By Kimberly Gasuras

The staff at the Crawford County Elections is in embarking on the tedious process of the recount of votes in the Bucyrus City Council president race.

Although the official count was completed last week and incumbent Garnet “Sis” Love was declared the winner of the race, her opponent, Kurt Fankhauser, requested a recount that he is footing the bill for.

“The cost if $60 per precinct,” board director Ruth Leuthold has previously said.

Leuthold said there are 48 cannisters of printed votes to count along with paper ballots.

“The votes in the canisters are the paper copies from each machine that people used to vote on Nov. 7,” Leuthold said.

Leuthold said there were 37 machines used in the nine precincts voting for council president.

The final vote tally last week, which included provisional ballots, showed Love winning with 1,134 votes and Fankhauser coming in at 1,105, a difference of 29 votes.

Fankhauser said previously, “I received so much overwhelming support from the citizens of Bucyrus that wanted to finally see change. If I gave up now, I would be letting all of those folks down. They are the ones that have been suffering for so long by the decisions of the few elite,” Fankhauser said. “We have real problems in this town, like utility rates spiraling out of control and weekly heroin overdoses and yet they continue to waste time and money on stuff like tree ordinances. If the incumbent president gets re-elected, then not only did I lose, but the whole town lost.”

Although the recount began at 9 a.m. on Friday, Leuthold said the counting of each vote by hand might continue Monday before the results can be released.