After a full week of waiting for Gwinnett County to certify the Nov. 6 election, the numbers show Republican candidate Steven Knudsen remained the top vote-getter for the District 2 Board of Education seat. With 118 votes more than his opponent, the unofficial results from last week now stand.
But Democratic challenger Wandy Taylor said the fight isn’t over.
“Yes, I’m going to demand a recount,” she said Thursday just minutes after the final tabulations were released. “The margin is less than half of one percent. I don’t just owe it to myself to call for a recount, I owe to everyone who believed in my candidacy.”
Taylor had a total of 31,418 votes to Knudsen’s 31,536.
The day after the election, Knudsen said he’s ready to get to the task of learning how to be a good board member.
“There’s some training involved and I’m eager to get started,” he said.
Taylor said the shrinking lead was testimony to the support she had in an area that had never had a Democratic winner.
Tuesday night Knudsen was ahead by 822 votes. After absentee ballots were counted, he was up by 175. And just Tuesday when the provisional ballots were counted, his lead had shrunk to 162.
Once the recount is official, Taylor said she’ll accept the results, whatever they are.
“It will be time to move on — one way or another,” she said.
When asked if she’d run for office again, she couldn’t give a definite answer.
“That has yet to be determined.”