After recount, Union School district still comes up short

<br>TULSA, Okla. (AP) _ The Union School District came up one vote short of getting $1 million to buy new buses. <br><br>A hand recount conducted Thursday showed the district received 59.99 percent support

Friday, February 22nd 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

TULSA, Okla. (AP) _ The Union School District came up one vote short of getting $1 million to buy new buses.

A hand recount conducted Thursday showed the district received 59.99 percent support in last week's school bond election. Under Oklahoma law, school bond issues require 60 percent approval.

``We're disappointed, but that's the way it works,'' said Mark Robertson, the district's support services director. ``As a citizen of Oklahoma, I got to see how the process works, and it works really well.''

Robertson was in a Tulsa County courtroom all day, watching four-person teams count through stacks of ballot boxes from the election. Each ballot was double-checked by another counter. When there was a rare question on a vote, the counters took the ballot to the three-person Tulsa County Election Board to decide the outcome.

The recount showed that 2,561 voters supported the bond issue, while 1,708 voted against it. The machine count had indicated that 2,562 voted in favor and 1,711 had voted against.

Election Board officials said they had to make rulings on only three or four ballots. The rest were clearly marked.

Robertson also said he believes in the system despite the district's close loss.

``If there's a lesson to be learned by all of this, it's that every vote does count,'' he said.