UPDATE: No Recount — Yet — in Ward 1 Kent Council Race

Editor's note: this story was updated with comments from Melissa Long at 1:30 p.m.

Tuesday's Kent City Councilman Garret Ferrara, who retained his seat by 10 votes, was just enough to avoid an automatic recount based on unofficial results from the Portage County Board of Elections.

The incumbent Republican defeated his Democratic challenger Melissa Long by a vote of 754 to 744.

Ferrara's 10-vote lead is big enough that elections officials don't have to conduct an official recount — yet.

Linda Marcial, director of the Portage County Board of Elections, said a margin of victory in a race has to be within 0.05 percent of the total votes cast in that race to mandate an official recount. Ferrara's 10-vote lead as of Tuesday is 0.66 percent of the 1,498 total votes cast by Kent's Ward 1 residents.

"As it stands right now, it isn’t" within the threshold for a recount, Marcial said.

But there's a catch. Tuesday's unofficial results exclude provisional ballots cast. All total, the elections board has 901 provisional ballots countywide it must count, certify and include in the official elections results, which won't be certified until Nov. 29.

Marcial said they will know how many provisional ballots were cast in the Ward 1 race on Monday.

"It is conceivable, depending on how many provisionals we have for Ward 1, that (the race) could tighten and it could be a recount," she said. "We won’t know until we run the provisional ballots."

And Long said Wednesday that she may consider formally requesting a recount after the provisional ballots are counted.

"I went to bed thinking that it was a 60 point spread, and when I woke up this morning the board of elections informed me it’s 10," Long said. " I think to my satisfaction, to make sure that every vote was counted correctly, I am considering a recount."

Long said first she wants to wait and see if the provisional ballots — and any absentee ballot with a Nov. 8 postmark — changes the race before deciding to formally request a recount.

"I am very pleased … considering that I am new to the area and new to Portage County politics," she said. "And not new to elections, but I’ve only lived here five years and I was very pleased that people were willing to listen to my qualifications and consider wanting me to serve them as their council person.”

The campaign was Long's first run at public office in Kent, but she previously served both as mayor and a council member in Cortland, OH. Long also is a member of the Kent Planning Commission.

Ferrara said he was surprised the race was so close.

"You never know, to be quite frank," he said. "I guess I hoped it wouldn’t be (close), but you hope that you win by a big number. Melissa ran a nice campaign and did a lot of leg work."

Provisional ballots are cast by voters who are registered or said they were registered somewhere in Ohio, but they changed their name, address or did not have ID with them at the polls Tuesday. In other instances, a voter may cast a provisional ballot if they requested a ballot be mailed to them but the ballot did not arrive or if some information was not filed before the Oct. 11 registration deadline.

Marcial said the board has until Nov. 29 to certify those 901 provisional ballots to make sure they can legally be counted in the election. That process includes checking with other counties to confirm a voter's status.

"It is one of the most confusing things to the general public,” she said. "Some people think provisionals don’t count. On Monday we’ll know exactly how many we have for Ward 1.

"If there’s none or one ballot, obviously that’s not going to swing it enough to lower that percentage to less than 0.5 percent" to trigger a recount, Marcial said.