City councillor Minka vanBeuzekom, right, talks Thursday with a recount worker on Day 9 at the Willis Moore Youth Center. (Photo: Marc Levy)

A vote recount ended Thursday without incumbent Minka vanBeuzekom’s reelection to City Council. It was called at 6:05 p.m. by election commissioner Ethridge King.

“I hope I did some good on the council. Hopefully I’ll do a lot of good off the council too,” vanBeuzekom said after the results were clear. She then thanked commissioners and recount workers individually.

But that was not quite the end of Day 9 of the hand recount. The votes had to be solidified by candidate so if a councillor leaves office, the city knows which otherwise unelected candidate would take that councillor’s place, commissioner Peter Sheinfeld said. In 2009, when Brian Murphy quit the council to work for the state, challenger Larry Ward took his place for the remainder of the term.

Because challenger Ron Peden rose to 51 votes as ballots were looked  at anew – one above a cutoff – there was an 18th count under Cambridge’s ranked method of voting and vote counting, while the Nov. 5 election went only to a 17th count.

The final matter was the “vacancy recount,” which was expected to take until 8 to 8:30 p.m. to pin down, commissioner Polyxane S. Cobb said. A councillor’s replacement would be decided by the departing councillor’s No. 1 ballots, which would be looked at to see who inherited the votes as a resident ranked the remaining candidates as their second choice, third choice and so on.

“A lot depends who leaves,” Cobb said.

Even with pausing Tuesday for a special election to fill U.S. Sen. Ed Markey’s former 5th Congressional District seat – Democrat Katherine Clark beat Republican Frank Addivinola – this recount took a shorter time than a smaller recount in 2001. As the first recount under new computer systems, that took two weeks to finish and cost the city $50,783 in today’s dollars, and it was for a 10-candidate race with some 1,230 fewer voters. This was a 25-candidate recount done in nine long days that included a Saturday.

Unofficial recount worker estimates put the cost of this recount at between $60,000 and $90,000, including the wages of the many recount workers and police details and such things as rental costs on tables and other incidentals. There was no rent charged for use the site of the recount, the Willis Moore Youth Center at 12 Gilmore St. in the Riverside neighborhood.