Monica Zoltanski becomes Sandy's first female mayor

SANDY, Utah (KUTV) — The Sandy mayoral race results are now official after city leaders voted to certify Monica Zoltanski's 21-vote lead.

The threshold for a recount is 19. The certification officially makes her the mayor-elect and the city’s first woman mayor.

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Zoltanski, in an interview with 2News minutes after the vote, described her emotions as “excitement, relief”, sharing that she is ecstatic, proud, humbled and ready to serve.

“People might say it’s close, and I guess if you compare it to all elections overtime, yes, it was a squeaker," she said. "However first time doing ranked-choice voting in Sandy, eight candidates in the field. So it may have well been a landslide if you ask me."

The final results followed controversy surrounding a recount by Salt Lake County where there appeared to be some gray area when it comes to the law as it's written for ranked-choice elections.

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Hayden Loftus is an elections specialist with the Lieutenant Governor’s Office, which oversees elections.

“Salt Lake County did what they felt was legally in the code as a recount," he said. "There is some ambiguity there that we are hoping to clear up. But they ran what they thought would be a recount, Sandy City disagreed. That’s what prompted our office stepping, in filling those ambiguous holes to offer what we feel is interpretation of the code."

On Thursday, some council members voted to reject the results due to this confusion. Some felt the county should re-scan ballots and re-adjudicate signatures.

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Instead, Loftus said they did a re-tabulation of votes. State officials said the ranked-choice election was part of a pilot project. Many cities, including Sandy, took part.

The lieutenant governor's office said they want recounts to be consistent.

“We feel that how recounts have been done in the past is how they should be done in the future and moving forward,” Loftus said. “However, Salt Lake County decided that through their legal team, a recount in that aspect wasn’t needed or wasn’t necessary to fulfill those code requirements."