By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — The Board of Canvassers released new election returns for the District 51 House of Representatives race Wednesday, saying the figures it had released after the polls closed the night before were incorrect.

Christopher Fierro, 28, still won the six-way Democratic primary, but he took in a total of 390 votes, not 279, as it appeared after the polls closed.
And David Lahousse, the runner up, garnered 296, not 177, giving him 26 percent of the votes cast in the race.
Linda Fontaine, the manager of the Board of Canvassers, said the figures released after the polls closed somehow omitted votes cast at two of the district’s five polling places, Woonsocket High School and Governor Pothier Elementary School. Polls workers returned the recording tapes from ballot boxes at those sites to the Board of Canvassers, and the tapes were fed into computer tabulating machines, but the machines did not record the numbers, she said.
Computer printouts run off after the polls closed indicated that no one voted at those two sites, which didn’t make sense, said Fontaine.
“Sure enough, when we double checked this morning there were zeros on them, but no one picked up on it last night,” Fontaine said Wednesday. “But it’s fixed now.”
There were widespread reports of technical problems in counting and relaying ballot numbers to authorities at the state Board of Elections on Tuesday night, but Fontaine said it’s unclear whether those in the city were related to any of the others.
In Woonsocket, the press was already reporting the possibility of a problem before the Board of Canvassers apparently realized there was one.
Based on information from Lahousse’s campaign workers, Wednesday morning’s editions of The Call reported the returns might have omitted figures from WHS and Pothier School. Fontaine said she was on her way to work Wednesday morning when she also heard a similar radio report.
In addition to votes cast at polling places, the adjusted figures include mail ballots the city received from state elections officials, said Fontaine. The canvassers - James Allam, Rita Rousseau and Gil Perez - were to meet Wednesday night to certify the returns, making them official.
Other candidates in the race included Robert D. Phillips, who finished with 183 votes; Richard A. Picard, 162; Bamby L. Mohamed, 52; and Joseph D. Barroso, 45.
On primary night, the incorrect tallies indicated only 737 people had voted in the District 51 race, but the figure was actually about 1,130. Although it was a primary, the contest is settled for Fierro, who faces no Republican challenger in the November election.