A recount of the 2008 Austin mayoral race election results will be held Wednesday.

First-term incumbent Austin Mayor Tom Stiehm defeated challenger Mark Nagle, 5,233 to 5,194 in the Nov. 4 election.

The percentages were 47.40 for Stiehm and 47.05 for Nagle.

On Thursday, Nagle requested a recount of the Nov. 4 results as he is entitled to do so by state law.

Only 39 votes separated the Austin businessman from the incumbent’s total.

“The recount will be conducted by Lucy Johnson, the Austin municipal clerk,” Mower County Auditor-Treasurer Doug Groh explained.

Groh will have his representative at the recount to observe.

Both Stiehm and Nagle will have their own representatives at the recount.

“If you’re going to challenge a recount, I imagine you would want to have a representative there to watch the recount take place,” Groh said.

The last recount conducted in Mower County was an appellate court judge’s race results held after the Sept. 9 state primary.

“That was a statewide recount all over Minnesota, of course,” Groh said. ‘This is only a municipal recount.”

The recount will take place in the Mower County Board of Commissioners’ meeting room and is open to the public.

According to Johnson, she will supervise Wednesday’s mayoral race recount with five or six election judges’ assistance.

“I’m assuming it’s going to take us most of the day Wednesday,” Johnson said of the 11,039 vote recount.

A total of 76.09 percent voter turnout was recorded in the city Nov. 4.

The recount will take place by hand as the judges examine each ballot recorded.

“The examination isn’t tough,” Johnson said. “You have to get them all straight and in the same direction and then you have to sort them out by candidate, count them up and make sure you come up with the right amount of ballots and the right tally.”