The math is a little hard to follow at first, but despite garnering 68 percent approval overall, the Gail Borden Public Library District annexation referendum did not pass.

The total number of votes cast were in favor of the annexation: 14,601 voters said “yes,” 5,652 said “no.”

But to pass, the referendum had to be approved, not just by all voters in the existing Library District, but also by voters in each precinct in the area under consideration for annexation — and that didn’t happen.

According to an article in The Courier-News, the majority of voters in Plato Township Precinct 1, Plato Township Precinct 2, Campton Township Precinct 2 and Campton Township Precinct 4 voted “no.” In Plato Township Precinct 5, no one voted, which officials believe would have been counted as a “no.”

The Gail Borden Library District’s November/December “Discover” publication said: “If the unserved people vote yes and the current residents vote yes on Nov. 4 (votes are counted by precinct), these people will become members of the Library District and will have the same privileges available to them as those available to the current members.”

The Gail Borden Library website said: “Unconfirmed numbers from the geographic referendum precincts this morning do not indicate that the ‘Yes’ won in any of the precincts that were part of the unserved area.”

Gail Borden Public Library Executive Director Carole Medal made this statement on the library website.

“At this juncture, we are disappointed with the voting results in the west as we very much wanted to bring library services to people in the un-served areas.  Although the referendum did not pass this time, we thought the process afforded people the opportunity to learn about what the library can do for them and, perhaps some day in the future, the results will be different.  At the end of the day, hopefully we made some new connections,” she said.  “I also want to thank everyone in this community who worked so hard to inform people about the extraordinary services available from the library.”