Losing by only 65 votes in this year's city elections in Waltham, Edmund P. Tarallo '04, otherwise known as Top Hat Teddy, accounted his loss to the unusually high voter turnout rate of approximately 13,000 residents rather than the usual 11,000. The election was further complicated when the campaign committee mistakenly credited Tarallo an extra 200 votes.Tarallo attributes the high voter turnout rate to a question regarding taxes, which sparked many residents' interest.

"If it had been two years ago, I would have had more than enough votes," Tarallo said, contrasting previous years' voter turnout. "But it's nice to know that 5,128 people really liked me!"

Although running for Waltham city council involved much work, the experience was worth it, according to Tarallo.

"I did what I could," Tarallo said. "It was a good experience. I found something that was important and meant a lot to me. It showed me I actually had a drive and that I could put my mind to something and follow through with it."

He explained how he was one of the only people with an actual campaign. According to Tarallo, he campaigned door-to-door at approximately 70 percent of the city's homes, sent out six pieces of mail, and had letters from the state representative, councilor of ward four, and the former councilor of ward nine, who originally ran for the council when he was 20 and is now a professor at Bentley.

"I had a lot of people holding signs at events, I think that and the things I sent out were what helped me the most." Tarallo said.

In spite of his efforts, errors in the counting of the votes obscured the election results.

"We (the campaign committee) went and looked at all of the numbers to see if mistakes were made," Tarallo said.

After the campaign committee conducted a thorough review of all votes, including late and absentee votes, Tarallo still lost the election.

"Even the few dozen we think are missing from my count, they wouldn't have made much of a difference," Tarallo said. "A few dozen off of 65 doesn't do it. If we had really wanted to, we could have demanded a recount and had the same lawyer as Al Gore had, but we decided it wasn't worth spending that money."

Despite a few slip-ups during his campaign, Tarallo maintains that his running for Waltham city council was a learning experience.

"I know that some of the debates went just OK, and a lot of these people look at how you say things, rather than what you say, and I know I stuttered a bit when I was speaking," he said.

Tarallo, though, is looking forward to a few years from now, and a chance to run again, this time not still as a student.

"It was a pain in my butt, but it was great and I can't wait until next time," Tarallo said.