Marquette City Commission candidate Margaret Brumm was the subject of a modest dollop of criticism in recent days after she asked that the votes cast for commission candidates in the August primary be recounted.

Thankfully, the criticism was mostly muted and short lived.

Brumm received the fifth most votes in the primary balloting; only the top four candidates move on to the November general election where city voters will select two for the commission.

The recount, completed Thursday, did not change those results. Brumm did not move into the top four.

Recounts, as a general proposition over the years, have taken on the trappings of a political strategy, a way to draw out and perhaps undo the election’s results while the candidate and his or her supporters cloak themselves in a thin veneer of legitimacy.

We are certain that wasn’t the case in Brumm’s circumstance. We believe her concern was rooted in an honest question of the primary’s results and she is well within her legal rights to envoke the recount statute.

“My faith in the election process and the integrity of the voting booth in the city of Marquette has been renewed,” she said for a Mining Journal story on the recount. “The results of the recount are that I missed being on the ballot for the general election by (20) votes. I have decided that I am going to continue as a write-in candidate for the Marquette City Commission. The general election date is (Nov. 5). As the fifth-place finisher in a four-person race, I have no where to go but up.”

If nothing else, one has to admire her drive to succeed.