NORTH SMITHFIELD — After Paulette Hamilton and Town Administrator Robert B. Lowe came in first and second to qualify for the November race for town administrator, the third and fourth-place finishers, Donald P. Gagnon and Ernest Alter, said Wednesday they hadn’t decided whom they would endorse, if anyone.

“I honestly don’t know how I’m going to do this,” Gagnon said.

Fourth-place finisher Ernest H. Alter was likewise circumspect.

“Right now I’m working with Paulette to some degree,” Alter said. “I want to find out more.”

One thing Gagnon said he did know was that he’d decided to pull back on his time commitments, and that would mean stepping down as chairman of the Conservation Commission and resigning from the town’s Ordinance Committee and the Branch Village redevelopment task force.

Gagnon said that as a retiree on a fixed income, the expenses of driving across town and the time required was becoming more of a burden. “I have always enjoyed it,” he said of his public service. “But financially, I just can’t afford it.”

There was some confusion yesterday over the final results of the voting. On election night, the Board of Elections’ Web site had the final tally as Hamilton 545, Lowe 464, Gagnon 370 and Alter 255. But by Wednesday the numbers had changed to Hamilton 462, Lowe 400, Gagnon 327 and Alter 211.

Board of Elections officials referred questions about the discrepancy to Joseph Vitale, a consultant with the private contractor that ran the state’s vote-counting system, but Vitale was not available for comment.

Town Clerk Deborah Todd said the only numbers her office had were the ones collected from poll workers on election night. Those did not include the 53 mail-in ballots.

When the board’s new totals are subtracted from the board’s election night numbers, the differences for all four administrator candidates — Hamilton 83, Lowe 64, Gagnon 43 and Alter 44 — equal the number of votes each got at the Villa St. Antoine polling place. And though the board’s Web site yesterday said the new numbers included all six polling places, only five of them were marked with small red checks. Villa St. Antoine was not checked.

Based on the election night numbers, Lowe was strongest in the Slatersville section, where Town Hall is, and the Forestdale section, where he lives. Those areas are also slated to get new sewer lines, with work starting this month. He won the Scouter’s Hall polling place by 39 votes and Kendall Dean by 12.

Hamilton won the polling place at the Primrose fire station, not far from her Black Plain Road home, and was strong in the northern part of town, winning the St. Paul Street area by 52 votes and the Villa St. Antoine on the Woonsocket line by 19.

Gagnon performed best at North Smithfield Elementary School in the southern part of town. He has been active there over the past year, particularly in his opposition to a subdivision proposed in that area by Narragansett Improvement Co.

Turnout was 20 percent townwide, a number Gagnon complained bitterly about. In a year where average homeowners saw their tax bills go up by about $300, Gagnon said he had expected more people coming to the polls.

“Everybody I talked to was … moaning,” Gagnon said. “But when it came time to go to the polls, they let somebody else make the decision.”

jhill@projo.com