Proponents of beer and wine sales in Tisbury restaurants, defeated by a mere two votes in this year’s ballot, say they plan to put it before the people again next April.

After years of controversy, the proposal to license restaurants to sell alcohol failed 692 to 690, after a recount conducted last Friday.

The original automated count on polling night, April 15, scored the issue a 690-all tie with 21 ballots recorded as blank. The manual count, completed after a tense two hours, just after 4 p.m. last Friday, found two of those 21 to have been valid “no” votes.

Beer and wine supporters have accepted that adjudication; their spokesman Laura Barbera said there would be no further challenge to the result. But she said the group Citizens to Repeal Prohibition would not give up.

“We are very encouraged by the number of people who turned out and the closeness of the result,” Ms. Barbera said.

“We want to get the ball rolling again.”

Their plan is to take it to a special town meeting this fall to seek approval to have a question similar or even identical to the one just defeated put on the ballot for next year’s annual town election.

As was the case last time, this would involve getting a home rule petition through the state legislature.

But there are several obstacles in the way, the first being that no special town meeting is planned at this stage, and the selectmen will not support calling a town meeting solely to consider beer and wine.

So they would have to piggyback their issue onto something else, that most likely being consideration of the re-siting of the town’s emergency services, which has been proposed as part of the Tisbury planning board’s ambitious master plan.

But that also is a hot issue, and opinion is divided about whether sufficient consensus could be reached over the next few months as to make any meaningful outcome likely.

Selectman Denys Wortman said a fall special town meeting is more likely than not. Selectman Tristan Israel said the degree of controversy over the siting of emergency services made a meeting a 50-50 chance at best. Newly elected selectman Jeff Kristal — whose narrow election to the board also was challenged, unsuccessfully, in Friday’s recount — thinks it will happen.

So the next hurdle for the beer and wine proponents is getting the question put to a special town meeting.

Ms. Barbera said she hoped the selectmen would support the move, but that seems unlikely.

Mr. Israel — who said he had voted in favor of beer and wine sales — believes the continued pursuit of the controversial matter has become a distraction from more important things. He said it is time to give the matter a rest.

“We need to let the smoke clear and take a break for a while,” he said. “The town has more pressing issues on which to focus, such as its future infrastructure needs.”

He added that he would be saying the same thing if the result of the referendum on beer and wine had gone the other way, and it was opponents who now were pressing the issue.

Mr. Wortman agreed.

Which leaves Mr. Kristal, a prime mover behind the beer and wine push, isolated on the board. Ms. Barbera said she had spoken to him about the prospect of bringing the issue before a fall meeting, and he was “certainly in favor.”

Mr. Kristal himself was more circumspect, saying only that he would not stand in the way of any such move.

But with two-thirds of the board reluctant to support raising the matter, beer and wine supporters will likely have to take another tack, and petition to have the question put to town meeting.

“We could do it either way, but we would rather do it with the selectmen’s approval,” Ms. Barbera said.

A petition would require the signatures of 100 voters registered in the town, which should not be a major problem for them, considering the size of the vote they achieved.

So it seems likely the town will again have to consider beer and wine in the fall.

The bigger problems for those determined to push ahead on restaurant sales are whether the special town meeting will go for it, or agree with Mr. Wortman and Mr. Israel that the issue is becoming a controversial distraction, and whether the state will entertain a second home-rule petition on the same subject.

In any case, it is clear last Friday’s recount only brought a pause to the controversy, not a resolution.

And the recount itself was not without a modicum of drama.

About 60 people — including counters of votes, recorders of votes, registrars, town counsel, observers for both sides and interested members of the public, assembled in the Katharine Cornell Theatre at 2 p.m., and after an explanation of proceedings, began the actual counting just before 2:30 p.m.

Things proceeded smoothly until 3:30 p.m., when the three counters finished their work, the results were tallied and found to be short. Staff then found another bundle of 101 ballot papers, and all eyes focused on one counter, Tim McLean.

At 3:52 p.m., Barbara Silvia again tallied the votes, groaned, and tallied them again.

Finally, just after 4 p.m., the result was announced. After more than three years of town debate and two weeks of uncertainty about the result, the electors had narrowly spoken.

A second recount, of the votes in the selectman’s election, then took place. The machine count originally gave the position to Jeff Kristal over the nine-year incumbent, Thomas Pachico.

The recount confirmed that result, 679 to 665, with 46 blanks and 10 write-ins.