New York State Supreme Court Judge Scott DelConte told Board of Elections officials that he would not declare a winner in New York’s 22nd Congressional District and fix previous errors.
My head is still spinning.
Things spun out of control right before Thanksgiving when Post-Its fell off a bunch of contested ballots.
Then the lead went to Democratic incumbent Anthony Brindisi by 13 votes. His Republican challenger Claudia Tenney took the lead three days later with 12 votes!
It doesn’t help that officials keep finding ballots! They found 55 ballots last week. They discovered 12 more ballots yesterday!
DelConte literally put officials back at square one.
DelConte made sure to note that “there is absolutely no evidence – or even an allegation – before this court of any fraud on the part of the Boards or the campaigns.”
The judge denied Tenney’s proposal to certify the race and declare her the winner:
DelConte wrote that Tenney’s proposal would require him to “ignore multiple errors by the respondent Boards of Elections, disregard proper challenges to invalid ballots that were counted and valid ballots that were not counted…and ignore hundreds of ballots that were never canvassed in the first place.”The judge added, “That is not the role of the court. The winner of this election must be decided by the real parties of interest: the voters. And to do so, every valid vote must be counted.”
DelConte granted some relief to Brindisi by ordering the Board of Elections “to fulfill their statutory canvassing duties, immediately correct all of the canvassing errors and, where their errors cannot be corrected, recanvass those ballots.”
Here’s the thing. They went to DelConte because they could not figure out the winner.
Granted, New York election laws would drive anyone insane. Then again, who uses Post-Its to mark something important? It doesn’t take long for the glue to come undone on a Post-It. But the law clearly states you must use ink!
The most recent tally still has Tenney ahead by 12 votes. But there are still many votes out there:
DelConte did not rule today on the validity of any of the hundreds of absentee and affidavit ballots challenged by the Brindisi and Tenney campaigns. He blamed the “failures” of county election officials in the 22nd District, who in some cases lost information about the disputed votes.In Oneida County, election officials admitted that they lost sticky notes that had been attached to disputed ballots with reasons for the challenges. The judge also said Madison County officials had also failed to follow election law, requiring details to be written in ink on disputed ballots.“Those failures have frustrated the candidates, and prejudiced their rights to meaningful judicial review of the boards’ actions on the challenged ballots,” DelConte wrote. “In particular, this court cannot rule upon the validity of those ballots without evidence establishing what candidate had challenged the board’s ruling on a particular ballot’s validity.”
We have:
Now those votes will be canvassed.
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