#NY22: Republican Tenney Leads by 29 Votes, Courtroom Meltdowns Continue
#NY22 Left Without U.S. House Rep as Race Drags On Into 2021.
The fight to represent New York’s 22nd Congressional District picked back up on Monday in court between Democratic incumbent Rep. Anthony Brindisi and Republican challenger Claudia Tenney.
Counties counted over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, which gave Tenney a 29 vote lead. But that could change since 2,500 ballots still need their day in court.
Vote tallies do not matter because State Supreme Court Judge Scott DelConte will rule which ballots will count two months after the election.
"It's January." — Justice Scott DelConte reminds attorneys this #NY22 legal battle has passed beyond his intended deadline and the swearing-in of the #117thCongress pic.twitter.com/m5lnb8IPnO
— Andrew Donovan (@AndrewDonovan) January 4, 2021
DelConte went through each pile ballot by ballot, which is honestly the only way to do this.
This is going to take a while.
Justice DelConte is reviewing each challenged ballot, one by one, and hearing attorneys for @RepBrindisi and @ClaudiaTenney argue the validity or invalidity of each.
"Every voters is going to be treated the same by me," says the judge." #NY22 pic.twitter.com/K4dW8Anmqb
— Andrew Donovan (@AndrewDonovan) January 4, 2021
DelConte is as frustrated as he was in December. Brindisi’s lawyer tried to convince DelConte to count ballots cast at the wrong place.
This situation brings up the “wrong church, wrong pew” idea. A 2019 law allows officials “to still count ballots cast in the wrong voting district as long as the person voted at the correct polling site.” For example, a person shows “up to a polling place that is hosting more than one voting district covering several lower-level races” and they get in the wrong line.
Brindisi says that qualifies as “right church, wrong pew.”
Brindisi’s attorneys said that “the failure of those poll workers to inform voters they were in the wrong place should not be enough to disenfranchise them.”
Tenney’s attorneys said “it is too heavy a burden on poll workers to ensure every voter is in the right spot” and the voter should make sure they are in the right line.
Wow! I haven’t seen Justice DelConte get this mad.
When @RepBrindisi’s attorney explained that a ballot cast in Norwich was marked by the Board of Elections as the incorrect election district, the judge demanded to know their argument on whether it should count. #NY22 pic.twitter.com/xolV3oC9sr
— Andrew Donovan (@AndrewDonovan) January 4, 2021
Attorney clarified: "We've taken the position that voters who vote in wrong polling place should count."
Justice demands arguments from both sides after 5-min. recess answering: should ballots cast at wrong polling place count?
"Let's get at this," the judge says. #NY22
— Andrew Donovan (@AndrewDonovan) January 4, 2021
Judge to Brindisi attorney: "That really means any voter in the State of New York can pick whatever polling place they want to go to, drive to and vote… that's what you're asking to find as a matter of law?"
Attorney: "Not quite your honor."
— Andrew Donovan (@AndrewDonovan) January 4, 2021
He asks @RepBrindisi's attorney: "You say that voters… can essentially vote in any polling place, where any race on the ballot would affect them at their home district. That's the rule you want me to adopt." #NY22
— Andrew Donovan (@AndrewDonovan) January 4, 2021
How are some of these ballots contested? I mean, don’t these unanswered questions make the ballot invalid?
Judge: "This voter did not answer the question: 'are you a citizen of the United States?' Did not answer the question: 'are you older than 18 years of age?'
This voter could have been 12 years old." #NY22 https://t.co/rvKvH2RZf9
— Andrew Donovan (@AndrewDonovan) January 4, 2021
The ballots look like they could have an episode on Forensic Files because the lawyers nitpicked at signatures.
Tenney's team argues some ballots are invalid because the signature and the historical signature on file don't match.
Brindisi's team is arguing why the signatures do match, like forensic evidence.
"the same looping pattern"
"distinctive H in distinctive cursive script"#NY22 pic.twitter.com/pQmAVYu4rD
— Andrew Donovan (@AndrewDonovan) January 4, 2021
In Broome Co., Tenney claims signature mismatches on 4 affidavit ballots so far. Brindisi’s arguments to save them sound like this:
•The “p”s are the same
•This one the same looping pattern
•This is a cursive version
•etc.In each case, voter provided DOB, SSN, etc. #NY22
— Patrick Lohmann (@PatLohmann) January 4, 2021
I told you DelConte is not in the mood to deal with anything. DelConte will also bring the truth.
F-bombs flying in #NY22 legal battle.
Seemingly frustrated with her computer, an attorney said: "What the f***?" in the virtual courtroom.
The judge screamed: "Who said that? Who said that?" When she identified herself, the judge ordered her removal from the virtual proceeding. pic.twitter.com/7V9OdkZXRL
— Andrew Donovan (@AndrewDonovan) January 4, 2021
“You may not be familiar with NYS voting but I am” DelConte tells Brindisi’s Washington based lawyer #NY22
— Karina Dale Gerry (@Rinaabobinaa) January 4, 2021
Brindisi’s lawyer proposed a timeline, which extends the battle for another week.
A proposed sped-up court schedule by the Brindisi campaign would have judicial review of contested ballots finishing up this Thursday followed by witness testimony and additional canvassing proceedings wrapping up next Wednesday, Jan. 13. #NY22 pic.twitter.com/H70G7E94tS
— Tommy CNY (@TommySladek) January 4, 2021
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Comments
True, but how were they given a ballot? And how can that ballot be counted since they don’t live in the district? I understand counting it if the district they voted in and the one they live in are both in the same congressional district (or whichever race we’re considering), but there will be other races on that ballot where the person will be voting in a district where they don’t live, so how can those be counted? Or is the idea only to count the vote for those positions that would have been on the correct ballot too?
Speaking as a poll worker, this makes no sense to me at all. The poll workers obviously did see that the person was not in their district, which is why they couldn’t let him sign the book and why they didn’t give him a normal ballot. Presumably they told him where to go and he refused, so they gave him an affidavit ballot.
That’s what we’re trained to do whenever a voter insists on voting despite not being in the book, or being in the wrong place, or registered in the wrong party (for primaries), etc. Give them an affidavit, let them cast it, and let the board of elections sort it out. We never outright tell someone they can’t vote; the expectation is that the BOE will examine the affidavit and throw it out.
So what is this about a heavy burden?
Why is it a “heavy burden” to know where to cast your ballot? In the two years between elections (feds anyway) can’t people get their information correct and their IDs in order? Why is that a burden?
My town mails out a form each year that confirms household members, their name, address and occupation, and current party status, with plenty of time to address any issues.
If they can mail out millions of junk mail ballots, why can’t every voting district do this? Or do they, and people ignore it?
I have no patience with most claims of “burdens” in voting. Every voter is, by definition, assumed to be a competent, autonomous, adult person of normal intelligence. If any one of them can figure it out, any person with anything resembling a true belief in Equality should assume any other person can and should as well.
It is not difficult to keep up with your voter registration, nor figure out where you need to go to vote. And, even if you forget or don’t know, every election in which you cannot vote due to your failure to put out the minimal effort required is a reminder to take the minimal amount of time and effort to fix the problem for the next year. You literally have all year to do it.
There are no human adults left in the US who have a valid “I don’t have ID” excuse. ID’s are free and you’ve had your entire post-pubescent life to get one. And given the coverage of voting issues in every form of traditional, alt, and social media, no young person “just turning 18,” the only people who might, decades ago, have been able to claim ignorance can make a credible claim they “didn’t know I needed to register (or whatever) to vote.”
Stop holding people’s hands (assuming no malicious acts by voting officials) if they can’t be bothered to occasionally check their voter registration, learn their in-person voting location and times, maintain a valid ID, and/or request an absentee ballot in time independently, they don’t need to be voting, and probably need to be in supervised care conditions because they are too stupid to live.
I think the rule in the country is keep counting until the Democrat wins. Works every time and there isn’t any fraud ever.
By the way, it happens all the time that people come to the wrong district table. As soon as we look them up in the book we find that they’re not there, so we look up where they should be voting and tell them.
It used to be a manual process of looking up their address and figuring out which electoral district they’re in, but now it’s all electronic, so we have access to the entire county’s electoral roll, and we can see exactly where this person is supposed to be voting.
Usually it is at a different table in the same room, so we just point them to the correct one. If it’s at a different location we give them a piece of paper with the correct address and tell them exactly which line to get in when they get there. But if they insist on voting here we give them an affidavit ballot.
2 districts in my town- I have no idea why. Population 1700. We all vote at the firs station. Except for school elections where we go to the high school- which is in another town… We don’t do anything by district in the town. But- if you go to the District 1 table and you’re not there, you go to District 2. One’s the west side, the other the East….
That’s the nice thing about early voting, at least in Texas. I can go to any polling place in the county and cast my vote. A poll worker sets the computer for your specific precinct so you’re voting for the appropriate local races and issues. Not so on election day, when you have to vote at the designated polling place for your precinct.
Pretty amazing how they can go through each individual ballot when it’s a Democrat’s seat in question, and they still refuse to have even a basic audit of the Presidential votes.
Two thoughts:
1. It is gratifying that the judge seems to understand the local district, “what are you legally entitled to vote for” issue. His pointed question about “anyone who has a ballot where they have any race they could vote for” really gets to the heart of that, and it suggests that he isn’t buying the notion that the process should automatically bend to include people at that level of error.
2. This could really be a teaching moment for the GOP to educate people on why local districts and voting rolls matter. Because when someone shows up at the wrong place, they are trying to vote for offices that they are not legally entitled to vote for. Much of American seems to not understand (at all) the whole purpose of voting roll audits and purges, which are designed to ensure that people can only lawfully vote for the offices for which they are lawful voters. A few years back, I moved three miles in a major city. And I crossed every single voting district you can imagine. My congressional district; my state legislative district; my school board district; everything. If I go vote at my old address (based on my prior registration), I’m illegally voting for a lot of people that are no longer in my voting district. That’s why registration rolls matter. Someone needs to do a decent educational campaign on this.
I began following Legal Insurrection years ago – long before it gained national prominence – because I was looking for information about an interesting upstate NY congressional race. So glad that LI is covering this one.
It might also be interesting to hear more about how upstaters are handling things – is the right of center population leaving NY the same way they are in California? Up until 2018, at least the state Senate was controlled by Republicans. NY has been a one-party state now for 2 years. How is that playing out? Upstate has been bleeding people all my life – I’m one of them. About 10 years ago I heard that about 25% of the population are government employees. Not sustainable. Are things any better now?
“”Are things any better now?””
I have family in NY-22, and according to them, no, things are “progressively” worse.
Correct. They are worse.