Thread: NY: Tedisco Race; Absentee Ballots to be Counted (w/Updates)

Margins Narrows, Tedisco Trails by Just 25 Votes

Thursday, April 2, 2009 12:48 PM

By: David A. Patten

New vote tallies in the bitterly fought 20th Congressional District in upstate New York put GOP Assemblyman Jim Tedisco within striking distance, just a scant 25 votes behind Democratic venture capitalist Scott Murphy.

On Election Day, unofficial results showed Murphy with a 65-vote lead over GOP Assemblyman Jim Tedisco -- out of 154,629 votes cast.

But as counties begin to canvass the actual voting machines, comparing their recorded vote totals with the results called into central county election boards, the gap is narrowing.

The Associated Press reports that now Murphy only leads by 25 votes, 77,217 to 77,192. The totals are expected to continue to fluctuate in coming days as the counties continue their canvassing efforts to ensure the correct vote totals were phoned in on election night.

The voting machines have been impounded under lock and key by a court order obtained by GOP officials seeking to avoid a repeat of Minnesota’s marathon election dispute between GOP Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken.

As Newsmax first reported Tuesday, that court order also prohibits precincts from counting absentee ballots. The ballots can only be evaluated and counted by county election boards, in the presence of representatives from the two campaigns.

All eyes are turning to those absentee ballots: The candidate who wins the majority of those ballots is likely to win the election.

A county-by-county Newsmax analysis of absentee ballots in the 20th Congressional District race suggests they will probably duplicate the razor-thin margin of the election itself.

That would set the stage for a drawn out, post-election recount struggle that could mirror the marathon election contest that has kept Minnesotans from having a second U.S. Senator for five months now. The 20th District race has been portrayed as an important symbolic test of the popularity of President Obama’s policies.

Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg reviewed a county-by-county tabulation of absentee ballots compiled by Newsmax and was struck by how closely it paralleled overall trends from the election.

“I’m open to why the absentee voting should be different, but so far I haven’t seen it,â€

The 20th District race has been portrayed as an important symbolic test of the popularity of President Obama’s policies.

Well, if that's true, I guess Obama isn't as popular as the media would have us believe.

This was the largest turnout in a Special Election in more than 10 years.

http://wnyt.com/article/stories/S863157.shtml?cat=300

More GOP absentees in House toss-up

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Republicans have so far returned more of the absentee ballots that will decide the race in New York's 20th Congressional District.


Democrat Scott Murphy leads Republican Jim Tedisco by six votes out of more than 154,000 cast. State Board of Elections spokesman Bob Brehm said reporting Thursday from Dutchess and Warren counties show Tedisco closing the gap. The count is 77,208 for Murphy and 77,202 for Tedisco, Brehm said.

The state board says nearly 3,000 ballots returned so far are from Republicans; about 2,200 are from Democrats.

Party registration does not guarantee a party line vote. Most absentee ballots won't be counted until April 7; Overseas ballots can be returned until April 13.

Counties also have 940 absentees back from voters not registered as Republican or Democrat.

The race is to succeed Kirsten Gillibrand, who was named to the U.S. Senate.


(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

nd while absentee ballots from U.S. military personnel serving abroad should help Murphy, those numbers may be small. As of Wednesday, election officials reported that fewer than 200 military ballots had come back in, along with about 150 absentee ballots from citizens living abroad.

Ballots from overseas typically arrive late because the mail service is much slower, especially from remote and isolated areas, combat zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, and ships at sea. If over a thousand ballots were issued to military personnel I would bet over 90% will be returned by the deadline.

Tedisco, Murphy Tied in N.Y. Race

Friday, April 3, 2009 5:58 PM
By: David A. Patten

New vote totals in New York’s landmark 20th congressional district race pitting Republican Assemblyman Jim Tedisco against Democrat Scott Murphy now show the two candidates perfectly deadlocked with the exactly the same number of votes.

“At the moment I feel like we’ve joined the ranks of Florida 200 and Minnesota 2008,â€

I wonder if any of those "provisional" ballots will turn out to be illegal aliens, dead people or Dallas Cowboys?

Late Delivery of Absentee Ballots Hurt Tedisco
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 3:29 PM
By: David A. Patten

Just 56 votes currently separate the candidates in the 20th Congressional District race, and some Republicans charge that the Empire State’s late delivery of absentee ballots to military personnel stationed abroad could cost GOP candidate Jim Tedisco the election.

On Monday, a court hearing reviewed the counting the district’s absentee ballots. Attorneys for Democrat Scott Murphy charge that Tedisco’s attorneys have slowed down the vote-counting process by objecting to legitimate ballots. Tedisco attorney Jim Walsh told the court that election officials in Delaware and Essex counties had opened military and other overseas absentee ballots last week, in violation of a federal court order.

Many observers expect the 403 military and overseas ballots to favor Tedisco. About half of those ballots were cast by military personnel stationed abroad.

The number of military absentee ballots could have been much greater, some observers say, if the state had given soldiers stationed overseas more time to receive and cast their ballots.

Hans A. von Spakovsky, a visiting legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation, says numerous nonprofit watchdog groups, as well as the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, recommend that absentee ballots should be mailed to military personnel 45 days prior to the deadline for casting the votes. This is intended to give military voters fighting in far-flung war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan time to receive and respond to their mail.

In the special election in upstate New York, which has been heralded as a test of the popularity of President Obama’s economic policies, absentee ballots reportedly were mailed out March 12 and 13. March 30 was the deadline by which all absentee ballots had to be postmarked in order to be valid.

Essex County sent the ballots via express mail, but the District’s other nine counties sent them via regular mail. That meant a soldier conducting patrols out of Kandahar, Afghanistan, for example, would only have about 17 days to receive, complete, and mail back an absentee ballot sent via regular mail from the United States.

Von Spakovsky recently wrote in National Review online that military voters “will probably end up being disenfranchised and having their votes discounted, thanks to the irresponsible New York Board of Elections and the half-hearted actions of the Department of Justice.â€