Look for a few more ballots to be opened and counted today and tomorrow. The so called "set-aside" ballots will be opened and counted in Saratoga, Washington and Warren counties. These are ballots that were objected to during the count by one of the campaigns, but the objection was over-ruled by both of the county election officials. These ballots have been "set-aside" unopened, not included among the lists of challenged ballots, nor void, nor counted. Columbia and Greene counties counted 54 of these ballots last Friday based on Judge Brands’ earlier ruling to open them and count them. The other counties have waited for clarification of the judge’s ruling which was provided yesterday.
More info below the fold...
From:
http://www.newsmax.com/...
Four of the district’s 10 counties have yet to count ballots that election commissioners from both parties are ready to accept.
On Tuesday, Saratoga and Warren counties will count their agreed-upon ballots, followed Wednesday by Washington and Otsego counties.
Precisely how many ballots the ruling pertains to is unknown, but sources tell Newsmax the number is not expected to exceed 100.
They should begin counting these ballots today and tomorrow. There is no official report of how many of these ballot there are, but using the process of elimination there seems to be between 40 and 210 of them. They should favor Murphy strongly, so expect Murphy’s lead to grow by 8 to 70 more votes today and tomorrow.
Trying to figure out how many ballots are left to count is difficult because of errors in terminology used in many of the public reporting. We have reports of unopened ballots, uncounted ballots, challenged ballots, "set-aside" ballots, and void ballots, none of which are clearly defined and all of which overlap to some extent in each report based on what the reporter or the source understands those terms to mean.
I’ve tried to sort it out.
We have 1789 ballots that are not yet included in the count. This number is the difference between the total number of paper ballots that we stated with and the number that have been counted as votes for either Murphy and Tedisco. So this number includes all ballots that have been challenged, declared void, or "set-aside".
We have good information that there are 1579 challenged ballots (1025 by Tedisco, 553 by Murphy.
That leaves 210 not included as either counted for the candidates nor "challenged". These are either "set-aside" or have been declared void. Previous reports have indicated that at least 32 are void and at least 46 are "set-aside". So there is still a lot of uncertainty there. But that uncertainty will be eliminated in the next day or two as all of the remaining "set-aside" ballots are counted and reported. This will also allow us to figure out how many ballots have been determined to be void so far.
Here’s a break down of ballot count by county. Some of these numbers are guesses, some are known.
So the demographic info and new developments that we have about the 1579 challenged ballots include:
Of Tedisco’s 1025 challenged ballots we have this report from:
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/...
Tedisco's team challenged most of the 1,800 ballots in question - about 700 were contested based on applications and about 300 were set aside because of residency questions, according to candidates' attorneys.
And this:
http://www.timesunion.com/...
In paper work Walsh filed with the court on the residency issue, the lawyer urged the judge to throw out any ballot from a voter whose primary residence — as shown by where the voter gets his or her STAR exemption or other tax breaks, for example — is outside the 20th District. About 300 ballots fall into this category.
Walsh also offered a 14-page memo using case law to convince Brands to allow poll watchers to use absentee ballot applications. Poll watchers referred to the applications while examining roughly 1,000 ballots.
Clearly the reporter in the first article is calling all uncounted ballots "challenged" which is not technically correct, and also seems to be using the term "set-aside" to refer to some challenged ballots, which is also not correct. But we see that residency is going to be a deciding issue for about 300 of the ballots and the legality of allowing poll-watchers or campaign staff to examine the ballot applications will be important for 700 of the ballots. The 1000 number in the second report is a total of the 300 and the 700, indicating that the 300 ballots challenged for residency issues also had their ballot applications examined, so those 300 fall into both categories.
We also have this from:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
About 200 ballots that were opened up but objected to on the basis of voter intent -- that is, a campaign challenged it based on how the voter marked it, similar to the ballot-challenges we saw in Minnesota -- will be brought to the State Elections Board, as a centralized location, on Thursday.
And this from:
http://www.politickerny.com/...
Just under 200 votes were objected to on the basis of the actual ballots. These objections entail things like checking a box in the wrong field. Lawyers from both sides agreed to meet Thursday at the State Board of Elections in Albany to being counting these ballots.
And finally:
http://www.timesunion.com/...
The lawyers agreed to meet at the state election board's offices in Albany on Thursday to look at 188 absentee ballots that were opened and then objected to by campaign poll watchers from one side or the other. Most of those were challenged due to stray markings on the ballot.
These 188 ballots seem to be a subset of the 1579 challenged ballots that are not going to be governed by any broad rulings from the judge like voter residency or the challenges having been based on access to the ballot application, etc. so they are going to be examined and one would imagine ruled on individually starting on Thursday.
So of the 1579 challenged ballots, we have:
188 that are being examined individually,
300 challenged based on residency.
700 challenged based on examination of the ballot application.
391 unknown.
And one more little tidbit of info on the 1789 uncounted ballots from:
http://www.politico.com/...
Fueling Democratic optimism is the source of the 1,773 ballots that have been challenged by both campaigns, and left out of the current count. According to a database provided by the Murphy campaign, the plurality of those challenged ballots were cast by registered Democrats.
Of the 1,773 ballots not included in the count, 810 were cast by registered Democrats, 653 were from registered Republicans and 310 were from independent or unaffiliated voters.
I think that the 1773 number is probably the total number of uncounted ballots (1789) minus some of the voided ballots. But in any case, it’s clear that this pool of ballots is going to heavily favor Murphy when they eventually get counted.
So we may have new updated vote counts from Saratoga and Warren counties today at the NYS-BOE 4:00 PM update.
UPDATE #1
After taking a long look at the numbers this morning, I see some oddities and maybe have a explaination for them.
I think that previous reports that the total number of challenged ballots in some counties (740 in Saratoga and 61 in Otsego) might have also been counting challenged as well as "set-aside" ballots. It seems unlikely that Otsego has zero void and zero set-aside ballots, and even more unlikely that Saratoga has only 16 combined set-aside and void ballots. I think when the numbers come in we'll see that some of those 61 ballot that were previously reported as challenged in Otsego and the 740 that were reported as challenged in Saratoga will end up being "set-aside" ballots that get counted today and tomorrow.
UPDATE #2
No update... The 4:00 daily update from the NY State Board of Elections had no new numbers in it. So either counting from the two counties that was supposed to happen today was delayed, or the results were reported too late to make it into the 4:00 PM update. We might see them in the 10:00 AM update tomorrow.