In a scathing ruling, a state judge excoriated seven local boards of election for botching the administration of last month's election in New York's 22nd Congressional District and ordered officials to fix their many errors, which could result in more than a thousand untallied ballots getting counted.
Last week, Judge Scott DelConte ordered all eight county boards to produce official tallies in the race between Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi and Republican Claudia Tenney, which showed Tenney up by just 12 votes. However, that result is now almost certain to change in one direction or another.
DelConte's lengthy opinion details officials' astonishing series of lapses by election officials, which most notoriously included failing to properly record objections to disputed ballots on the ballots themselves, as required by state law. Instead, in multiple counties, objections were recorded on sticky notes affixed to ballots, many of which were lost.
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Meanwhile, thousands of affidavit ballots were never properly canvassed at all—that is, reviewed to see whether they were in fact cast by eligible voters. In Oneida County, for instance, 1,500 such ballots were "administratively rejected" and ultimately "placed in a cardboard box in a secure room, without any further action." And in Chenango County, at least 12 voters who cast absentee ballots never received a so-called "cure notice" informing them of errors with their ballots that could have been fixed. Another dozen Chenango ballots were "inexplicably found in a drawer, marked 'undetermined,' and never canvassed."
All in all, it's impossible to even know how many ballots were never tallied, since much of the testimony before DelConte was decidedly vague, with officials frequently describing situations involving "dozens" or even "hundreds" of problematic ballots. We have, however, cataloged the situation as thoroughly as possible in this Google doc.
As a remedy, DelConte instructed officials to "correct all errors with regards to past objections" to ballots and to properly mark all such objections. In that event that objections cannot be accurately reconstructed—which will undoubtedly be the case in many instances—administrators must conduct a new canvass. All ballots that were never canvassed in the first place must also be canvassed as well, and any cure notices that should have gone out but didn't must now be sent.
DelConte also chided both campaigns for arguing "for relief that tactically presents the best option for their ultimate victory." He specifically called out Tenney for asking that he certify the results as they currently stand, which show her leading, saying, "The winner of this election must be decided by the real parties in interest: the voters. And to do so, every valid vote must be counted." He also criticized Brindisi for asking the court "to place expediency above the Boards' compliance with their statutory duties, if it becomes too time-consuming to determine who the actual winner is."
Indeed, it may be some time before we see a final resolution to this election, but as DelConte put it, "It is more important that this election is decided right, than that it is decided right now."