Judge orders review of challenged ballots in neck-and-neck New York House race
A New York Supreme Court judge is refusing to certify former Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican, as the winner in the final uncalled House race of 2020, even though the latest count has her up by 12 votes out of hundreds of thousands cast. Judge Scott DelConte on Tuesday denied the Tenney campaign’s motion to certify the result, showing her with an ultra-slim lead over the Democratic rival who vanquished her in 2018 after a single House term, freshman Rep. Anthony Brindisi. DelConte instead ordered eight county board of elections in New York’s 22nd Congressional District to canvass disputed ballots, correcting all canvassing errors, and, where errors cannot be corrected, to recanvass those ballots. “Today’s decision affirmatively rejected Brindisi’s attempt to have only votes favorable to his campaign counted. It appears that this ruling will see to it that every legal vote is counted. If the proper legal procedures are followed, we are confident that we will prevail, and Claudia will assume office as the congresswoman for New York’s 22nd District,” Tenney campaign spokesman Sean Kennedy said.
The race has taken on singular importance due to House Democrats' tenuous majority in the coming Congress. A Tenney win would likely leave the House with 222 Democrats and 213 Republicans, the chamber's closest margin in decades. Brindisi was 28,422 votes behind Tenney on election night based on in-person ballots cast during early voting on Election Day. But Tenney's giant lead vanished to only 100 votes after almost 60,000 mail-in ballots were counted. Both campaigns went to court to have a judge rule on the challenges of over 2,000 absentee and affidavit ballots. Although Brindisi led by 13 votes last week after more ballots were reviewed, the narrow lead then swung back to Tenney, topping out at 12 votes.
According to DelConte’s ruling, officials on each county board of elections should look for any outstanding ballots, pick up ballots seized by the court, correct prior recording errors of disputed ballots, and count “not properly canvassed” ballots. “The only proper result here is to remand all the challenged and uncanvassed ballots back to the Boards of Elections with specific orders directing the Boards to publicly correct their errors and fulfill their statutory duties by properly canvassing — or when necessary, recanvassing — each and every single ballot, including properly recording every single challenge in New York’s 22nd Congressional District race,” DelConte wrote.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/judge-orders-review-of-challenged-ballots-in-neck-and-neck-new-york-house-race
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=1b/45_PLUS_oFR1lwqSsE_PLUS_1FvIQ==