COLUMBIA COUNTY — 20th Congressional District candidate Republican Jim Tedisco submitted a petition to the Dutchess County Supreme Court Thursday asking the judge to declare him the winner of the extremely close special election race, despite the numbers currently being in favor of his opponent, Democrat Scott Murphy.
According to The Associated Press, Murphy leads Tedisco by 178 votes district wide — 79,452 to 79,274. The only ballots that have not been counted are those challenged by each candidate’s lawyers, and while Tedisco’s office has said the challenges are roughly evenly split between the two camps, Columbia County lawyers for Murphy have only challenged 22 ballots, while Tedisco’s have challenged 258.
Tedisco is also asking the court to authorize recanvasing of all machine ballots to acquire the “proper” tallies. He would like them to reassess the validity of absentee votes already counted, and keep ballots challenged by Tedisco unopened.
County Board of Elections Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin said this new development could result in the election taking quite a bit more time to be decided. She would not venture a guess on how long it will be before the 20th District has a representative in congress.
Murphy’s office was not available for comment on the development before press time.
The last group of unchallenged Columbia County absentee ballots were counted Thursday as well. According to unofficial numbers provided Thursday by the BOE, Murphy accumulated 93 new votes and Tedisco gained another 49. This brings the total unchallenged absentee vote count to: Murphy 476, Tedisco 270.The votes counted Thursday were military ballots, federal ballots from county residents overseas, affidavit votes from voters who experienced problems at the polls, and the 49 challenges overruled by the Dutchess County Supreme Court Wednesday.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s vote has now been counted.
3 comments:
Nobody I've talked to knows anything about this new petition/motion being filed to declare Tedsico the winner. It's not in the local papers where the court case is being heard so I would like to know what the source is for the article...
I'm wondering how much of this election is going to go to the court of the appeals at this point.
When the number of disputed ballots is greater than the margin of a candidates lead, the election is no longer in the hands of the voters.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/17/jim-tedisco-178-votes-beh_n_188170.html
In response to Jeff's comment: The source for the new petition/order to show cause is the New York State Board of Elections, which forwarded it to all election commissioners in the 20th CD.
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