A state Supreme Court judge today ordered a partial recount of absentee ballots in the undecided House race between Rep. Anthony Brindisi and Claudia Tenney.
Justice Scott J. DelConte also denied a motion by Tenney’s lawyers, who had asked the court to order the eight counties in the district to immediately certify her as the winner by 12 votes in an election where more than 318,000 ballots were cast.
Instead, DelConte ordered each county Boards of Elections in the 22nd Congressional District to correct their counting errors in the election.
Where it’s not possible to correct the errors, the counties must go back and conduct a manual hand count of the ballots in question, DelConte wrote in a 20-page order.
DelConte wrote that Tenney’s proposal would require him to “ignore multiple errors by the respondent Boards of Elections, disregard proper challenges to invalid ballots that were counted and valid ballots that were not counted…and ignore hundreds of ballots that were never canvassed in the first place.”
The judge added, “That is not the role of the court. The winner of this election must be decided by the real parties of interest: the voters. And to do so, every valid vote must be counted.”
Update: you can find the 20 page opinion at this link.