Tabulation of the votes has taken so long, the winner missed the opening day of the 117th Congress on Sunday. The seat representing New York’s 22nd Congressional District, previously occupied by Brindisi, is empty for now.
A string of recordkeeping problems had led to confusion over vote totals, as counties in the district struggled with a historic deluge of absentee ballots cast by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Counties sent in shifting and at times incomplete tallies. They also had problems with a process that allows candidates to object to certain ballots. In some cases, counties lost records on ballot objections when the sticky notes on which they had been written lost their adhesiveness.
DelConte in December ordered counties to fix errors they made when first counting ballots or count ballots again with candidates present.
While the judge criticized counties for carelessness, he has said there was no evidence of voter fraud.