Republican Claudia Tenney will be certified as the winner of New York’s 22nd Congressional District race, a judge ruled Friday, ending a three-month ordeal in the only undecided House race in the country.
The ruling represents the most definitive answer to who won in an election saga with many twists and turns, though it’s not entirely over yet. Democrat Anthony Brindisi has promised to appeal at the state court, and he could seek to contest the election results at the House of Representatives itself.https://9bbfba686363572403305ba1ef9dc273.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
Tenney, of New Hartford, is ahead of Brindisi by 109 votes. She earned 156,099 votes to Brindisi’s 155,989.
State Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte ruled that counties and the state elections board are to certify the election, rejecting an effort by Democrat Anthony Brindisi, who occupied the seat until November 2020, to keep the election unofficial until his appeal to a higher court concludes.
In ruling against Brindisi, DelConte argued that the Democrat did not provide enough evidence that certifying Tenney would cause “irreparable harm,” given that he still had a remedy at the federal level.
It’s not clear when Brindisi’s appeal will begin. His attorneys announced Friday morning that they will appeal DelConte’s rejection of several hundred ballots that Brindisi wanted counted.
In his ruling, DelConte criticized local elections boards for what he said amounted to “systemic violations of state and federal election law” that affected both candidates. In particular, he singled out Oneida County’s failure to process more than 2,400 applications from voters who registered via the DMV, which rendered them unable to vote on Election Day.