Dem in NY-26 Race Doesn't Live in District, Can't Vote

Kathy Hochul, the Democratic candidate in today’s battleground New York House special election, can't even vote herself because she lives just outside of the 26th Congressional District she wants to represent, The Caucus blog of The New York Times reports. Hochul has managed to avoid the politically inconvenient fact of her residence while riding attacks on the Ryan plan’s Medicare overhaul to a narrow poll lead in this normally Republican territory.

Republican Jane Corwin, left, and Democrat Kathy Hochul, in a debate in the run-up to today's special election. Also on the ballot is Jack Davis, running as a tea party candidate. (Getty Images Photo)

The Republican nominee, Jane Corwin, has struggled to rebut Hochul on Medicare while also seeing some of her base of support diverted to a third candidate, habitual party switcher Jack Davis, who is running as a tea partyer.

Corwin and Davis live within the district and will be casting their votes there. A Hochul spokesman acknowledged that she can’t vote but insisted that her office address justifies her presence in the race: Erie County, where Hochul is the county clerk, sits partly inside NY-26.

Polls close at 9 p.m. in a contest that has commanded massive out-of-state money and attention, with some observers casting it as a referendum on the Medicare re-design contained in the 2012 budget approved by House Republicans.