The tight race for Congress in New York’s 22nd District (Utica) between Republican ex-Rep. Claudia Tenney and Democrat Rep. Anthony Brindisi took some bizarre turns Monday.
Along with revelations of votes by three people in Madison County who were dead, Oneida County election officials admitted that they had lost color-coded “sticky notes” attached to ballots explaining how the ballots were handled and whether they were counted.
The fate of the heatedly contested race is now in the hands of state Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte, whose courtroom in Oswego County was the sight of the strange revelations on Monday.
That Tenney leads is inarguable — so far. With unofficial returns reported from six of the eight counties in the upstate district, the former congresswoman and President Donald Trump-style conservative leads Brindisi by between 106 and 300 votes, depending on different reports of the count.
But while DelConte ordered the counts of all eight counties to be submitted in his courtroom Monday morning, officials in Oneida and Oswego Counties did not comply because of confusion over the intent of several ballots.
Speaking to the judge by video conference, Oneida County Election Commissioners Rose Grimaldi and Carolann Cardone admitted that there were problems with 39 ballots — some lack stamps indicating the date they were submitted, some were dropped in boxes outside the 22nd District, and some were not signed by voters.
Both commissioners testified they had planned to put sticky notes explaining the problems with each of the 39 ballots, but when the envelope arrived in DelConte’s courtroom, at least eight of the sticky notes were missing.
Asked by the justice how the intent of the ballot could be determined, Cardone replied: “You can’t.”
At the same time, a filing in the courtroom by Madison County Attorney Tina Wayland-Smith revealed that there were three absentee ballots disqualified from the count because they were cast by dead people.
The developments in DelConte’s courtroom are being increasingly watched by the national press as well as the national organizations of both major parties.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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