It's up to Absentees in the 20th District

It’s up to absentees in the 20th District

Is the House race in the 20th Congressional District headed for an endless court battle to decide the winner, similar to the Franken-Coleman political brawl over the Senate seat in Minnesota?

“I think here in New York we can have an orderly process,” said Jim Tedisco, a Republican who trails Democrat Scott Murphy by just 25 votes. Tedisco, who predicts absentee ballots will put him over the top, does not want any absentee ballots to be counted until April 13, the deadline for receiving overseas and military ballots.

“We want total openness and transparency, and let the chips fall where they may. We feel secure when the ballots are counted we will win,” Tedisco, the Assembly minority leader.

Murphy, a Glens Falls businessman, said he would keep his lead to win. “We are confident that once all the absentee ballots are counted, we will expand our lead and we will go to Congress to partner with Sen. Gillibrand and President Obama to create jobs and turn our economy around,” he said in a statement.

A spokesman for the Murphy campaign declined comment Wednesday when asked about possible legal issues surrounding the counting of absentee ballots. Murphy has asked supporters for money, however, “to protect our victory.” Absentee ballots are a key point of conflict between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman, who have fought over the Minnesota Senate seat since the November election.

In the 20th, neither Tedisco nor Murphy can claim victory. The Republican State Committee has asked for the absentee ballots to be impounded until a judge can rule on how the ballots will be opened. State Supreme Court Justice James Brands of Dutchess County will consider the issue Monday and will decide when and how the Boards of Elections in the 10 counties that comprise the district may open absentee ballots.

Machine recanvassing began Wednesday.

As of Wednesday afternoon, 6,381 absentee ballots have been returned out of more than 10,000 sent, the state Board of Electionsaid. Of those, 170 are military and 875 are overseas ballots.

Absentee ballots must have been postmarked by March 30 and be received by Tuesday for regular absentee ballots, or April 13 for military and overseas ballots.

Tedisco pointed to Saratoga County, part of his Assembly district. According to unofficial results, Tedisco won Saratoga, 54 percent to 46 percent. The county Board of Elections also sent 2,581 absentee ballots, the highest number sent by any board in the district. Tedisco said he’s also counting on the military vote, which typically leans Republican. Democrats say the geographic distribution of the ballots will keep Murphy ahead.

Both Republicans and Democrats tried to cast their candidates as underdogs despite the fact Tedisco was more than 20 points ahead of Murphy, a political newcomer, at the beginning of the two-month campaign. By the week before Election Day, he fell behind Murphy.

“Jim Tedisco has closed the gap in a district that has come to exemplify Democratic dominance in the Northeast in recent elections,” said National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions.

Tedisco himself celebrated his ability to take a beating.

“They pulled out all the stops. The only thing I didn’t get hit with was the kitchen sink,” he said.

Murphy, meanwhile, said his “strong grass-roots campaign focused on creating jobs and turning our economy around” is what won voters to his side.

Nate Silver, statistician and founder of the political blog fivethirtyeight.com, who accurately predicted the presidential election outcomes of 49 out of the 50 states, said that without more data it is difficult to predict the outcome of the absentee ballot count.

“Absentee ballots are always hard to predict because it’s been changing over time. It used to be, until really about four years ago, that absentee ballots were usually Republican votes … and Karl Rove did a good job with organization and turnout. Now there’s been a switch. In 2008 with Obama, absentee ballots helped the Democrats in most areas.”

“It’s very hard to say,” he said. Without polling that would show the differences between absentee and regular voters, “it really is a lot of guesswork.”

Silver also noted that because of the razor-thin margin between Murphy and Tedisco, it isn’t useful to use a win-loss framework to extrapolate larger campaign trends.

“The difference between winning and losing could be because someone’s daughter got an ear infection and they drove her to the doctor instead of going to the polls, or someone happened to turn on their TV five minutes after a Tedisco commercial aired rather than five minutes before. When elections are decided by hundredths of a percentage point, there is a lot of luck involved,” Silver wrote on fivethirtyeight.com.

 
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