ICYMI: Tenney gets one step closer to flipping NY-22
Claudia Tenney is one step closer to winning the race for NY-22.
On Friday, State Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte dealt a blow to Anthony Brindisi as he ruled against batches of dozens of votes that Brindisi was hoping would erase his deficit.
The ruling – along with Tenney’s 122-vote lead – means Claudia Tenney is nearing victory, and Republicans are one step closer to flipping yet another competitive House seat.
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Tenney nears victory after judge rules against key Brindisi ballots in NY 22nd race
By: Patrick Lohmann
January 29, 2021
OSWEGO, N.Y. — State Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte on Friday ruled against batches of dozens of votes that Democrat Anthony Brindisi hoped would count in the ongoing 22nd Congressional District.
His ruling all but ensures that Republican Claudia Tenney has won the seat in the House of Representatives following a three-month ordeal that made the 22nd district the only undecided Congressional race in the country.
Brindisi’s efforts to keep his seat suffered two major blows on Friday. First, Oneida County officials reported that Tenney had grown her lead by 93 votes after they reviewed more than 1,000 as-of-yet uncounted ballots in search of voters who applied to vote on time but were erroneously left unregistered by Election Day.
Despite the bad news for Brindisi, he has an appeal pending, and it’s still not clear when the race will be completely over and done with.
The new ballots from Oneida County mean she is currently ahead by 122 votes in the unofficial race.
Second, DelConte, in a 23-page ruling on Friday afternoon, ruled that he would not order counted several categories of votes that Brindisi’s attorneys challenged in hopes of erasing the deficit.
Below are some of the biggest categories of votes that Brindisi wanted to count but that the judge ruled would not:
- 128 ballots from voters who voted in the right election district but wrong polling place, in addition to 20 ballots cast in the wrong county.
- 85 ballots from voters who were listed in the state voter database as “purged.”
- 51 ballots from voters who dropped their absentee ballots in a ballot drop box outside of their election district, ballots that were later sent to the correct polling place after a state deadline.
Brindisi did score a victory in the case of 92 absentee ballots from Madison County he wanted to count. The judge agreed. However, those 92 ballots were already included in the vote tallies, so the judge’s ruling simply did not subtract any votes from Brindisi’s count.
The judge also overruled Tenney’s objections on 62 ballots alleging that the signatures on the ballot did not match signatures in a state voter database. Brindisi’s campaign argued that those 62 ballots should count.
But all in all, the number of ballots that DelConte ruled against make it all but certain that Tenney won the race. What’s not yet clear is by how many votes and what will come of Brindisi’s appeal.
Officials from each of the eight counties that make up the 22nd district will meet Monday in DelConte’s courtroom for one last review of ballots that DelConte deemed needed to be canvassed before being added to the count.