Politics & Government

Bishop Continues to Cut into Altschuler's Lead with Absentees

Both sides take jabs over objected votes.

After three days of absentee ballot counting in the race for the First Congressional District, incumbent Rep. Tim Bishop, D - Southampton, continued to cut into the lead of Randy Altschuler, the Republican challenger and businessman from St. James.

Altschuler started the absentee ballot count, which began on Tuesday, with a 383-vote lead. With 31 percent of election districts counted - the exact number of remaining absentee ballots to be counted remains unknown - Bishop has cut Altschuler's lead to 90 votes.

"We feel great right now," said Bishop spokesman Jon Schneider. "Obviously we still have some votes to count but we feel even better about the fact Altschuler's people seem to be on this objection spree - they have objected to 168 more ballots than we have. And since about 90 percent of those will most likely be rejected, the net gain probably puts us in the lead."

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Rob Ryan, Altschuler's spokesman, confirmed that his candidate has indeed challenged many absentee ballots mailed from out of the district. But he noted that the amount of vacation homes on the East End - Bishop's relative stronghold - could hypothetically allow people to vote in their primary home district one year, and their vacation home district another. In a press release on Thursday, Ryan stated that Bishop was trying to "deny military and poll workers' vote."

"That's different than challenging people who may have numerous residencies," he said on Friday morning. "You get situations where people can jump back and forth between districts depending on the race. One year there might be a tight race where their main residency is, than the following year they might vote where their vacation place is. That's a lot different than challenging someone who they know is a Republican working for the Board of Elections who is unable to vote on election day."

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After all the absentees are counted, it may not even matter how many votes are chellenged by each candidate. The objected votes will go to a judge for a final determination only if the difference between the two candidates is so small that the number of challenged votes would make in impact in determining the winner.

Without counting challenged votes, all absentee ballots from Smithtown and Southampton have been counted. Two election districts remain to be counted in East Hampton, one in Southold, and 18 out of 22 in Riverhead. None of Brookhaven's 292 election districts have been counted yet.

As of Thursday night, no problems were reported in the three percent audit of voting machines simultaneously taking place at Board of Election headquarters in Yaphank.


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