Reportedly, legal battles erupted almost immediately after the closing of polls last night—and are continuing to rage today in court today—over how and where to keep the absentee ballots for the hotly-contested Hudson mayoral contest.
Greg Fingar and the County GOP apparently wanted the ballots impounded by the Columbia County Sheriffs, but local Democrats countered that since the Sheriff is a known backer of Hallenbeck, this would be inappropriate.
For the moment, ballots are said to be under double lock and key (one key for the Republicans, one for the Democrats, requiring both of their participation) at the Board of Elections. This standoff means, among other things, that members of the media and candidates looking to inspect ballots in anticipation of potential challenges cannot get access to inspect envelopes, review names, and so forth.
Republican Bill Hallenbeck is said to be leading Democrat Nick Haddad by somewhere between 2 and 27 votes. (This site leans toward the latter, higher number.) Information from the Board of Elections indicates that 179 absentee ballots have been returned, excluding those from a few people who ended up voting on the machine, leaving 69 ballots yet to be returned.
Ballots will be accepted for 10 days after Election Day, but have to be postmarked as of Monday. Given the efficiency of the U.S. mails, one might expect only 10-20 more to come in at most. Military and other overseas ballots tend to trickle in toward the end of these long waits.
Above is a formula which helps compute how many votes a candidate trailing by a certain number of votes (m) needs to win depending on the number of absentee ballots (a) there are to be counted. For example, if Hallenbeck is ahead by 27 votes, and there are 190 ballots to count, Haddad would need 109 votes [((190 + 27)/2) rounded up], or about 57% of the outstanding ballots, to gain 28 on his opponent, and thus surmount Hallenbeck’s 27-vote lead by one.
