In the final run-up to Tuesday’s seemingly endless election, both Democratic and Republican partisans are puffing out their chests in a pantomime of strength. The more likely scenario is that at least one of the closely-watched races in our region will be a dead heat, and could drag out for weeks.
Columbia County GOP chair Greg Fingar is calling for “100 percent participation from Republicans in this year’s election,” according to The Register-Star.
Meanwhile, Democrats traumatized by the election of Trump have been boasting that new Democratic registrations in New York State have wildly outpaced new GOP voters. Locally, Dems are beating Republicans by a factor of more than 11-to-1 — 1,434 to 128 to be exact, according to Charlie Ferrusi of the Columbia County Young Democrats.
If both major parties can agree on anything, it’s should be the fervent hope that one of them—either of them—wins decisively on Tuesday.
With polls showing Antonio Delgado and John Faso neck-and-neck, and several other competitive races for the State Assembly and Senate, the likelihood of at least one hotly-contested legal battle looms.
Few are looking forward to the potential of another interminable ballot count like the ugly Murphy/Tedisco special election in 2009, which dragged on for most of a month as lawyers battled over hundreds of disputed absentee ballots. Despite roughly 150,000 voters getting to the polls for that rare March contest, the difference between them on Election Day was just 59 votes. This meant that protecting—or invalidating—every single sealed ballot became a bitter chess match for each candidate’s hired guns.
That fracas was followed up by an even longer and more bitter absentee ballot struggle in the Town of Taghkanic, as Fingar and his GOP operatives tried but failed to re-litigate their previous effort to disenfranchise absentee ballots. That one dragged out for an excruciating couple of months.
So whatever happens on Tuesday, a landslide by one side or the other should be a relief. That probably won’t happen. And there are already indications (which this site will be reporting on for the next few days) of eyebrow-raising handling of registrations and absentee ballot requests.
Check back for that reporting over the next couple of days, as well as results.
