In the 22nd Congressional District race, the last undecided congressional race in the nation, a judge has ordered the Oneida County Board of Elections to review more than 1,000 rejected affidavit ballots. Republican Claudia Tenney has a lead over incumbent Democrat Anthony Brindisi of just 29 votes.
State Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte is ordering the Board to properly canvass all of its affidavit ballots, after it was discovered that the Board failed to process more than 2,400 voter registration applications that were filed on time through the state DMV website.
Those people, DelConte said, were registered and entitled to vote in the 2020 election. Someone is registered to vote under the law, “as soon as her completed voter registration application is received by the proper Board of Elections.”
Brindisi’s lawyers showed 68 affidavit ballots were rejected by Oneida County, even though their voter registration applications were filed on time.
The judge's order says every ballot rejected by the Board as “not registered” must be reviewed. There are 1,028 rejected affidavit ballots, where it is unclear if their unprocessed voter registration applications were filed on time.
DelConte said the Board failed a December order to review records relating to voters who filed affidavit ballots, to determine if they were eligible to vote.
Oneida County was the only county in the 22nd Congressional District that had this problem. DelConte’s order says the Board must report the results of its correction by January 27.
