Campaign Diaries

As of Wednesday morning at 9am, Scott Murphy leads NY-20’s special election by 47 votes - a swing of 102 votes based on the counting of absentee ballots. Tedisco-stronghold Saratoga County and Murphy-stronghold Washington County have yet to report any results from their absentee counting, while Columbia and Warren Counties (both won overwhelmingly by Murphy) have a long way to go before completing their count.

The early trends contain good news for Murphy

That does not mean we cannot draw some lessons from the ballots that have been tallied so far. 5 out of 10 counties have finished counting their absentee ballots, and the results are telling (the counties are ordered by size):

In 4 out of 5 counties, Murphy performed better among absentee ballots than on Election Day - and the fifth county (Ostego) is by far the smallest of all these counties, having cast 115 absentee ballots compared to 432 in Rensselaer!

Now, remember what I calculated last week: Counties where Murphy performed well are dramatically over-represented in the absentee ballot count. If every county’s absentee ballot count is exactly the same as the Election Day count, Murphy would net a decisive number of votes. Put otherwise: Since Murphy’s strongholds make up a disproportionate share of absentee ballots, Murphy needs to do nothing else than secure the same percentage among absentee ballots as he did on Election Day in each county, while Tedisco needs to over-perform to offset the absentee ballots’ unfavorable geographical distribution.

And yet, we now learn that not only is Tedisco not improving his score - but that it is Murphy who is drawing better results than he was Election Night! Sure, we should not draw any conclusions before we get a sense of the trend in Saratoga: if Tedisco overperforms among absentee ballots in the district’s biggest county, he could make up for losses elsewhere. But he would have to do so decisively considering that Saratoga only represents 27% of the total number of absentee ballots - compared to 36% of the ballots cast on Election Day. In short: Murphy has every reason to be (cautiously) optimistic.

In case you had any doubt, look no further than the fact that Tedisco is seeking to get an extension to the deadline by which overseas absentee ballots have to be returned. He is looking to expand the field of eligible votes while Democrats are resisting his move - a clear parallel to Norm Coleman’s efforts in Minnesota.

Tedisco picks up ballot challenges

And here is another parallel to Minnesota: Tedisco’s camp has been doing its best to keep Murphy’s lead low by challenging absentee ballots. As of Monday, 600 absentee ballots had already been challenged - many from Democrats, but more from Republicans.

One of the GOP’s argument: Voters whose primary residence are not in NY-20 should not be eligible to vote in the district. As a result, reports indicate that Republican poll watchers have been systematically challenging ballots from voters who hold a secondary residence in New York City and in Florida, as well as those from students who come from outside of the 20th Congressional District (many of whom attend Skidmore College).

The Hill writes that the “challenge gap in NY special may be exaggerated” because poll watchers do not know for whom the electors they are challenging have voted. This is a bizarrely weak argument: Sure, we cannot know for sure that a voter who lives on a college campus or whose primary residence is in New York City has voted for Murphy - but such a voter is more likely to be a Democrat than a Republican. Challenging dozens of such electors will undoubtedly depress Murphy’s numbers.

This situation has naturally led Democrats to complain that Republicans are looking to disenfranchise voters - and they furiously accused the GOP of using racial bias by systematically challenging voters with Jewish surnames. Yet, the GOP’s efforts will mostly be temporary: These ballots are not being tossed out; they will be looked at by an election judge - and most of them should be reinstated. In Minnesota, this led to a dramatic boost in Franken’s totals; there obviously cannot be as big a swing in a House race, but the basic principle is the same.

Yesterday, the GOP might have gone too far in challenging the absentee ballot of the district’s previous representative - Kirsten Gillibrand. The motive: The state’s new Senator was in the district on Election Day since she was at Scott Murphy’s victory party; she could have thus voted in person and had no right to request an absentee ballot. The two problems with Tedisco’s claim: First, Gillibrand was in Washington during the day and only traveled to upstate New York in the evening. Second, she claims to not have set foot in Columbia County, her county of residence; election law states that a voter needs to intend to be out of the county - not out of the district - to request an absentee ballot. In short: Gillibrand’s vote was probably challenged frivolously.

What is particularly stupid in the GOP’s decision to challenge Gillibrand’s ballot is that the move is predictably igniting a lot of negative media coverage. For the past 5 days, Democrats have been doing their best to accuse Republicans of launching frivolous challenges based on no other ground than the likelihood that a voter be a Democrat - and the Gillibrand incident is a high-profile story that is sure to make the Democrats’ complaints more credible than anything else Republicans had done up until then.