Congressman Tim Bishop speaks during a "Get Out the Vote" rally in Stony Brook, N.Y., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010. Bishop is being challenged by Republican millionaire businessman Randy Altschuler in the Nov. 2 election. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Elections officials said a preliminary review of unofficial election results that showed Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) with a 3,500-vote lead were misinterpreted and the Republican challenger, businessman Randy Altchuler, is actually ahead by nearly 400 votes.
Suffolk County Board of Elections officials checking voting machine memory cards discovered Friday that the unofficial tally released in the hours after the polls closed Tuesday was off by thousands. Board of Elections commissioner Wayne Rogers said the original numbers were reported by telephone and relayed through intermediaries before being entered into the county’s computer system.
“Somewhere within that process, some of these numbers must have been transcribed incorrectly,”’ he told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Nearly 10,000 absentee ballots cast in the 1st Congressional District race on Long Island’s East End have yet to be counted and have until Tuesday to arrive. By law, they need to be post marked by Nov. 1 and counting is not expected to begin for days. Military members have until Nov. 24 for their absentee ballots to arrive.
Bishop spokesman Jon Schneider called for all ballots to be recounted by hand to confirm the accuracy of the tally.
“The vote count released is far from final,” he said in a statement. “This is simply one of many steps to ensure that every voter’s voice is heard through our electoral process. At this point the only way to be sure of the accuracy of the count is to do a full hand recount of all the ballots.”
Altschuler issued a statement saying the correction to the vote totals validated his decision not to concede the race on election night.
“We were right!” he said, and offered another signal that the two sides will dig in for a fight over the remaining ballots. “We are working closely with the National Republican Congressional Committee to guarantee that we have the resources needed to ensure that every vote is accurately and fairly counted.”
The Associated Press had called the election for Bishop after the Suffolk County Board of Elections reported results showing Bishop with a thin, but seemingly insurmountable lead of 92,252 votes to Altschuler’s 88,791. The Board of Elections has not released the new, accurate tallies.
It was unclear whether the error in the election night tally had anything to do with New York’s new electronic voting machines.
This was the first general election in which New Yorkers had cast their votes on paper ballots that are then read by a scanner, which replaced the old voting booths that operated by mechanical levers. But once the polls close, the system has not changed much for reporting results from the polling stations to headquarters.
At the end of the night, poll workers then read a printout of results from each machine, enter the results in a worksheet, and then call in the results by telephone to the elections board. Someone then takes the numbers down and enters them into the computer.
The second count is more reliable, Rogers said, with the numbers coming straight from the memory cards on the scanners.
Two other races in upstate New York are in play as well. In the race in the 25th Congressional District between Republican Ann Marie Buerkle and U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei, a Democrat, also remained too close to call, with just a few hundred votes separating the candidates.
The Bishop-Altschuler race is one of three on LI where the results hinge on recounts and absentee ballots. Assemblyman Marc Alessi (D-Shoreham) is neck and neck with Republican challenger Daniel Losquadro and State Sen. Craig Johnson (D-Port Washington) is trailing Jack Martins.
-With Associated Press
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