Dan Maffei's options in New York's 25th Congressional District: Concede or recount

2009-08-25-sdc-maffei3.JPGView full sizeU.S. Rep. Dan Maffei has to decide if he wants to concede to Ann Marie Buerkle or request a hand count of all ballots in New York's 25th Congressional District race.

Syracuse, NY -- U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei is left with two options: concede to Republican Ann Marie Buerkle or ask a judge to order a hand recount of more than 200,000 paper ballots in the undecided race for the 25th District.

Maffei’s campaign said Monday he had not made a decision. State Supreme Court Justice Brian DeJoseph has set a hearing for 10 a.m. Wednesday. The judge moved the hearing from Tuesday to give the campaigns one more day to review the vote totals the county election boards were sending to the state.

The tally stands at 104,374 for Buerkle and 103,807 for Maffei — a margin of less than three-tenths of 1 percent. Here are the facts the congressman has to weigh:

• Maffei trails by 567 votes in the unofficial count of votes cast on election night and by absentee ballot.
• The two campaigns have challenged the validity of 392 ballots, not enough to turn the race.
• He would have to raise money.
• He would have to consider whether his aggressive effort would turn off voters in future races.

At the Onondaga County Board of Elections, the Maffei campaign appeared to be tracking back to a problem reported in the first week after the election. On Wednesday, the campaign sent a representative to look at the poll book that voters signed on election night in the DeWitt Town Hall — to count the number of voters who signed in. Commissioners had to recount the ballots from that polling place because a poll worker mistakenly mixed a stack of unscanned ballots with a suitcase full of scanned ballots. The error was fixed, with lawyers for each campaign watching, and the results helped Buerkle.

Maffei was not talking Monday, leaving political observers to speculate on his conversations with lawyers.

“I’m getting the sense that it’s not so much Dan Maffei as Washington saying it’s one-third of 1 percent of a vote. That’s a tough pill to swallow for Washington,” said Onondaga County Elections Commissioner Ed Ryan, a Democrat.

Both Ryan and Helen Kiggins, the Republican elections commissioner, said the Maffei campaign would have little left to argue in court Wednesday. The machines did not malfunction. In fact, the machines passed two state requirements: a recanvass that compares vote totals from the machines to the totals announced on election night and an audit, which is a hand-recount of 3 percent of the paper ballots scanned on election night.

Last year, the state had a requirement that any election results within 1 percent would trigger an automatic recount. The county did recounts in two local races last year and the results did not change. Kiggins said there were no mistakes found in other recounts across the state, so the state elections board did away with the requirement. Now, a judge would have to order any recount.

Elections commissioners will argue against a recount. If the judge orders one, commissioners plan to ask the judge to order the campaign to pay for it, Kiggins said. “We don’t feel it’s necessary,” Kiggins said. “We’re confident with the results and even if every paper ballot was opened, there would still be more votes for Buerkle.”

Area Democrats were reluctant to discuss Maffei’s options because they were not plugged into his lawyers’ strategy.

Maffei has to consider whether his aggressive push for a hand recount would tarnish his image for future races. Already, the Buerkle campaign has capitalized on the Maffei campaign’s challenge of ballots cast by seniors. Some absentee voters were also unnerved to receive phone calls after the election from Maffei representatives who wanted to know how they voted.

Grant Reeher, a professor at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, said those anecdotes could damage him. Reeher asked on his blog, “Could the Maffei campaign be writing its own attack ads for 2012?”

Mark Stanczyk, the Democratic floor leader of the Onondaga County Legislature, said the accusations were just politics. “If he chooses to be a candidate for this or for anything else going forward, I think he’s made a wonderful candidate. He has a big, big brain and a good, solid heart,” Stanczyk said.

Contact Michelle Breidenbach at mbreidenbach@syracuse.com or 470-3186.

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