Uncounted Nassau votes mean race remains undecided

No one knows how many votes remain uncounted in Nassau County from Tuesday's election because poll workers confused by new voting machines failed to run emergency ballots through scanners, elections officials said.

Nassau Democratic Elections Commissioner William Biamonte said the largest number of uncounted emergency ballots come from the 7th Senate District, where Mineola Mayor Jack Martins leads Sen. Craig Johnson (D-Port Washington) by 415 votes. It will take at least three weeks to decide who won the race, which in turn may determine which party controls the State Senate.

Voters had to cast emergency ballots when they could not scan them into voting machines because of technical breakdowns or power outages. Once the machines became operational, poll workers were supposed to scan the emergency ballots, but some failed to do so, Biamonte said.

"We have reason to believe that there are a lot of ballots out there that weren't scanned," Biamonte said. "We're checking for all emergency ballots that weren't scanned. . . . We know we had a lot of breakdowns where they had to go to emergency ballots. We're assuming there is a lot of paper out there that wasn't counted at the end of the night."

Nassau officials Thursday issued a public notice stating they will open the voting machines and also count the emergency ballots Wednesday in Mineola.

The 7th Senate District also has 724 affidavit ballots cast by voters whose registration could not be confirmed by poll workers on Election Day. Elections officials must research the ballots individually to determine if they are from eligible voters and should count.

Austin Shafran, the spokesman for Senate Democrats desperately trying to hold on to the Johnson seat to retain their two-seat majority, said Senate Democrats have retained election lawyer Thomas Garry, who is also working for Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) in his close fight with Republican Randy Altschuler.

"The people get to decide the outcome of elections," he said. "We're going to make sure that happens by making sure every vote is counted."

Martins, who predicted he will maintain or increase his lead once all ballots are counted, said he's not planning to hire legal help unless Johnson goes to court first.

"Everything I'm hearing seems to be steered through the Democrat party, the New York City-dominated Democrat party," he said. "Maybe that's how they do things in New York City, but they should allow the process to play itself out in the suburbs and not interfere."

The Johnson-Martins race is one of three that will determine which party controls the upper house of the state legislature. In Westchester County, Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer (D-Mamaroneck) increased her lead over Republican Bob Cohen Thursday from 180 to 466 votes, with two election districts yet to report results.

In Erie County, a re-canvassing saw Republican Mark Grisanti's lead increase over Sen. Antoine Thompson (D-Buffalo) from 468 to 598 votes.

Republicans need two of the three too-close-to-call seats to win a 32-seat governing majority. Democrats must win all three for a majority.

With James T. Madore

Delayed results

The Nassau Board of Elections won't certify its elections for at least three weeks. Here are the steps the board will take:

1. Beginning Wednesday, Nassau officials will begin counting emergency ballots that were not tallied on Election Day because of machine troubles and power outages at poll sites.

2. Starting Nov. 17, the Nassau Board of Elections will conduct a random audit of 3 percent of its voting machines. The audit process is expected to take about a week.

3. Once the audit is complete, elections employees will manually remove the computer cards from the voting machines and compare the number of votes to the unofficial totals.

4. Only once the computer card check is complete can the counting of absentee ballots begin. This step - including the counting of military ballots, which can arrive as late as Nov. 24 - is expected to take several days.