Absentee ballots could decide three crucial races

While Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) woke up Wednesday morning relieved that he was ahead in the vote count against Republican Randy Altschuler, two other Long Island incumbent Democrats found themselves facing narrow deficits.

Ultimately, the fates of all three could rely on still-to-be-counted absentee ballots.

State Sen. Craig Johnson (D-Port Washington) and Assemb. Marc Alessi (D-Wading River) are trailing their GOP rivals, according to unofficial returns, and vowing to not concede.

"I expected all along for the race to be very close, a couple points either way," Bishop said Wednesday. "I'm just glad I'm the guy with 51 percent."

Altschuler, a millionaire businessman from St. James, will fight until "every vote has been accurately counted," spokesman Rob Ryan said.

Altschuler's election lawyer, Vincent Messina, watched at the Suffolk Board of Elections Wednesday as county employees unpacked voting machines. The county's standard re-canvassing begins Monday, and the tally of absentee ballots likely won't start for more than two weeks, Democratic elections commissioner Anita Katz said.

Facing a 3,461-vote deficit, Altschuler needs 68 percent of the 9,749 outstanding absentee ballots - closely divided between Democrats and Republicans - to draw even. It will be a difficult task, Baruch College political scientist Douglas Muzzio said. "If you need that large a percentage of the remaining vote and the ballots are essentially evenly split by party, you've got to give it to the person who is ahead," he said.

For Johnson, who trails Mineola Mayor Jack Martins by 415 votes, to draw even he needs to win 57 percent of the absentee ballots, also closely divided between the major parties. Johnson's seat is critical to Senate Democrats' attempt to retain control of the upper house of state government.

"Jack feels confident that the absentee ballots are only going to add to his lead," spokesman Umberto Mignardi said.

Austin Shafran, a spokesman for Senate Democrats, said Johnson will seek to have every vote hand-counted, which would require a judge's order. "We are going to pull out all the stops to win this seat and retain the majority," Shafran said.

In the closest of the three races, Alessi trailed Suffolk Legis. Dan Losquadro (R-Shoreham) by 40 votes out of 42,028 cast. There are 2,460 outstanding absentee ballots.

Losquadro predicted a GOP advantage in absentee ballots will keep him ahead. Brookhaven Democratic chairman Jon Schneider said he hopes Alessi can make up the difference but hopes to avoid a long recount.

What's next in the ballot count:

1. Beginning Monday, boards of elections in both Nassau and Suffolk will run a random audit of 3 percent of voting machines. The audit entails counting the paper ballots by hand and comparing the numbers to the machine count. If the numbers do not match, the counties increase the number of machines surveyed until the tallies agree. The process is expected to take most of next week.

2. Once that re-canvassing is complete, elections employees will manually remove the computer cards from the voting machines and compare the number of votes to the unofficial totals.

3. Once the first two steps are complete, the counting of absentee ballots begins. This step - including the counting of military ballots, which can arrive as late as Nov. 24 - is expected to take several days.

SOURCE: Nassau, Suffolk boards of election