Schneiderman still trails as comptroller recount continues

With two-thirds of the votes counted, Southampton Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, the Democratic Comptroller candidate, still trails Republican incumbent John Kennedy by 6,759 votes, according to Suffolk elections officials.

Nicholas LaLota, Republican elections commissioner, said 23,500 of the absentees have been counted and about 10,100 remain as of the end of Monday. The recanvassing, under way for more than a week, is now counting absentees in Huntington and still has Babylon, Southold, Shelter Island and East Hampton to complete. LaLota said Kennedy only needs 17 percent of the remaining 10,000 ballots to assure victory.

Unofficial machine results on election night showed that Kennedy leading Schneiderman by 8,623 votes and Schneiderman withheld conceding, citing the 29,000 absentees yet to be counted, including 12,678 from Democrats, 9,320 from Republicans and 5,452 from those unaligned to any party.