How to watch the LI vote tonight, and odds on Zeldin

Daily Point

Long Island counts

The percentage of Long Island votes in the gubernatorial race could be a significant factor in whether a Long Islander wins the keys to the governor’s mansion. So here’s a little preview of what to expect tonight as the Nassau and Suffolk county vote totals for Kathy Hochul and Lee Zeldin roll out.

The releasing of the results will be a little different this year, given changes in the way election boards process absentee ballots. Both Nassau and Suffolk have already begun canvassing those mailed-in votes, and many of them will be included in the count Tuesday night.

Those trying to parse the numbers will certainly want to know when that tranche of absentees, and the other tranche of early, in-person votes, gets added to the website totals.

“There is no specific requirement on order of reporting,” state Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin tells The Point via email, “but generally early voting and absentees that have been canvassed up to election day will be included [in] the first wave of results. Election day machine totals would follow on a rolling basis as the precincts report to the central board.”

That’s more or less how the Nassau election board plans to release the results on its website, according to Democratic commissioner Jim Scheuerman: The expectation is that between 9 and 9:30 p.m., the early voting totals and the absentees that had been returned before Tuesday will be uploaded.

Around 9:30 or 9:45, the “sticks” from each polling site will start coming in, many of them driven to BOE headquarters in Mineola by the Nassau County Police Department, and those in-person Election Day results will start rolling onto the website.

Left to be counted afterward are a smaller pool of votes: affidavit ballots filled out because, for example, a person already requested an absentee but decided to vote in person, and absentees that come in Tuesday or in the days to come. That deadline for arrival is Nov. 15 while military and overseas absentee voters have until Nov. 21 for their votes to be counted. Approximately 50,000 absentees have been requested in Nassau, with more than 30,000 already returned.

In Suffolk County, which still has no election board website due to the recent cyberattack, results will be posted to this state site.

Those results will be released in a similar fashion, according to the Republican commissioner’s office: Minutes after polls close, the website will include the early voting totals plus a tranche of the absentees. Of the 32,000 or so that have been received so far, around half have not yet been scanned, and therefore won’t be included in the night’s numbers.

Suffolk’s in-person Tuesday totals will start coming in around 9:30, and will be uploaded on a rolling basis.

Happy waiting — and counting.

Talking Point

In governor’s race, the bettors like Zeldin more than the pundits

On the political forecasting site fivethirtyeight.com, Democrat Kathy Hochul is a 19-1 favorite to beat Republican Lee Zeldin. The site ran 40,000 simulations of the race, using polls, voter registration, and electoral history to determine that Zeldin would win in just five of every 100 scenarios.

But on PredictIt.com, where investors can buy shares of candidates for fractions of a dollar that will be worth $1 if they win, Zeldin is just a 3-1 underdog. At 5 p.m., shares of Hochul were selling for 78 cents, while shares of Zeldin could be bought for 26 cents.

But the two sites do agree on one thing: Both have Zeldin’s odds improving.

On Oct. 17, fivethirtyeight had Zeldin at 99-1, and PredictIt had the Shirley Republican at 6-1 on Oct. 9.

Pencil Point

The day after

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Marking Point

Definite firsts

No matter who wins New York’s gubernatorial race, there will be a “first.”

Kathy Hochul would become the first woman to be elected governor in the state’s history. She, of course, is serving in that office already, having ascended from the lieutenant governor post after Andrew M. Cuomo’s implosion last year.

And Lee Zeldin would be the state’s first governor born and raised on Long Island.

Multiple governors have had Long Island connections at one time or another. Hugh Carey had a summer home on Shelter Island. Nineteenth-century politician Roswell Flower died in Eastport. Teddy Roosevelt owned land in Oyster Bay and lived there for 10 years before he was elected governor, returning to make Sagamore Hill his summer White House while he served as president.

The Red Book, a long-standing repository of information about New York State, does not list a governor whose residence was Suffolk County. And no New York governor yet had been born on Long Island.

Various government sites say Zeldin was born in Nassau’s East Meadow. He was raised in Suffolk County and currently lives in Shirley, a solid and long-standing claim to LI compared to the rest.

Hochul’s incumbency is record-breaking on the gender front already. She is one of nine women governors currently serving, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers’ Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Ballot Point

GOP election lawyer looking for votes of his own

For attorney John Ciampoli, who made his name as a fierce election lawyer for New York’s Republicans, Election Day is always a big deal. But this year, after his name landed on an upstate ballot practically by accident, he’ll be watching returns more closely than ever.

Ciampoli, who lives in Massapequa, is a candidate for a Supreme Court judgeship in the lower Hudson Valley’s 9th Judicial District, serving Westchester, Dutchess, Rockland, Putnam, and Orange counties.

“We were at the state Republican convention in Garden City in March, and I was telling the party chair it was crucial that we not have any empty lines, that we had to have nominees for every slot,” Ciampoli told The Point. “And to illustrate my point, I said, ‘Listen, if you really don’t have anyone for a judicial race, put my name down and I’ll run.” Judges do not have to reside in the judicial district where they serve.

And then he didn’t think much more of it, until he got a call asking him to take the race.

Because there is almost no politicking allowed for judicial races, Ciampoli was able to accept the obligation without committing much time or energy to the run. And now, with the potential for a big Republican turnout, he’s being told he could easily win.

There are seven open slots in the judicial race, and seven Democrats facing seven Republicans. No candidate in the race has a Working Families Party line, while Ciampoli, one other Republican, and five Democrats have the Conservative nomination.

Ciampoli turns 64 on Feb. 15. If he won the 14-year term he’d serve six years before hitting the mandatory retirement age of 70, but there is always the option of serving on senior status for six years.

Ciampoli was the Nassau County attorney for several years under Edward Mangano and famously attempted to fast-track a redistricting based on the 2010 census for the 2011 county elections, a play which eventually failed to pass judicial muster. He has been instrumental in a majority of New York election law battles for decades and was a player in the recent and ultimately unsuccessful challenge to counting absentee ballots.

The job pays $210,900 and Ciampoli, in high demand and able to command steep fees, said a judgeship was something he’d always considered as a possibility after retiring from practice. Now might be that time.

As for whether he’d move, Ciampoli said he’d have to see how it went, pointing out that his wife has a business in Nassau County. “I did move upstate when I worked in Albany, and if I need to I will again,” he said.

So for Republicans this could be the week they elect a judge … and lose their go-to guy on election lawsuits.

Final Point

Whose limits

Which Suffolk County political chairman will get the win Tuesday night? Regarding term limits, that is.

The leaders of the two major parties in Suffolk are on fully opposite sides on the question on the county ballot of whether certain officials should serve only a set number of terms before calling it quits.

“I don’t support term limits of any kind or length of time,” county Democratic chairman and longtime Babylon Town supervisor Rich Schaffer told The Point in an email. Asked why, he replied, “I trust the voters.”

GOP chairman Jesse Garcia has repeatedly boosted term limits this cycle, including closing a Shirley campaign rally last week with a plea to vote yes on Prop 2, a proposal currently on the ballot in Suffolk to set limits for county executive, county legislator, and county comptroller at 12 years “in total.”

That is partially to settle a lingering question of whether the limits allowed an official to serve 12 years, take a break, and come back. That’s what former Suffolk Legis. Kate Browning tried to do in 2021.

Browning ended up losing, but the loophole remains, pending the approval of the current ballot proposal.

Cue the emails and videos put out by the Suffolk GOP that implore voters to “close the Democrat term-limit loophole to keep our local officials accountable to the people and not the special interests.”