After weeks of speculation about fraud, a Senate committee quickly solved the ballot mystery in state Senate District 25 on Tuesday, when it discovered a counting error was responsible for a discrepancy between the number of voters and the number of votes cast on Election Day in the small town of Long Island.
But now that there’s universal confidence in the outcome of this exceedingly close state Senate election, it’s time officials at the secretary of state’s office and policymakers act to ensure there can be universal confidence in the next election — and recount.
That can be accomplished by strengthening the role of the secretary of state’s office at the recount — rather than allowing political parties and their attorneys to essentially have veto power over the process.
“I believe we made an error at the recount, and I wish we had counted them again,” Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn, who oversees the Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions, told the seven-member Senate committee on Tuesday. “I will assure you we will amend our rules, so that if we get a change like this, we’ll go back and count those ballots again to make sure.”
Indeed, most questions about the state Senate race would have been resolved — and Democrat Cathy Breen, Republican Cathy Manchester, Long Island Town Clerk Brenda Singo and others involved would have been spared undue stress and uncertainty — had a second inspection of the Long Island ballots taken place during the recount.
But the official rules governing recounts don’t outline how to address a major discrepancy such as the one that arose with Long Island’s votes — when ballot counters at the recount counted 21 more ballots than there were voters on election night.
The rules, at a minimum, could require that ballot counters reconcile the number of ballots with a municipality’s voter list to ensure there’s no major discrepancy between the number of people who voted and the number of votes cast. The rules should also make clear that election officials have the authority — without the signoff of a candidate’s counsel — to double-check vote counts when such a discrepancy exists.
During the Breen-Manchester recount, no second inspection of the Long Island ballots took place because the Republican side didn’t agree it was necessary. There’s no way a political party should have veto power over any aspect of vote tallying.
Once the matter ended up in the Senate, the seven-member committee appointed to resolve the matter had wide latitude. The committee could have done whatever its members wanted since there’s no prescribed process for the committee to follow.
In this case, the seven senators had an interest solely in exposing the truth. But a future committee could decide it has different priorities.
At a minimum, the Senate should set basic requirements for the vote committee to follow — to first conduct an investigation by consulting relevant witnesses. The best course of action would be to change the Senate review process so the majority party doesn’t have such wide latitude in deciding a matter over which partisan interests should have limited discretion.