New York State Courts Decide the Winner of the 23rd Assembly Race

On December 4, New York Assemblymember Stacy Pheffer Amato was declared the winner of the 23rd district race, defeating her Republican opponent by fifteen votes. The race outcome had been in doubt until December 4. See this story.

Key to Pheffer Amato’s win was the discovery that about a dozen voters had cast a regular ballot for her, and had also written her name in. The vote-counting machines had rejected those votes because the machine could not possibly know that the voters had not voted for two different people (thus making their ballots invalid). Instead the voters had voted for her twice. Only human beings, not a machine, were capable of understanding these ballots.

This is similar to what happened in Florida in 2000, when about 7,000 voters voted for Al Gore the normal way and also wrote him in. About 3,000 voters did the same for George W. Bush. The machines rejected all those ballots because the machines thought the voters had voted for two different candidates for the same office, thus making their votes invalid.

No one knew about those Florida votes until November 2001, when a consortium of news organizations recounted all the Florida votes by hand and released the findings. Al Gore had never requested a recount of the overvotes (he only asked that the undervotes be counted).


Comments

New York State Courts Decide the Winner of the 23rd Assembly Race — 6 Comments

  1. How corrupt/stupid was the ENTIRE system in 2000 ??? —

    esp ALL the USA and FL election alleged officers ???

    How come NO quo warranto case after the Nov 2021 info ???

    IE to Declare Bush II election in 2000 illegal

    regardless of EC and SCOTUS machinations.

    Set the stage for 2016 and 2020 chaos.

  2. It amazes me sometimes how dumb some voters can be. Literally. what was their thought process for this

  3. Could a ballot be tampered with by someone writing in a vote for the same person checked on the ballot?
    Why not an all write-in ballot with an X mark required in space for the name when the voter has no preference? “When filling out this ballot leave no blanks. Mark “X” for no candidate name.”

  4. ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymanders in ALL 99 Houses in 50 state Legislatures.

    1/2 or less votes x 1/2 cracked/packed gerrymander areas = 1/4 or less CONTROL= oligarchy.

    bit worse in top 2 primary States — 2 DD, 2 RR, no D or R —
    many voters NOT voting for ANY D or R.

    Super-worse primary extremist math.

    Too many polisci MORONS to count –
    esp in law skooools and resulting super moron judges- esp SCOTUS super-hacks.

    Super-worse media MORONS – esp CNN, Fox, etc.
    —–
    NOOO primaries
    Equal pets/filing fees
    PR

  5. This would never be a problem if elections were held in person with open voting in the manner of a caucus, town meeting etc.

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