Latest Delay in NY-22 Results May Not Be Last

In what was thought, possibly, to be the last court appearance before certifying election results of New York's 22nd Congressional District, there's been another hold-up in naming a winner - with more delays potentially on the horizon.

This most recent delay follows a recanvassing request by attorneys for Democrat Anthony Brindisi, the incumbent. According to Syracuse.com, a small discrepancy over over hand-counted ballots in Oneida County vs. the machine counted number prompted the request to re-examine the numbers. While the county count had a discrepancy of 9 votes, or less than 1%, attorneys argued that if that miscalculation had been replicated across the 22nd district it would be enough votes to swing the outcome in Brindisi's favor:

If that error rate — 0.8% — is extrapolated to all of the votes cast in Oneida County, they argued, 800 votes might have been missed. And, because they have no indication that other counties used different voting machines, as many as 2,500 votes might have been missed, they said.
So they asked DelConte to halt the certification until there could be a hand audit of all the ballots cast in the 22nd Congressional District. They also argued that a new state law that goes into effect this year requires full recounts in any election where the margin is less than .5%. In this case, the margin is .04%, so a manual recount is a just outcome, even though the law does not apply to cases that began last year.

The article also notes there was a second issue raised in arguing their case to the judge: The likely-hood that either side may appeal some of his rulings, which would delay the process further, anyway:

...Because of that, it would be inefficient to let votes be cast and a winner certified when DelConte’s orders could be overturned by an appellate court.
It was this question that ultimately appeared to sway DelConte to issue a halt on the certification of results.

By its count, the Post Standard has Republican Claudia Tenney up by 122 votes - a razor-thin margin for a district that saw over 315,000 ballots cast.

Attorneys are due to file their most recent motions by Thursday afternoon, with another court appearance expected on Friday, it was reported.