The latest state score in NY-20 shows Democratic candidate Scott Murphy ahead of Republican Jim Tedisco by 167 votes, a margin of 50.05%-49.95%, up from an 86-vote lead at the close of business yesterday — making it appear more likely than not that Murphy will be the winner when all is said and done.
The big question now is how the roughly 1,200 challenged absentee ballot envelopes will play out, as they are currently being kept out of the count — including the vote of U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. The ruling yesterday by Judge James V. Brands means that the vast majority of these challenges will be rejected out of hand, and the envelopes will be opened and the votes counted.
The numbers from Columbia County, for example, show that there have been 249 ballots challenged by the Tedisco campaign, compared to only 22 from Murphy. There are 740 challenges in the Tedisco stronghold of Saratoga County, but it’s not been publicly disclosed what the breakdown is of who challenged how many ballots.
Overall, it seems like more ballots were challenged by the Tedisco camp across the district than were challenged by Murphy. And since a basic assumption is that a ballot that gets challenged is believed to be a vote for the other guy, this would mean that Murphy could gain a little bit when the votes are counted, assuming that more ballots were indeed challenged by Tedisco.
