Queens District Attorney candidates Melinda Katz and Tiffany Cabán. (Melinda Katz/Tiffany Caban)
July 5, 2019 By Laura Hanrahan
Tiffany Cabán and Melinda Katz are set to face off yet again, this time in Queens County Supreme Court.
The pair will head to court on Tuesday to determine the validity of 114 disputed ballots that were not counted since voters didn’t clearly state their party affiliation.
The ruling could change the result, since Katz had a lead of just 16 votes on Friday.
The court battle is just another phase in an election saga that has seen Cabán’s 1,100-vote election-night lead evaporate. The election swung in Katz’ favor on Wednesday after a manual count of affidavit and absentee ballots was conducted by the NYC Board of Elections. By Wednesday night, Katz was 20 votes ahead in a stunning reversal.
This morning the BOE began re-reviewing several affidavit ballots at the request of Cabán’s team.
The BOE ruled that six of these ballots could be counted. Five votes went to Cabán and one went to Katz, bringing the Borough President’s lead down to just 16 votes.
The court will review the 114 disputed ballots next week. Cabán’s team believes that these votes should be counted as long as all other requirements are met.
On Tuesday, the BOE will also begin its manual recount of the 85,000 votes that were cast on election day. BOE workers will go through every ballot that was cast at more than 700 voting machines.
The recount was automatically triggered since Katz’ lead is less than 0.5 percent of the vote.
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17 Comments
According to City&State, the Judge reportedly will not rule on the validity of the contested affidavit ballots (also known as the “provisional” ballots) until the manual recount of the machine ballots is completed. Plus there’s likely hundreds of machine ballots that were rejected by the machine, especially if a voter didn’t fill in the bubble properly. This is going to take some time.
One thing is for sure: the vote tally will change again. Sit tight.
Several current machine members were once rebel candidates. It is in the nature of a machine operation to ensnare successful insurgent candidates and make them part of the machine. The only difference now is that the leftist faction in Western Queens believes that they can create a machine of their own. In the pre-AOC old days, the old-time machine converted every single insurgent that I can remember. In fact, if Caban loses and the Dem Socialists lose a little steam, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if AOC joined the traditional machine. She has already shown that she is hooked on the attention and power so she’ll do whatever it takes to keep that now. It’s human nature.
What happened to Harry Bingham 1-3? Did they malfunction?
Watch Katz vs Caban Tuesday July 9 on Pay-Per-View
may the bartenders friend lose by one vote, that is my wish. I will laugh like hell.
You mean when AOC worked to jobs to support her mother after her father died of cancer? You’re criticizing her for THAT? That’s a new low.
GO Melinda beat the Socialist? Communist AOC clone. She does not want to prosecute anyone anyway. Why do we need her?
Well said, now hand over your social security check. I’m sure you don’t take government handouts like a socialist.
> She does not want to prosecute anyone anyway
Can you imagine being this gullible?
Absurd statement. First of all, this is the DA. Their job is to prosecute and uphold the laws. In this case, the laws of the city. It’s worse than socialism, it’s basically voting someone into a position based on a platform of what they “won’t do”. If you have an issue with criminal justice reform, take it up where it matters. Ginsburg is a model for progress. She challenged the legality of legislation that differentiated based on sex and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. Caban is just talking about what she won’t do. If you want to change things, then focus your efforts on changing our city’s legislation (or our state, or our county), stop running local politics into the ground to make some point nationally, that by the way, no one outside of Queens is listening to anyway. Rather than trying to destroy the good model that we have for government, work it. Get people involved. You’re not trying to change the Democratic Party, you’re destroying it. If you want something fresh, the start it. Your falling into the same old … and don’t come back and blame anyone else when you end up continuing to tilt people’s anger and lay the groundwork to put people like trump back in office. It just feels like these Caban supporters are trying to unravel vs. build upon something.
Cool story. How is it socialism?
People paid into Social Security, you know. Well, real Americans did, not the million Chinese grandmas and others who get benefits ten minutes after stepping off the ChinaAir and without having paid a dime into the system.
Anyway, AOC is a Cultural Marxist (e.g. anti-white), not a “socialist.” There aren’t any socialists. Not even one.
Agreed, the government is redistributing taxpayer’s money to the boomers. That’s socialism. I can’t believe you’d stand for that, you hate socialism!
>Anyway, AOC is a Cultural Marxist (e.g. anti-white)
Oh god, not the regurgitated Jordan Peterson talking points. Do you have any evidence of that at all?
Do you even know what Marxism means? Do you think it’s a method of socioeconomic analysis that views class relations and social conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development? Or you’re too stupid to know what words mean?
Not sure what your looney alt-right theory has to do with counting papers ballots
Okay, this is epic.
Just wondering if that court is the same court where every sitting Judge owes their position to Crowley, Reich, Bolz, et al?
Republican here but something is rotten in the state of Denmark when an 1100 vote lead evaporates overnight. If Caban doesn’t challenge any eventual adverse outcome, then that would be an indicator that the machine has bought her off with a promise. Boys and Girls: That happens A LOT with insurgent candidates in Queens County. For all you young and idealistic naive kids, don’t think your girl (?) is above it. It’s amazing how “progressive” principles take a back seat when you have a nice carrot in front of you.
Harry Bingham IV -What you are saying is possible and does happen. In this case I don’t think AOC would let her give in. Neither would the WFP-Working Families Party after their efforts. I wonder how this will turn out. I just don’t see Caban giving in. Caban did claim victory a bit early on election night. the news said Caban’s team was cherry picking Western Queens ballots where Caban drew most of her support.
The DA position in no way relates to Socialism. But, this has become the cry for all trumpeters & those resisting fundamental change/realignment in our two-party system.