The following is from WNYC:
The contest between Republican David Storobin and Democratic City Councilman Lew Fidler—now more than two weeks after the March 20 special election to fill the seat vacated by disgraced former state Senator Carl Kruger—got both a little closer and a little further away from a final resolution on Wednesday. Lawyers from both campaigns, as well as from the Board of Elections, huddled with state Supreme Court judge David Schmidt to hammer out the next steps now that a panel of judges has suggested which of the contested absentee and other paper ballots should be counted.
As it stands, the Storobin campaign hangs on to a razor thin three-vote lead. The panel of judges, who were assigned by the court as special referees, looked at more than 210 ballots the campaigns argued should be invalidated for one reason or another.
Out of the 164 ballots the Storobin campaign objected to, 143 of them were ruled valid. Of the 54 Fidler-initiated objections, 35 were overturned by the judges, who said they should be counted.
Assuming the opposing campaigns were looking to take votes away from their opponents, the suggestions the referee judges made to the court are good news for the Fidler campaign. The ballots reviewed by the referee judges have not been officially counted.
But—of course—that’s not where things end. Both campaigns are also pushing to get large chunks of ballots invalidated on different grounds.
The Storobin campaign wants the Board of Elections to provide supporting documents for 50 or more voters who were given permanent absentee ballot status, in the hopes of showing this was done in error—that they should have been going to the polls on their own volition and, thus, should have their absentee ballots invalidated. The BoE’s lawyers said they felt that was impossible because the documentation was no longer available and likely permanently destroyed.
Fidler’s lawyers are asking for information for dozens of absentee ballots collected by Alla Pometko, who they alleged may have committed voter fraud. Pometko, they say, asked for nearly 180 absentee ballots from the board, but only returned 119, raising questions about what she did with the other 65 or so.
More seriously, they say, out of that 119 absentee ballots submitted on behalf of voters, 16 of those voters actually went to the polls on Election Day. The Fidler lawyers are suggesting that there may have been an intentional attempt by Pometko to commit voter fraud, and might seek in the next hearing on April 11 to have all of the Pometko-submitted absentee ballots invalidated.
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7 Responses
one thing is clear. the frum community resoundly told fidler and his askunim, you vote toeva, we dont want you
#1) Nope, ya got it all wrong. There were insufficient voters for Strawbones which is why he didnt get enough votes and now his fraud is coming to the forefront. If he would have gotten the frum majority as many believe he did, he would have won by a landslide. Fidler is a proven man, regardless of his beliefs and he will win by honesty at the end.
Klugeryid- if that was true….. We wouldn’t be reading about this 2 weeks later. What’s clear to see is that Storobin’s team is pulling at straws just to win, by challenging 164 of 210 absentee votes, of which 143 were validated.(For the record I didn’t vote for either one once this became pure Sinas Chinum) If you ask me that doesn’t look like the moves of a confident team. So if you and the frum community supported him so much… invite him to your seder, then we’ll see it’s about so much more then “Voting AGAINST Toveya”
#1 klugeryid is 100% correct. Its not even debatable. Simply look at the board of election returns. All the election districts in boro park and the frum part of flatbush went to Storobin by big margins. Storobin also won the Russian areas. The only areas Fidler carried were the non-Orthodox and non-Russian neighborhoods.
So, yes, Orthodox Jews have a proven track record of voting against pro-toeiva candidates. Especially Democrats. Remember the Turner victory?
And considering the new Senate district will become much much Orthodox in a few months, the November race for this seat is effectively guaranteed to go to a pro-lifer.
Brooklyn is the MOST Democrat country in New York State, a blue state. Fidler the Democrat was supposed to easily win this is a cakewalk. That he lost or at least almost lost, is a humongeous loss to the Democrats.
It doesn’t matter who will be the winner-by the time all the cchallenges are filed and adjudicated, then the court decisions from the legal matters to come are decided, the Senate willbe on Summer break, then will com e the Fall Primaries for the Newly re-drawn district and the election to come. Do you really think either of these gentlemen will actuallyget to vote on anything between now and January?
To Chamor Hador
Lew Fidler also commited voter fraud when he voted to extend Term Limits when the vote came up in the City Council about foru years ago. Fidler did this despite the voters not once but twice voted against it when the vote came up as a charter question on the General Election Ballot.