Republican Claudia Tenney says corrected error gives her 13-vote lead over Anthony Brindisi

Claudia Tenney’s campaign on Monday said she has taken a 13-vote lead over Rep. Anthony Brindisi in the 22nd Congressional District election after one county corrected a “tabulation error.”

Tenney, a Republican from New Hartford, ended up with a net gain of 25 votes over Brindisi, D-Utica, after Herkimer County found the error in its unofficial vote count, her campaign said.

The correction erased Brindisi’s lead of 12 votes that he held before the Thanksgiving holiday.

The lead change may prove to be of little significance because the fate of more than 2,000 disputed absentee and affidavit ballots will ultimately determine who wins the election. A state Supreme Court justice is expected to rule on the challenges to those ballots later this week.

In a letter to the judge Sunday, a lawyer for the Brindisi campaign expressed dismay at how Herkimer County handled its reporting of the error.

Lawyer Martin Connor wrote that the campaign learned about the error in a Sunday morning tweet from Syracuse radio personality Bob Lonsberry.

“As a preliminary matter, counsel is deeply troubled by the fact that Herkimer County adjusted its tabulations outside of public view, without public notice, without publication of its new results, and in direct violation of this court’s order directing the respondent Board of Elections to produce final tabulations to the respective campaigns by no later than Nov. 25,” Connor wrote.

Connor said he reached a Herkimer County attorney Sunday afternoon who confirmed that some votes were transcribed incorrectly by election officials. After the correction, Brindisi picked up an additional 10 v... (Read more)

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