http://www.registerstar.com/articles/2009/04/10/news/news01.txt
"Washington attorney and former President Reagan White House counsel David Nolan has been acting as a volunteer attorney for the Tedisco campaign [...] 'How I see it, is that Columbia County is make or break,' Nolan said Thursday night. 'I think we are over the top and have weathered the storm.' Nolan says the Republicans have been making most of the challenges over the past two days and the majority have been related to ballots from people who are registered to vote in Columbia County but whose driver's licenses state that they live in New York City."
There you have it from the horse's own mouth: Tedisco's own attorney states that Columbia is "make or break" for Tedisco, and "most of the challenges" are to people who vote here but have New York City ties.
Yet The Times-Union evidently has no interest in reporting this story. T-U reporter Leigh Hornbeck told me today (from the comfort of her desk in Albany) that she sees no reason to report on the Tedisco vote challenge campaign in what we now know his own campaign considers "make or break" Columbia County.
The article further notes that the number of votes challenged thus far is 93; the number of votes Murphy has received is 92. Eyewitnesses confirm what the article indicates above: that almost all but a handful of the challenges are from Tedisco's camp.
The T-U is missing the story that will determine the outcome of this race, one way or another.
PIC: Tedisco attorney who evidently didn't want to be photographed...
 AFTERNOON UPDATE: I had an opportunity to get out of my office and visit the site of the absentee count and speak face-to-face with multiple observers. This morning Tedisco's attorney signaled their broader strategy: To go after absentee voters who have a second home in Columbia County who also have a rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartment in New York City.
Given the high-stakes intensity of landlord-tenant disputes in NYC, this is potentially ugly stuff. In point of fact, voter status cannot be the sole criterion used to throw someone out of a rent-controlled apartment. However (speaking as someone who once did work for a citizens housing organization) many tenants are unaware of their rights. The threat of losing their apartment would terrify and chill many of these voters. But since such threats cannot actually be used to invalidate a legally-cast vote, the apparent consequences and intent of this action would be:
(1) To induce some absentee voters to disavow their ballots out of fear of losing their apartments;
(2) To intimidate people out of voting absentee or registering to vote here in the future;
(3) To punish Murphy voters with a major financial and legal headache - one they can win, but only if they have the tenacity and resources to fight for their own rights.
All around, this is a very disturbing admission by the Tedisco team -- that they are prepared to use intimidation of this type to scare off voters.
Moreover, two separate observers noted that the GOP legal team (at least 6-8 attorneys with laptops and crates of documents) is also challenging many non-second-home ballots, and allege that these voters are being profiled: They say voters with Latino or Jewish-"sounding" last names are being routinely challenged. This is a more subjective charge, but the allegation is made by more than one person present.
Only 9 more out of the fifty-plus EDs have been completed; no counting will take place until next Monday, so this will likely stretch to the end of next week. In some EDs, as many as 60% of absentees were challenged by the GOP. (Republicans who fit the above profiles are not being challenged by Tedisco.) The count in Tedisco-friendly Saratoga County is apparently far ahead. Despite the challenges, Murphy is still ahead in the County; and to their credit, the Murphy team has only challenged a handful of voters. Indeed, Murphy's lawyer proposed that they just count all the ballots, which the GOP wanted nothing to do with.
NOONTIME UPDATE: According to my second source, when the absentee vote count resumed Thursday morning at 8:30 am at 401 State Street in Hudson, Murphy's attorney delivered a blistering rebuke to his GOP counterpart -- putting him on notice of the potentially criminal aspects of his team's disenfranchisement strategy. Unperturbed, the GOP continued to challenge Democratic absentee voters from New York City, while letting Republican absentees from NYC go unchallenged. (There are more potentially explosive developments, but I am waiting for additional confirmation.)
------=== ORIGINAL DIARY ===------
I received an urgent distress call this evening [and have now confirmed this account with two more sources]. The message was loud and clear:
"You have to get the word out about what is really happening here with the absentees."
Here is the short version of the situation shaping up in Columbia, Murphy's strongest county in NY-20:
Tedisco's legal team is moving to disenfranchise an entire class of voters.
Specifically, virtually all ballots from Democrats who fit the profile of "second home owners" are being challenged -- and if the Board does not uphold the challenge, those ballots are being set aside, unopened, subject to a formal appeal by Tedisco. That is: They cannot be opened until a judge rules on them.
This GOP strategy is going to significantly depress Murphy's vote tally in Columbia, at least temporarily.
Those unfamiliar with Columbia County may not be aware that there has been, for many years, a large second home community here -- made up overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, of Democrats from New York City. Many of these voters have been here for many years, in some cases decades. As is entirely appropriate and legal, they have cast their ballots here without incident many times before, including just a few months ago for Barack Obama.
But as I'm hearing it, the Tedisco lawyer in Columbia (sent in by John Ciampoli) came prepared to challenge pretty much anyone who was a Democrat who had their absentee sent to a "downstate" address.
[Irony alert: As smartly pointed out in the comments by MinistryofTruth, Tedisco himself doesn't even live in the district! Yet he's challenging the residency of longtime home owners and voters here?]
Now, the legal precedent has been affirmed many times (see link in comments) on the State and Federal level that a person who owns more than one home can pick whichever of their homes' districts they want to vote in. The law is clear: You don't have to vote at your "primary" residence, where you file your main tax return. So long as you don't register and vote in more than one place, this is 100% legal. There are many good reasons for this: The right to representation where you pay taxes, the difficulty of determining primary residence, the fact that some professionals spend a large part of the year away from their main home, etc.
(How do I know this? Because for several years, I was deeply involved with a concerted effort to re-register these voters in Columbia County. We had the laws carefully reviewed by attorneys, and mailed out thousands of registration forms with legal backup.)
But Tedisco's team evidently wants to reverse that well-established legal principle, and is challenging Democratic second homeowners in Columbia wholesale. (They're also going after some students, apparently.) I don't know if they are doing this elsewhere, but Dutchess County similarly has a lot of weekender voters...
This is disenfranchisement of the most noxious variety, based on who you are, not based on valid and specific ballot defects.
The Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin knows the law and reportedly is correctly denying challenges which are without merit and spurious. The Republican Commissioner is said to have initially agreed with her; but after being taken aside and harangued by the Tedisco "team," he evidently changed his tune and began siding with the challenges. (Tedisco's guy also took aside the two Republican inspectors charged with handling the ballots, and gave them an unidentified packet of information.) In the case of a 1-1 vote, the challenge fails; but Tedisco's lawyers then have the right to have these set aside and brought before a judge.
BOTTOM LINE: Even though Murphy picked up about 40 votes in Columbia already, that number would likely be double without the challenges. I am optimistic that this will be laughed out of court, but in the meantime we are not seeing the real numbers.
And since the challenges are chugging along so laboriously, the Columbia BOE only got through about 7 out of more than 50 districts today. This is going to take a while, and it is already getting ugly.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Normally I would not write such a diary based on a single distress call. But the caller happens to be someone I have known for well over a decade, with whom I have worked closely under stressful conditions over a sustained period of time, who has an impressive professional resumé, and whose judgment I know is sound. The person witnessed these events firsthand. I will certainly be seeking out further details and confirmation from a second source in the morning, but am confident enough of this source to get this news out right away. Certainly if anyone else has different information, have at it...
KEY UPDATE: I just spoke with two additional, equally-reliable sources present for these events, who confirmed the original caller's account in full. |
