Buerkle wins NY-25th CD

Three weeks after the polls closed, U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei conceded to Ann Marie Buerkle in my hometown district, New York 25 yesterday.

For three weeks, dozens of Maffei lawyers and volunteers pored over absentee ballots and voting machine counts across four counties in an effort to find enough votes to survive. With all the votes counted, Maffei was left with only one more option — to ask a judge to order the boards of elections to start over and count by hand more than 200,000 paper ballots. Eight elections commissioners were gearing up to fight that suggestion in court today.

Buerkle grabbed the lead after regular votes were tallied with only a few hundred votes and absentee ballots helped her maintain her edge over the incumbent Democrat.

The unofficial vote on Tuesday stood at 104,387 for Buerkle and 103,826 for Maffei — a margin of 561 votes.

Several New York districts weren’t able to get their ballots to the troops in time for their absentee ballots to be counted, that wasn’t the case in the 25th.

Category: Military issues