Queens Assembly District 30 recount begins after two-vote margin
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Bins of ballot were counted by the Board of Elections in Queens on Tuesday for the race in Assembly District 30 between Shamsul Haque and Patrick Martinez. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
On election night last month, thousands of ballots cast in the race for Assembly District 30 in Queens were counted by machines and tabulated so quickly that unofficial results of the race were available online an hour after the polls closed.
Tuesday’s recount of the virtual tie between Democrats Shamsul Haque and Patrick Martinez couldn’t have looked more different.
Those same ballots were counted by hand, marked up with red pens and sorted with rubber bands at the city Board of Elections’ offices on Metropolitan Boulevard in Middle Village.
The recount in the race was called after Haque, a self-described progressive Democrat, and Martinez, who was endorsed by the Queens County Democratic Party, were separated by 13 votes on election night. The vote differential dropped to two as the counting continued in the days after the election.
The tight race automatically triggered the hand recount, which began in earnest on Tuesday and is expected to be completed before the end of the week.
‘It's efficient’
The recount process rejects the world of automatic vote tallying machines and instant results published online, and embraces a not so distant past where paper ballots rule the day.
Board of Elections employees counting ballots and votes lined up along four long folding tables in an otherwise barren looking room on Tuesday, opposite representatives and attorneys for each campaign there to monitor the count.
First, the ballots, which were organized by voting district and put in large blue bins, were counted by election workers.
They were then passed off for a first round of vote tallying by a different group election workers.
At one of the two manual counting tables, the election worker responsible for the counting held each ballot up to poll watchers and read the first name of the candidate marked on the ballot out loud.
“Shamsul. Patrick. Patrick. Shamsul,” she read.
Election workers and poll watchers wrote down tally-marks on sheets with red pens.
If the vote was valid, and neither candidates’ election attorney took issue with it, it was passed to another set of tables, where the vote will be counted a second time. Should no issues arise, the ballot would be sent off to another room for a final count and tabulation by the BOE.
In total, each vote was counted three times.
“It's efficient, there's a lot of integrity in this process,” said election attorney Ali Najmi, who represents Haque’s campaign. “The board staff is just here to make sure all these votes get counted correctly, and there's really no gamesmanship.”
There were moments of disagreement, though.
Najmi and Matinez’s attorneys at Sweeney Reich and Bolz, the Queens County Democratic Party’s law firm, raised objections to a number of ballots. On some, voters didn’t properly fill the bubble next to their preferred candidate’s name. On others, voters with bad handwriting left a write-in illegible. Sometimes voters cast their ballot for more than one candidate in the Assembly race.
Whenever a dispute arose, the ballot was shown to BOE officials, who then made the ultimate determination of whether to count the vote – the BOE’s determination could later be challenged in court by either campaign.
One ballot reviewed Tuesday had the names of all three District 30 candidates, Haque, Martinez and Somnath Ghimire, bubbled in.
The ballot was tossed by BOE officials.
Another ballot had Haque’s name both bubbled, and written in.
It was counted for Haque.
Just before the workers went for a lunch break, one ballot sparked a particularly tense argument between the BOE, Najmi and attorney Frank Bolz.
A voter had written “Shamsul” in the write-in box, leaving out the candidate’s last name. The voter also failed to bubble in Haque’s name.
Bolz said the ballot should be tossed, arguing the voter could have been voting for some other person named Shamsul, noting that several people in Queens are named Shamsul Haque, according to BOE records.
Najmi argued that the intent of the voter was clear – writing Shamsul was a vote for the only guy with that name on the ballot.
The BOE initially sided with Najmi, and the vote was officially counted for Haque. However, the decision was later reversed. Should the race remain close at the end of the recount, Najmi indicated he may bring the ballot before a judge for a final determination.
Haque himself was present for the count on Tuesday, standing behind a partition but closely monitoring the process as ballots with his name were counted.
“It’s interesting,” he told the Eagle.
A former NYPD cop who ran a progressive campaign supported by the likes of Senator Bernie Sanders, Haque said he wished more people voted in the race.
“I like vibrant democracy where people come out and vote, and I wish the turnout was even higher, even though it was higher than before,” he said. “Obviously, a situation like this, I was not expecting.”
Martinez was not present on Tuesday, and his campaign did not provide a comment to the Eagle about the recount.
In a previous statement, Martinez said his campaign was “focused on ensuring that every vote is counted and every voice is heard.”
A local district leader, Martinez had the blessing of the Queens Democratic Party, an organization formerly run by his uncle, Congressman Joe Crowley, who was defeated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018.
On election night, Haque and Martinez largely split the district along Queens Boulevard.
Haque won most of the precincts north of the borough’s eponymous thoroughfare, characterized by the diverse communities in Elmhurst and Jackson Heights, and along Roosevelt Avenue. Martinez dominated south of Queens Boulevard in the more moderate parts of Maspeth and Elmhurst bordered by the boulevard and the Long Island Expressway.
Ghimire pulled in double-digit percentages in the central part of the district, which is home to a significant Nepali community – areas almost entirely won by Haque.
It will likely be at least a few days before the recount process is finished and District 30’s voters know which candidate will be on the Democratic party line in the general election – the winner of the race will face off against Republican Brandon Castro in the heavily Democratic district in November.
As afternoon turned to evening on Tuesday, the first official tally began to appear on a spreadsheet on a TV screen.
There was also at least one write-in vote for Hello Kitty, the fictional Japanese cat. In a race that could be decided by only a few ballots, that might just make her a spoiler.
