Assembly District 23 candidates head to court as ballot count drags on
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There are three votes separating Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato and her Republican challenger Thomas Sullivan in the ongoing count of the Assembly District 23 race. Photos via Assembly/Ballotpedia
By Rachel Vick and Christopher Janaro
A Queens judge heard arguments in a case brought by incumbent Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato against her Republican challenger, Thomas Sullivan, in the race to represent a portion of southern Queens and the Rockaway peninsula in the Assembly on Tuesday.
The last race to be decided in Queens isn’t headed for closure anytime soon – fewer than 10 votes separate the candidates.
The closed conference between the parties and Queens Civil Supreme Court Acting Justice Joseph Risi comes amid an ongoing absentee ballot count in the Assembly District 23 race by the city’s Board of Elections. Regardless of the outcome of the court proceeding, the race appears to be headed toward an automatic hand recount.
Just three votes out of 32,245 cast currently separate the candidates, with Sullivan, who led the race on Election Day by around 260 votes, in the lead.
Pheffer Amato’s suit requests that 92 ballots be reviewed and counted after they were disqualified for not being properly secured in an envelope. A spokesperson for her campaign emphasized that the intention of Tuesday's proceedings were entirely focused on getting those ballots validated, and not to invalidate any votes.
“Generally, we just want to make sure that every properly cast ballot is counted at the end of the day, because the stakes are so important, particularly this election when extremism and people who are threatening democracy or have been resoundingly rejected,” Campaign Spokesperson Matthew Rey told the Eagle. “That is our core goal.”
“As the narrow margin will lead to a manual recount mandated by law regardless of the final outcome of this case, we are confident that the will of the voters can only be uphold once these valid ballots are opened and counted,” he added in a statement after the proceedings.
Both camps have expressed concern over the sanctity of the vote. Both have gone as far to suggest that the race has potentially seen voter fraud, a claim neither have substantiated.
“Anyone who could not get to the polls on Election Day still deserve to have their vote counted and their voice heard,” Pheffer Amato said in a statement after the election. “We've suffered greatly from repeated attempts to stop valid votes from being counted by those who seek to subvert our democracy for their own benefit. We will not allow that to happen here in Queens.”
In the week since the initial filing, the race has only tightened. Sullivan voiced his concerns about extending the election process as long as it has been extended for.
"I trust and believe in the process but we're going on 23 days since the first vote was cast,” Sullivan told the Eagle ahead of the appearance. “Your lead starts to diminish [and] you start to lose faith and trust in the process.”
He claimed to have “known people who have cast ballots [on behalf of] their mother or father… [who] unfortunately, may not know what day of the week it is, let alone who's running.”
“Are those the people that Stacey talks about having a right to vote?” he added.
Both parties are working to get a number of ballots cured, or fixed for minor errors, before the Dec. 1 deadline. Sullivan is currently working to cure four ballots, and Pheffer Amato is currently working to cure three ballots, according to a source with knowledge of the race.
Less than a dozen ballots are left to cure, according to Rey.
“She's out doing that, I'm out during that; it's exhausting,” Sullivan said. “Because we're in a position where every vote counts.”
The recount likely won’t happen until December, and the two parties are going back to court for a hearing regarding the validity of the 94 ballots on Dec. 1.
