Harrison supervisor race will come down to very last vote
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the accurate number of write-in votes (2,227) that were cast by voters in the town of Harrison last week, according to the Board of Elections. Also updated are the vote tallies for the major party candidates, according to the board's latest count.
The race for Harrison supervisor will come down to the very last vote, according to the latest election numbers provided by the Westchester County Board of Elections.
With nearly every ballot counted, incumbent Richard Dionisio has apparently defeated his Democratic challenger, Mark Jaffe. Unofficial numbers posted online indicate that Dionisio's 1,987 votes were insurmountable for Jaffe, who has only secured 1,863 votes.
However, the board has also identified 2,227 write-in votes from Harrison voters across all races last week, according to Tajian Nelson, the board's Democratic commissioner.
Former Harrison Supervisor Ron Belmont launched a last-ditch write-in campaign for the supervisor's office in the weeks leading up to the election. Belmont's was the only prominent write-in campaign for an elected official on Harrison's ballot.
If substantially all of these write-in votes were cast for Belmont, that would place him in serious contention to beat out Dionisio.
Beginning on Thursday, election workers will start to manually re-canvass the voted ballots to ascertain the names written in on the write-in candidate line.
Elections commissioner: no irregularities found
Nelson also disclosed that she spoke with the Westchester County District Attorney's Office in response to reports of electoral irregularities. Among other things, some ballot machines malfunctioned at voting sites, causing some ballots not to be scanned on Election Day and instead deposited into a security bag.
"I spoke to the District Attorney and confirmed that no irregularities occurred," she said. "The ballots were secured in our orange security bags. There was nothing unusual, just the amount of ballots because of the machines at those sites."
These ballots had to be counted manually. Nelson noted that had back-up machines been properly set-up at these sites, the ballots at issue "would have been run through the machine and been scanned" on election night.
She also confirmed that it was the proper role of the town clerk and the Harrison Department of Public Works to secure and deliver the ballot bags.
Late Monday, Dionisio sued Belmont to disqualify him from the race, arguing that a pre-existing law establishing term limits for the office of supervisor would prevent Belmont from taking office. The viability of that law remains in doubt, as the New York State Court of Appeals recently struck down a similar term-limits law in the town of Clarkstown.
Asher Stockler is a reporter for The Journal News and the USA Today Network New York. You can find him on Twitter at @quasiasher or send him an email at astockler@lohud.com. Reach him securely: asher.stockler@protonmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Harrison NY elections: Supervisor race will come down to write-in votes
