NY-20 Special Election

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Gillibrand's ballot is valid too.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/new-york-case-law-says-gillibrands-ballot-is-valid-even-if-gop-claim-is-true.php

What matters is that she intended not to be in the district during election day when she requested the absentee, not whether she actually was.

Oh no, not voter intent again!

Well, it's not exactly voter intent   The merits of the quality of her excuse to request an absentee ballot are weighed by whatever official/bureaucracy is in charge of that sort of thing at the time of the request, not when counting the votes.  Once the ballot is mailed, the excuse for requesting the absentee is already valid, says the rules.

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also no one cares if Pelosi gets one more vote

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?

COLUMBIA COUNTY — 20th Congressional District candidate Republican Jim Tedisco submitted a petition to the Dutchess County Supreme Court Thursday asking the judge to declare him the winner of the extremely close special election race, despite the numbers currently being in favor of his opponent, Democrat Scott Murphy.

According to The Associated Press, Murphy leads Tedisco by 178 votes district wide — 79,452 to 79,274. The only ballots that have not been counted are those challenged by each candidate’s lawyers, and while Tedisco’s office has said the challenges are roughly evenly split between the two camps, Columbia County lawyers for Murphy have only challenged 22 ballots, while Tedisco’s have challenged 258.

Tedisco is also asking the court to authorize recanvasing of all machine ballots to acquire the “proper” tallies. He would like them to reassess the validity of absentee votes already counted, and keep ballots challenged by Tedisco unopened. County Board of Elections Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin said this new development could result in the election taking quite a bit more time to be decided. She would not venture a guess on how long it will be before the 20th District has a representative in congress.

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It's easy to find links by Googling a sentence in quotation marks, but here

http://www.registerstar.com/articles/2009/04/17/news/news02.txt

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Update on my earlier post

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/about-that-tedisco-filing.php


The blogosphere has been abuzz about a reported filing by Republican Congressional candidate Jim Tedisco, asking to be declared the winner in the NY-20 special election. Does the filing really say that he should be declared the winner, notwithstanding the fact that he's down in the count?

Not exactly. I've now had the chance to look through the filing, and what it really does is formally state Tedisco's goal of being declared the winner -- after all, you can't go to court without some kind of specified goal -- and then it goes into the various complaints that Tedisco has, mainly relating to challenges against Murphy voters as being allegedly ineligible to vote in the election.

The Tedisco campaign clarified to The Hill that this filing was made in order to establish Tedisco's legal standing, as an "insurance policy" against questions about the standing of the local party officials who first challenged the election before the polls even closed.

So make no mistake that Tedisco is contesting this result -- but that's not news, as the litigation has been going on literally since Election Day. This latest filing is just one more procedural step along the way.

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One could argue that no Presidential candidate should ever concede until the Electoral College votes and the votes are counted.

You can always withdraw your concession if something unexpected happens... it's been done before.

Conceding, for Tedisco, would just be a sportsmanlike thing to do and signal that he's not intending to issue legal delays if things unfold how he expects them to.

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Ok Murphy is up by 401 and the majority of ballots left to be counted are from Democrats

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Ouch for Steele.

Actually, there are no national losers in this exchange.  If one side won convincingly that'd mean something.  But one side scraping by?  Anti-symbolism

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Oh, Tedisco is a major loser.  How hard is it for a conservative to come against the stimulus when motherf-'n Cao, in a D+26 district or whatever can vote against it?  It's a partisan vote, and all of your campaign volunteers oppose the bill, are you really that retarded to think that you can waffle on the issue and profit?  The media and a number of voters tore him a new one.

If he had come out against the stimulus from day one, I think he would have won.  Tedisco ran one of the worst campaigns I've ever seen.


Tedisco represents the disgusting triangulating side of politics and I'm happy he lost.  Murphy triangulated too (I don't really think he's pro-gun or that he didn't consult polls before he came up with his positions) but Murphy didn't pretend to be anyone but how he'd vote, an Obama rubber-stamp.    At least Murphy wasn't checking the daily polls to figure out how he'd vote on the stimulus package, which every Republican in the House has voted against.  That was one of the more fake things I've seen in politics etc.  Tedisco only came out against the stimpack at the peak of the AIG bonus scandal.

[Lunar]

Indeed, the leading Democratic candidates for New Jersey, Virginia, and NYC are candidates that most Democrats don't even like, these races could give the GOP momentum

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I don't think the candidate with the worst fundraising this quarter, despite him quitting the legislature just so he wouldn't be subjected to fundraising limits, is the leading candidate...

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Cuomo is running for something in NYC?  news to me, I was talking about Thompson

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  Just focusing on 2009 elections which don't bode well for Democrats thus far.


Props to Tedisco for conceding.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/scorecard/0409/Tedisco_concedes_to_Murphy.html

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k, I'll remember that post later this year

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I never made a prediction, I just said he was the frontrunner for the nom.  Hell, I'm semi-working for one of Terry's Democratic opponents and I would never cast a vote for Terry myself ... I'd rather stay home

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aye laddy

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Tedisco probably won't do a rematch, he probably still won't be living inthe district.


Probably the odds-favorite to become Scott Murphy's challenger in 2010 is Betty Little

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Sometimes you gotta roll with the cougar in you want to roll

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And CA-10

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And CA-10

Tauscher hasn't resigned yet, but yeah, it's imminently a vacant seat.

Fair enough. I pray that CA-36th will be soon empty due to resignation, but it may take an arrest to get that finished.

[Lunar]

she sold her soul, for starters.  What did she ever do FOR you, and how much did you pay her?

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CHECK THE NEWS

and if you really offered her $500k then yes, you've already experienced everything she has to offer.  EVERYTHING

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I think this is a must-read for anyone interested in a lengthy and video-linked conservative opinion on why this race unfolded as it did.  Here's a hint:  it wasn't because the district is super Democratic, it's that the GOP is losing its connection with these types of voters, and Tedisco let his campaign be directed by idiotic pollster-strategists from out-of-state...

http://newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx?ID=0cf11e44-00c5-473d-a587-07c84ef676b7

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That is not a conservative opinion. That is a Rockefeller Rinoish position that needs to be cleansed from the face of the earth Republican Party. [/has been reading too much of the Specter thread]

It criticizes him primarily for switching from being an unapologetic conservative to overly-obsessing about political winds to the point where he did a disservice to the conservative principles he stood for... but he also faults the national party for isolating many of these voters (the district did vote for Obama).


I think the most ignored aspect of this race is that while special elections heavily favor Republicans in most circumstances, they also heavily favor whatever constituency is the most excited.  Murphy himself was unapologetically pro-EFCA, pro-Obama, and pro-stimulus.  Murphy almost never talked about blue dog issues... I saw a debate when asked what his stance on gun rights was and he gave a monotonous, hardly-believable answer that he was "pro-2nd Amendment."  Gillibrand, in contest, has practically shooting from the hip while criticizing big government.  Tedisco ran ads [linked in the article] praising Obama that were unbelievably retarded.