Judge rules that there's no need for recount in Schenectady mayoral race; absentee-ballot count goes on

PHOTOGRAPHER: Kathleen Moore

There will not be a recount in the Schenectady mayoral race, according to a decision released this morning by state Supreme Court Justice Vincent Reilly.

Reilly ruled that there was no evidence to indicate the machines misread any ballots, even at Schenectady High School, where machines were jostled as they were moved outside during a brief evacuation.

“In this court’s opinion the current record before it fails to demonstrate either the existence of a material discrepancy likely to impact upon the result of the election, or a flagrant irregularity in the election process,” Reilly wrote in his decision.

He also refused to order the Board of Elections to hand-count all the ballots read by one of the machines at Schenectady High School. He said the law required the board to hand-count machines at random. No high school machine was chosen in the random selection process.

Meanwhile, the count of the absentee ballots in the race is still going on today.

With about half the ballots examined, Acting Mayor Gary McCarthy’s lead is now 53 votes. But more than 100 ballots have been set aside, uncounted. And those ballots are piling up fast: this morning, attorneys for McCarthy and Alliance Party founder Roger Hull have counted just 20 ballots while objecting to another 18 ballots.