Judge sets schedule for ballot count in undecided Senate primary

Posted at: 09/18/2012 4:09 PM | Updated at: 09/18/2012 5:24 PM
By: Mark Mulholland

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BALLSTON SPA - The voters have spoken. Now this race is in the hands of the attorneys.

Kathy Marchione, the long-time Saratoga County Clerk, and Senator Roy McDonald, the incumbent, were separated by just 122 votes after election night votes were tallied.

But there are roughly 1,000 absentees to be counted and Tuesday morning a judge decided how it will happen.

Here are the dates when the votes will be pored over by attorneys representing both campaigns:

Thursday the 20th, they'll count in Rensselaer and Washington counties. Then, next Monday the 24th, they'll canvass the votes in Saratoga and Columbia counties.

It's not a glamorous process. As we saw in the 2009 Special Election for Congress, attorneys huddle around a table and peruse each ballot.

"It's a sort of mundane and tedious process, frankly," said Jeff Buley, Attorney for McDonald Campaign

If there are ballots they can't agree on, a judge will decide.

Marchione's attorney says he expects his client's lead to grow when the absentees are counted.

"We think the absentee voters are generally going to be more conservative," said Michael Cuevas, attorney for the Marchione campaign. "Absentee voters are likely to have been less influenced by the ads that were run late in the campaign so we have reason to believe they would go our way."

"We're confident that we have a lot of absentee votes that are going to be canvassed for Senator McDonald," said Jeff Buley, attorney for McDonald. "He did an aggressive absentee ballot campaign and we're optimistic we can overcome our deficit."

Supreme Court Justice Robert Chauvin, the judge who ruled on the dates for the canvassing has recused himself at Senator McDonald's request because he was the Halfmoon Town Attorney while Marchione was Town Supervisor.

A new judge will be assigned.

Marchione has a three-member legal team, including former Congressman John Sweeney who played a key role in the counting of ballots in the 2000 presidential election.