The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

The Star-Gazette is reporting that the Kuhl and Massa campaigns have agreed to let votes be counted "as they would in any other race".

A re-canvass of machines has not altered the vote count, and Monroe will count absentee ballots this afternoon.

The man accused of stealing Kuhl, McCain and Cub Scout signs in Victor has been charged with fifth-degree possession of stolen property, which is a misdemeanor. According to the Democrat & Chronicle, his sign haul was worth $43.20. He's out on his own recognizance.

Reader Elmer sends today's Corning Leader story documenting yesterday's reversal of the convictions of five protesters who occupied Randy Kuhl's Bath office in August, 2007. Money quote:

[Judge Marianne] Furfure ruled Kuhl’s office was the public office of an elected official with no signs or public access restrictions. In addition, the trespass did not meet the standard for the misdemeanor charges because it did not occur in an area “fenced or otherwise enclosed ... to exclude intruders,” she said.

Attorney Ray Schlather, the legal advisor for the protesters, said the push by the county District Attorney’s office to make the offense “a fingerprintable crime” showed a lack of judgment and allowed the protesters to turn the charges into political theater.

“This should never gone before a jury,” Schlather said. “That lack of good judgment effectively played into the protesters’ hands.”

Readers might recall that a similar protest at Kuhl's Fairport office was defused when a clever policeman invited the protesters outside and locked the door behind them. If the Bath PD and Steuben County prosecutor had exercised the same good judgment, Steuben County taxpayers would have been spared the tens of thousands of dollars it cost to litigate this innocuous little sit-in.

Sean Carroll of 13-WHAM sent over the court order [pdf] governing the re-canvass of voting machines and canvass of absentee ballots. Here are some highlights:

• Absentee ballot counts start in Monroe County today. Counts start in other counties on the 17th.
• Re-canvass of voting machines will be attended by representatives of both campaigns, as well as representatives from the Board of Elections.
• Absentee ballots in other counties may be organized prior to Monday's count. I assume this means that the counts will go quickly once they start. Syracuse News 10 reports that Chemung and Steuben Counties will start organizing ballots today.
• "The campaigns are not to send rabid, bitter, untrained, unsophisticated partisans to participate in this process."

Since the counts start in Monroe today, if absentee ballots in Monroe are overwhelmingly cast for Massa, it's possible that Kuhl might concede to the inevitable today. In 2006, Massa conceded before all the absentee ballots were counted.

Update: Reader Pystew says Yates will be done by Monday, also.

WETM reports that the absentee ballot count in the 29th will start tomorrow, which is earlier than the last reported date of next Monday, the 17th.

Exile at The Albany Project reports that an audit of Randy Kuhl's 2004 campaign by the Federal Election Commission found some irregularities. From a scan of the audit, it looks like Kuhl's State Senate campaign committee was working as his Congressional committee for a while, and those in-kind donations weren't correctly accounted for. The FEC says that the total of mis-stated contributions is about $118K.

It's not clear to me what the Kuhl campaign owes because of the mis-statement. Exile thinks they owe the whole $118K, because the report says so. Duh. (Updated)

The Star-Gazette has Eric Massa's schedule for today. He's in Schuyler County, Canandaigua, Elmira and Bath.

Happy Veterans Day to all the Veterans reading this.

13-WHAM's Sean Carroll posts his reflection on covering the 29th for the last four years. Sean notes that the combined difference between the 2006 and 2008 races was less than 2,000 votes.

Sean wonders if there will be a Massa/Kuhl III. I never got the impression that Randy Kuhl enjoyed fundraising or campaigning. A rematch by Kuhl would require a much bigger fundraising effort, since he wouldn't be able to count on as many "automatic" PAC donations running as a challenger. I just don't see a Kuhl challenge in 2010.

David Kubissa at the Star-Gazette sees hostility in Massa's recent fundraising letter.

The Massa campaign's latest fundraising letter makes the following claim:

Teams of lawyers representing Kuhl have already descended upon our district, and you can bet your last dollar that they will challenge every vote they can that was cast for Eric. With Kuhl's corporate backers, he has all the funds he needs to challenge the votes of thousands of our friends and neighbors. We need to fight to make sure that EVERY vote gets counted accurately and fairly, but to do that, we need your help.

(Emphasis in original.)

It might be worth comparing Massa's situation to that of a much closer race, the Minnesota Senate race. In that race, unlike this one, there's going to be a recount. Because Minnesota uses optical scan ballots, every original ballot will be re-scanned, and any rejected ballots will be hand-examined. That race has thousands of "undervotes", where the voter marked the ballot for President but not for Senator. That means that thousands of ballots may be disputed, and both sides will be able to argue about marks made in the wrong place on each of those ballots.

In this race, for better or worse, any voter mistakes by voters who used the lever voting machines can't be recovered. The only mistakes with regular (non-absentee) votes that could sink Massa's boat are multiple major errors by election workers who transcribed the tallies from the election machines, which is extremely unlikely.

The other possible route to a Kuhl victory is an unprecedented swing in absentee votes. It's hard to see how Kuhl can swing 4,400 votes out of the 20,000 absentee ballots cast. And I definitely don't see how Kuhl's team of lawyers will sway the tally appreciably. Accepted wisdom on voting errors is that the error rate is 1% or less. This means that something under 200 absentee ballots will be disputed. Even if Kuhl's crack attorneys push all of those votes into his total, he still isn't going to win the election.

Massa supporters may well believe that it's critical that Massa have the best possible legal representation, and Massa might be able to raise money based on that belief. But even if Kuhl has resurrected Clarence Darrow, I doubt that he'll be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Eric Massa is visiting a Brighton Middle School today to discuss what it means to be a Veteran.