Closest council race still in doubt

Robert Cornegy Jr. (left) leads Kristen John Foy by 68 votes.

The closest City Council race in the five boroughs is going to a recount.

Robert Cornegy Jr. leads Kirsten John Foy by only 68 votes — a minuscule .47% — in their battle to replace outgoing Councilman Albert Vann in central Brooklyn. A margin of victory of less than a half a percentage point triggers an automatic recount of all the paper ballots.

The lever machines, which registered a 94-vote gap on Primary Night, have already been recanvassed and will be rechecked one more time. The recount also applies to the more than 1,000 paper ballots that have already been counted once in the contest for the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights seat.

Cornegy called it “unfortunate that we all have to wait just a little bit longer” for official results, but remained confident he’d win.

Foy’s campaign has complained of Board of Elections miscues over the handling of the count since the results first rolled in. The campaign charges the board twice lost Foy and his wife’s paper ballots, wrongly disqualified hundreds of ballots, and that some voting machines were not included in the original count.

“What is clear is that the more paper ballots that were counted, the more votes Kirsten John Foy received towards further narrowing the margin,” Foy’s campaign manager Tyquana Henderson-Parsons said in a statement. “We are examining the various irregularities.”

Elections spokeswoman Valerie Vasquez said votes tossed in the initial count could be reevaluated during the recount. She had no timetable for the count’s completion or cost.

Such a close race is unprecedented in the district, which has become an important epicenter in black politics, said Lupe Todd, a political consultant.

“What this demonstrates is the importance of one person, one vote because every vote in this race has had an impact,” she said.

Vann and Assemblywoman Annette Robinson had endorsed Cornegy, a district leader and legislative analyst.

Foy, a former aide to the Public Advocate’s office, raised more money than any of the other four candidates in the field. He was also backed by Jobs for NY, a controversial real estate group that paid for several mailings supporting his candidacy.

The recount will begin Thursday.

sgoldstein@nydailynews.com

Yahoo Local News – New York Daily News

http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=14516

via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info