BOE Certifies Katz As Democratic Nominee For Queens DA

QUEENS, NY — The results are in. The NYC Board of Elections has officially certified Queens Borough President Melinda Katz as the winner of the dramatic Queens district attorney Democratic primary.

Katz secured the nomination with a 60-vote lead over public defender Tiffany Cabán, after election board staffers spent two weeks recounting more than 90,000 ballots by hand.

"This is a great day for the people of Queens, who have waited patiently for the long recount process to conclude," Katz said in a statement Monday.

Still, the race isn't over.

Cabán's campaign is waging a court battle over more than 100 ballots that were invalidated during the recount or were never counted for such reasons as the voter went to the wrong polling site or didn't properly fill out an affidavit oath form when casting a provisional vote.

For at least some of those uncounted ballots, no one knows who the voter chose.

The number of ballots under contention is at least double the margin that now separates Katz and Cabán, according to a Cabán campaign source.

The Katz campaign has so far declined to explicitly say whether they support Cabán's legal challenge, though Katz's statement Monday hints at the matter.

"While it is everyone's right to avail themselves of the judicial process, I urge all participants in this hard-fought election to come together and join me in beginning the hard work of reforming the criminal justice system in Queens," Katz said.

Cabán, an insurgent candidate backed by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, declared victory the night of the primary election with a lead of just over 1,000 votes.

Then a count of absentee and affidavit ballots put Katz ahead by a handful of votes, and she claimed the nomination. Her lead of less than 0.5 percent of the vote triggered an automatic recount.

Katz on Monday evening will host a victory party — which the campaign deemed "an appreciation party" — to thank her supporters and volunteers.

Two days later, on July 31, campaign lawyers head to a Queens courtroom to kick off the legal battle.