Queens DA Vote Recount Kicks Off As Campaigns Spar

MIDDLE VILLAGE, QUEENS — The manual recount of the results in the Democratic primary for Queens district attorney kicked off Monday in Middle Village as Melinda Katz leads Tiffany Cabán by just 16 votes and both campaigns call for "every valid vote" to be counted.

The recount will include ballots cast the day of the election June 25, absentee ballots and affidavit ballots. It will also add to the tally 359 new ballots not counted by vote-scanning machines because voters didn’t properly bubble in their selection, according to elections officials.

Tensions have flared in the weeks since the election. Katz’s campaign and the Queens County Democratic Party, which endorsed her, have accused the Cabán campaign and supporters of spreading misinformation about the vote count.

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"The Cabán camp has worked to undermine faith in the electoral system since Election Night, and we trust that it will not attempt to do so as this crucial process begins," Katz campaign adviser Matthew Rey said in a statement.

Cabán, a public defender endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has pushed back on that rhetoric. She says her campaign has made no allegations of fraud and is only calling for valid votes to be counted.

Her legal team, led by prominent election lawyer Jerry Goldfeder, has filed suit in Queens County Supreme Court in an effort to count 114 affidavit ballots missing information like party affiliation, which the NYC Board of Elections requires to count the vote.

A judge will decide the fate of those ballots if the vote margin remains close after the recount.

"Our team is prepared to move ahead in court to restore the ballots of dozens of eligible Democratic voters who are at risk of being disenfranchised," Cabán campaign spokesman Daniel Lumer said in a statement.

"It's disappointing that the Katz campaign has repeatedly lied about these efforts while refusing to agree in court that every legitimate vote must be counted," he added.

A manual recount is a meticulous process. Counting all the 90,000-some ballots cast in the primary is expected to take 15 days of counting, or three weeks, according to elections board spokeswoman Valerie Vasquez.

She said the recount team may work six days a week — Monday through Saturday — but that the schedule is not yet final.

Four people man each recount table; a Democrat and a Republican from the NYC Board of Elections pull out ballots by assembly district, conclude who the voter chose, then show the ballot to observers from the Katz and Cabán campaigns.

NYC Board of Elections staffers float around the room to oversee the process and render a decision on any disputed ballots. Each campaign’s lawyers can formally object to the decision, and then the ballot goes into a folder marked "objected ballots" for later review.

State Sens. Michael Gianaris, Jessica Ramos and James Sanders Jr. and City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer convened in Middle Village just before the start of the recount in a show of support for Cabán.

While their calls to count every "valid" vote echoed statements made last week by Katz supporters in Forest Hills, the opposing campaigns have butted heads when it comes to counting affidavit ballots.

The term affidavit ballot refers to provisional votes cast when voters encounter an issue with their registration at the polls. Voters fill out their ballot and an affidavit oath form, which asks voters their reason for using an affidavit ballot, their party enrollment and other personal information.

Drama is no newcomer to this race. Cabán claimed victory the night of the election with a lead of just over 1,000 votes. Then a count of absentee and affidavit ballots put Katz, the Queens borough president, ahead by a handful of votes, prompting her to claim the nomination.