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Onondaga County will delay the counting of absentee ballots from Nov. 9 to Nov. 10 after multiple candidates, including Rep. John Katko (R-Camillus), filed lawsuits for greater oversight of the counting process.

Katko filed a lawsuit on Thursday asking a judge to oversee the count of nearly 70,000 absentee ballots in the race against Democrat Dana Balter to represent New York’s 24th Congressional District.  He joined other Democratic and Republican candidates from the area, including State Sen. Rachel May (D- Syracuse) in filing similar lawsuits.

Now, the Onondaga County Board of Elections will wait an additional day before it starts counting absentee ballots due to a court stipulation, the board announced on Friday. The board of elections will post nightly updates on the ballot count once it begins tallying votes.

Dustin Czarny, commissioner of the Onondaga County Board of Elections, said via Twitter that he’s glad the board of elections was able to reach an agreement that would prevent a significant delay in processing the mail-in ballots. The specifics of the agreement referenced in Czarny’s tweet are currently unclear.

“I feel confident we will start the absentee count on Tuesday and finish in a short amount of time,” Czarny said.

The specifics of the agreement referenced in Czarny’s tweet are currently unclear.

Katko, a three-time incumbent, declared victory over Balter on Tuesday night, when he was leading by about 20 percentage points after all in-person votes from Election Day and the early voting period had been counted. Balter’s campaign, though, issued a statement declining to concede until all absentee votes had been counted.

The incumbent totaled 155,830 votes after all ballots cast in-person before and on Election Day had been counted. Balter received 100,728 votes. The number of ballots that Democrats returned in the 24th Congressional District would likely not surpass Katko’s existing lead over Balter.

Published on November 6, 2020 at 1:41 pm

Contact Chris: cjhippen@syr.edu