Recount Ended: Olechowski +23

An Olechowski source informs me - what is already widely known - that that the recount finished yesterday, a month after the elections, with Chris Olechowski ahead by 23 votes.

Yossi Gestetner, who wrote at one point (8:41) that my report about a mistake that pushed Restler in the lead for a short while is "out of thin air," haven't ran out of air yet. He's pinning his hopes on a Restler legal challenge. As I already pointed out, part of the fraud they have accused point to fraud committed by the Restler camp, and the only documented fraud with a clear address that is now public was clearly committed by the Restler camp.

It will be very hard to succeed to have an election redo, but it is possible. Actually, Williamsburg was the place of the only congressional primary redo that brilliant election lawyer Marty Connor recalls. In that election, the Hasidic voters were a deciding factor, and their candidate, incumbent John Rooney, survived a challenge from the left by Albert Lowenstein for a redistricted seat. Rooney fared much stronger in the redo than in the first round.

UPDATE: My blogger-mentor Gatemouth is pointing to another Williamsburgh had another election redo in 1980, between Harvey Sterzlin and Roger Green. This was for a state legislature seat, and the district included parts of the Hasidic area. Interestingly, in that case the court ordered twice to redo the election. Green won the first and last, while Sterzling won the middle.

BTW, Connor was the first candidate where the 2 Hasidic Williamsburg faction earnestly fought each other. He will now represent Restler's case against his former supporters. Looks like that Hakoras Ha-Tov is only a one way street. Someone who knows him well, defended him that "Zalis have now proven what they needed to prove, and the actual result doesn't really matter."

Still, a redo is very rare, even when the results are clearly invalidated. Marty Connor, Restler's lawyer, recently said that the "court standards is such that you have to find five or six or seven times the number of irregularities as the margin," but when the accusation is about fraud it is easier. You can listen to Connor here. It's interesting that Connor calls there just to use the memory sticks of the voting machines when counting the votes. If this would have happened in the current race, the results would for quite a while have Restler as winner, and in case it would have been with over an 0.5 percent the mistake could have been missed entirely. This proves that the machines aren't perfect. The discrapency actually was between two machine counts.

Russel Gallo, the republican candidate for the 45th assembly district, prove in court that he lost the independent line to Ben Axelrod because of the Board of Elections mishaps, but the court still refused a redo because it is to close to the general elections (though, they could have delayed it and called for a special election). The cases are different, but to redo an election is very uncommon, especially when their is direct proof of fraud against a Restler operative.

CORRECTION: Gallo haven't proven that he would have won, according to Gatemouth. I haven't really followed the case.

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