Supervisor race outcome won’t be known until at least Sept. 21

With a mere 29-vote spread in yesterday’s Republican primary election for town supervisor, the winner in the race won’t be known for at least another 10 days.

That’s because the county board of elections, pursuant to state law, must first recanvass the voting machine ballots cast in yesterday’s primary election and then count the paper ballots on hand, including absentee ballots and affidavit ballots.

The recanvass will begin no sooner than Monday, Sept. 21, election commissioner Nicholas LaLota said today.

Until at least then, Councilwoman Jodi Giglio, who got 1,085 machine-counted votes yesterday, and Supervisor Sean Walter, who got 1,056, won’t know for sure who will be the Republican standard-bearer in the November general election.

So far, 110 absentee ballots have been received by the Suffolk County Board of Elections. Another 60 can still come in; LaLota said 170 absentee ballots were mailed out to Riverhead Republican voters who applied for them. If returned by mail, they have until Sept. 17 to arrive at the board of elections, pursuant to state election law; and they must be postmarked on or before Sept. 9.

In addition, there are “up to 52 Republican affidavit ballots” at the board of elections following yesterday’s polling. At this point, LaLota said, there’s no way of knowing how many of those 52 affidavit ballots are Republican ballots, since there were also Conservative, Independence and Green party primary elections yesterday; some portion of those 52 affidavit ballots could be ballots cast in other primaries. Affidavit ballots are those cast by voters who can’t vote by machine for some reason, either because their names did not appear in the roll book or because of a machine malfunction.

The addition of as many as 222 more ballots can obviously tip the scales either way in such a narrow race. Giglio, though ahead in the machine vote 50.6 percent to Walter’s 49.25 percent, was careful not to declare victory last night. Walter said he would not concede until after a recount and paper ballots were counted.

The board of elections does not recount every vote cast on every machine, however. It conducts a machine audit, sampling only a portion — about 6 percent — of the votes cast by machine and compares them to the paper ballots. If the machine count is accurate the election result if certified. If it’s not, the audit is expanded to a larger portion of the total machine votes cast and the process is repeated.

“The machines have been very accurate,” said Roseann Weis, an assistant to LaLota.

The first year the optical scanner machines were used in Suffolk, there was an excruciatingly close race in the First Congressional District, where incumbent Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) was eventually declared the winner over Randy Altschuler (R-St. James). In that race, human error and the use of new voting machines resulted in discrepancies between election night printouts and direct downloads from the machines’ computers after they had been returned to the board of elections later that week.

There has not been such a problem on a wide scale in any election since.

The supervisor candidates in the party primary — and the Democrat waiting in the wings to take either or both of them on — will have to wait and wonder.

Regardless of the outcome, it appears there will be three-way race for supervisor in November.

Walter has the Conservative Party line in November and reiterated this morning that he’s staying in the race even if the Republican primary ends in Giglio’s favor.

Noting that the party convention was decided for Giglio by half-point in a weighted vote does eventually go to Giglio and the primary vote also ending in a virtual dead heat, Walter says he has a solid base of support.

“I am certain there are Democrats who would support me over Mr. Coates,” he said, referring to his one-time consultant, Anthony Coates, who is the Democratic nominee.

Giglio floated the same speculation. “People see Tony Coates and Sean Walter as the same person, as they should. People who are not happy with Sean are not going to vote for Tony. They’re going to support me,” she said.

Coates believes a three-way race will work to his advantage, splitting the Republican-Conservative vote between Walter and Giglio.

“Most people know it’s time to leave the Jodi and Sean show in the past,” Coates said this morning. “Riverhead needs a fresh start.”

Walter acknowledges his role might be that of spoiler, but maintains he’s in it to win.

Giglio, meanwhile, says Walter will drop out if he loses the GOP primary because he has already “cut a deal” with the Conservative Party. He will accept a judgeship as part of the deal, Giglio said.

Walter denies that accusation outright.

“Ain’t happening,” he said. “The Republicans would have to be involved. Do you think John Jay LaValle is going to offer me Gail Prudenti’s position?” he asked, referring to the retiring State Supreme Court justice. “If that happened, seriously I would consider it,” he said, laughing. “But it ain’t happening.”

“There is nothing that could motivate me to get off the Conservative line,” he said.

If Walter should come out on top in the primary, Giglio is on the November ballot on the Independence line. Since she is not a lawyer, she can’t run for judge and that is the only way her name could come off the general election ballot, she said.

“We’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” she said.