Martins leads Johnson by 451 votes, contest goes to court

Election workers finished counting paper ballots Friday morning in the Seventh Senate District in Nassau, and both political parties agreed that Republican challenger Jack Martins was ahead by 451 votes with the contest headed for another court hearing.

Justice Ira Warshawsky has scheduled a rare Saturday session in state Supreme Court in Mineola to decide whether to certify the results, or to take other steps, such as ordering a further examination of the voting machines and the paper ballots stored inside.

If the judge certifies the election, the Republicans will have regained control of the state Senate, 32-30.

Attorney Steven Schlesinger, representing incumbent Democrat Craig Johnson, plans to push for a hand count of all 85,000 ballots cast in the race in an attempt to unearth more votes that may have been missed by the new optical scan voting machines.

Schlesinger said outside court that enough machines had failed to warrant a hand count, but Republican attorney John Ryan said all of the problems lent themselves to rational explanations which would be laid out for the judge in a final report Friday.

That report will detail the Board of Election's examination of the actual ballots in each of the 32 sample machines and compare the results to the machine-generated tape of the results on election night.

Meanwhile in Suffolk County, elections officials were expected Friday to open 70 previously contested paper ballots in the close race between Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop and his Republican challenger, Randy Altschuler.

Bishop holds a 277-vote edge, but more than 1,400 paper ballots remain to be counted.