Queens district attorney candidate Tiffany Caban speaks to reporters outside her polling place in the Queens borough of New York on June 25, 2019. AP Photo: Seth Wenig

Tiffany Cabán's campaign is targeting more than 100 affidavit ballots it says were wrongly invalidated by city Board of Elections officials, as the career public defender trailed Queens Borough president Melinda Katz by 16 votes in the Queens district attorney primary race ahead of an automatic recount this week.

The campaign said Monday that 114 ballots from Queens County Democratic voters had been discarded because they did not state the voter's party affiliation. According to the campaign, poll workers are required under New York state law to ensure that voters include party affiliation on affidavit ballots, and failure to restore legitimate ballots would amount to voter disenfranchisement.

Cabán's camp said that it would continue to review discarded ballots and that the total number could grow in the coming weeks if other instances of supposedly improper invalidation became apparent.

“We will also be closely monitoring the hand recount, which could yield hundreds of new votes improperly read by machine scanners,” campaign spokeswoman Monica Klein said in a statement. “When every valid vote is counted, we are confident that we will win.”

Cabán claimed victory on election night last month as she held a nearly 1,100 vote lead with absentee and affidavit ballots uncounted. Katz, for her part, claimed she was the winner after the count of outstanding ballots put her in a razor-thin lead.

Attorneys from both sides were expected to appear Tuesday morning in Queens County Supreme Court for initial proceedings regarding the invalidated ballots.

Matthew Rey, a spokesman for Katz' campaign, said Monday that it would be up to the court to decide whether to count all or none of the disputed ballots.

“We believe that every valid vote cast should count,” Rey said.

Katz, who has served as borough president since 2014, declared victory last week after a review of the uncounted paper ballots pushed her slightly ahead of Cabán, who had led by 1,100 votes. As of Monday, just 16 votes separated the two heading into a manual recount, which occurs within a .5% margin of the overall vote.

“It is a narrow margin, but it's a margin of victory nonetheless,” the spokesman said. “The recount process is mandatory, and it will confirm Melinda Katz as the Democratic nominee.”

The official recount was scheduled to begin 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Queens County Board of Elections machine facility, with the unpacking and marking of ballots by election district. Actual counting was expected to begin Wednesday and could take anywhere from one to three weeks, Cabán's campaign said.

Cabán's team is also eyeing between 300 and 400 additional votes that were not recognized by voting machines but could be reflected in the recount. The campaign said it was not sure which way those votes would fall, though they could prove decisive to the election.

Over the past week, her campaign has cited close ties between the local officials and the Queens Democratic party as potentially raising conflicts of interest with the Board of Elections and the local courts. However, the campaign said it had not seen any evidence of fraudulent activity on the part of the BOE.

Rey responded Monday by calling those allegations “irresponsible” and “corrosive to the Democratic process.

“Every fair-minded, neutral observer has agreed there has been no foul play, and these allegations are reprehensible,” he said.

Cabán's camp has also pointed to pending state legislation it said would make it harder to disqualify affidavit ballots for missing non-pertinent information, such as party affiliation. The bill, which has cleared both the Assembly and the Senate, has not yet been forwarded to Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his signature.

Because the legislation originated in the Assembly, it falls to Speaker Carl Heastie, D-Bronx, to sent the legislation along to Cuomo, who would have 10 days to act before the bill becomes law.

Cabán's campaign believes the legislation, if approved, would take effect immediately and could impact whether the disputed ballots are counted in the Queens DA race.

Read More:

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