Posted on 11/12/2009 4:25:08 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
GOUVERNEUR, NY - Despite the fact that Bill Owens has already been sworn-in and has voted on crucial legislation in the House of Representatives, he may not have actually won the NY-23 Congressional Special Election.
Several errors were made during the initial vote counts. Over 2,000 votes for contender Doug Hoffman were not counted in the preliminary results, narrowing the current vote gap to less than 3,000 votes between Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Doug Hoffman.
The errors were discovered during the standard vote recanvas that has been underway since November 4th. The largest error occurred in Oswego County where the vote recanvas found a discrepancy of more than 1,200 votes in Doug Hoffman's favor. Another error, in Jefferson County contributed an additional 700 votes in Hoffman's favor during the recount.
The election was close enough even on election night that the New York State Board of Elections was unable to present a "clear decision" in the race according to John Conklin, Communications Director for the department. He said that the Board sent a letter to the Clerk of the House of Representatives in Washington indicating that they could not yet determine a winner and could therefore not certify the election until after the recanvas and absentee ballot count. Those final numbers will not be available until at least mid-December.
Nancy Pelosi was only able to legally swear-in Bill Owens because Doug Hoffman had conceded the election, indicating that he did not contest the initial, and now shown erroneous, results, something he may not have done if he had been aware of how close the election was.
Mr. Hoffman told the Gouverneur Times that he felt at the time that he "was being a good sport" in doing so. With 93% of the polls in and counted and a margin of over 5,000 votes in favor of Owens, he felt he had lost the election. He now says that "while hindsight is 20/20, if I had known it was that close, I probably would have waited."
Bill Owens was sworn in 2 days later and proceeded to vote in favor of Pelosi's health care bill the following day. While Mr. Hoffman feels that deliberately contesting the results of the election to prevent Owens' deciding vote in the Health Care bill would "not have been very sportsmanlike," and that he, personally, would not like to see a politician manipulate events in that manner, he also indicated that the good of the American people and the citizens of the 23rd district would have weighed in on that decision as well.
As it stands now, Bill Owens may be in Washington and voting the Pelosi Party line but when the vote is certified he may be ousted. The state Board of Elections indicated that "...all ballots will be counted, and if the result changes, Owens will have to be removed." Concession speech or not, if the voters in the 23rd District elected Doug Hoffman and not Bill Owens, then Hoffman will be the Representative.
There are currently over 10,000 uncounted absentee ballots, many of which were in the military where a strongly conservative bias exists. Given the narrow margin of Owens' lead at this time, it's entirely possible that this race could still swing for Hoffman.
Sources indicate that the Democrats would not have had the votes to pass the Health bill if Owens had not been sworn-in and pledged his support for it. Several other Representatives have indicated that they would not have cast their votes in favor of the bill if they were not certain that it had the votes to win.
Sorry...Political Cheating is a one way street....
They cheat and then They win....
it will never work the other way arround....
Nope. They don’t have liberal “bias” - they “support liberal principles.”
hmmm. how do you like that? what in the world could've happened there?
For the record i said here in FR that the outcome of that election stunk to high heaven.
It may turn out that Hoffman is still the loser. But it points out something else going on and i doubt that is an isolated incident.
Am i way off or was the Bush/Gore recount settled by a number just over 1000 votes?
This should have been a slam dunk for Hoffman and he did his job.
I blame RINOs - Newt, Dede and NY-23 local GOP RINO party hacks. Thanks Newt.
But please keep in mind that this was a Special Election. There will be a regular Election for this race in 2010. As long as the Democrat loses in THAT election, the claims and bragging rights disappear on the spot. Let's keep our eye on the ball, here.
Congressman Billybob
We need to get off the good sportsmanship trip! We’ve got to fight tooth and nail, every inch of the way.
Since he was not duly elected by the people Owens vote for ObamaCare should be null and void...
Agreed! Just wrong! Concession speech or no, count the GD votes!
Why not?
If Hoffman is ultimately shown to be the winner and replaces Owens as the rep from that district, does that invalidate any votes Owens cast while he was a "representative"?
‘...he “was being a good sport” ...’
It’s not a sport. It’s a winner take all death match, at least in the long run.
Heck yeah! Until this, I was sort of hoping Newt would run in 2012. But this was either the biggest miscalculation ever or he tipped his hand about his real feelings: party over principle. Either way, he is dead to me.
See my posts # 38 and # 49.
Agreed -- but we have momentum from NJ and VA. This would add more momentum and will pull a seat out from under the botoxed-one.
The best thing you can see from your enemy is fear in his eyes.
I’m not Billybob, but the answer is “no.” Representatives have been excluded after casting not one, but dozens or perhaos hundreds of votes, on many occasions—it was fairly common in the 19th century, when election contests sometimes lasted over a year and successful challengers would serve only a few months of the two-year term.
This lack of fight in the end result unfortunately shows a weakness in Hoffman that he needs to overcome immediately if he wants to be a force in future politics, if it's not too late already.
The Fascicrats play to defeat.
I Owens vote does not count, can Cao change his vote?
Whether that argument is legitimate under the Constitution will not matter. That's because the Constitution commits the judging of House election results to the House itself.
Wish I could give you a better answer, but that's the correct answer.
Congressman Billybob
Owens was selected not elected!
Besides that, there is a pretty credible story circulating that Pelosi “allowed” a number of blue dogs to vote “no” in order to give them political cover for 2010. The Dhimmis probably had a fairly good cushion on that vote, so the importance of this Hoffman vote shouldn’t be exagerated.
Still and all, I’d love to see the result reversed just to be able to imagine blood shooting out of the eyes of the Dhimmi leadership.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.