Buzi Oppencohen?: Oppenheimer and Cohen in Dead Heat
Have you met your new State Senator Buzi Oppencohen?
Incumbent Democrat Suzi Oppenheimer is fighting for her political life in a 50-50 dead heat with Republican challenger Bob Cohen.
As of 6:45am Tuesday morning with 66,363 votes reported, Oppenheimer holds a 180 vote lead. Stay tuned and watch the results come in over at the Westchester Board of Elections:
Office SENATORIAL DISTRICT 37
PARTY 227 Districts out of 281 Reporting (80)% Votes Percent
0 Absentee Votes Cast
DEM SUZI OPPENHEIMER 31,761 48%
WOR SUZI OPPENHEIMER 1,511 2%
SUZI OPPENHEIMER Totals 33,272 50%
REP BOB COHEN 29,077 44%
IND BOB COHEN 1,725 3%
CON BOB COHEN 2,290 3%
BOB COHEN Totals 33,092 50%
Office Totals 66,364 100%
Just checked the westchester county board of elections site and note that the posted figures are unchanged from Tuesday; e.g., Oppenheimer leads Cohen by 180 votes. However, on NY Public Radio this morning, I heard a report that Oppenheimer was up by about 500 votes. Anybody know if more ballots have been counted or updated totals released?
My understanding was that a judge ruled that no additional ballots be counted, and no further action taken, until the 9th, when the court could supervise the process of determining the number of votes.
It’s not surprising that rumors and the media are murddying up the waters. “Let every vote count” is only heard when it favors the party in power. Just ask any sailor, soldier, airman or marine from New York if they had a chance to vote in this election. (Answer: No, they didn’t, b/c they weren’t provided with ballots… another sterling example of government efficiency. Yes, you can get your a$$ shot off in Afghanistan protecting America, but you can’t be trusted to decide who your representative should be).
Rather pathetic to see the process in action in New York now, where there were only 2 sleeves in my district to keep the ballots “confidential” at the polls. This meant waiting for someone else to finish filling out their ballot before the sleeve was handed off to the next-in-line.
And what happened up in Bridgeport, where they ran out of ballots? Some genious copied a bunch of ballots to be used after the official closing time. Is it any wonder that the public is simply disgusted with government?
When I voted, I asked if I could get a receipt from those wonderful new electronic scanning machines to see how my vote was recorded, and was told there was no need for it, that they’re “foolproof”. Puh-leeze! Everyone knows that any electronic device can be manipulated very easily by software engineers. While I vote in every election, I have a very real fear that this time, highly paid lawyers will determine who my state senator will be for the next term.
And now the Journal News is showing Suzi up by almost 500 votes – See today’s column by Phil Reisman who says the ballot difference is 466. What gives?
Matt, what did you plan to do with that receipt? What would it prove?
I guess if the results came out and nobody voted for your candidate, you could cry ‘foul!’, but absent that, how would it come in handy?
Taken alone, the receipt would give me some solace that the machine actually recorded my vote properly. But taken with a host of other receipts, it would verify that the numbers of votes cast were properly recorded and reported at the district level. Imagine a citizen’s watchdog group located just outside the polling place, where voters could voluntarily provide their voting receipts to the watchdog group, who could then easily scan these receipts as a check against the official machines. That would provide some comfort that things were on the up and up – If 300 voters for candidate X had their receipts scanned, and the official tally was 250 votes for candidate X, you know the machine’s been manipulated.
And before you say that technology would be too complex and subject to fraud and chicanery, realize that the state has already managed to put together a system where millions of receipts are issued every day, identifying where all these transaction occured, when they occured, each with a unique identifier, and recording a series of numbers for the individual purchase. The state runs the Lotto business, and makes damn sure that it can’t be tampered with. Why can’t they use the same technology for voting? It’s because the politicians would then have no chance of manipulating the voting results, that’s why.
Isn’t it “interesting” that when these recounts occur, it’s almost always the Democrat who wins. Think Al Franken, for example. The Democrats even tried to steal the 2000 Presidential Election from the voters – what’s a mere state senator’s seat?
I’m with you Matt. That makes good sense.
After all, we live in a state that now gives us stories like these –
“Parents just won’t understand”
https://bit.ly/deuGeG
“Mulgrew’s 12000 secrets”
https://bit.ly/9snYEg
At last the answer to my question. The url Ray originally posted is to a Westchester County BoE page that’s not being updated. To get the “current” stats, go to
https://www.westchestergov.com/boe99/
You’ll have to pick “SD” and 37th district. Right now, Suzi has 40,527 and Bob has 40,023; a 504 vote difference.
As of right now, Suzi is shown with