The race to decide the next Public Works Commissioner in Saratoga Springs remains in limbo after a long day in court Friday.
Saratoga County State Supreme Court Judge James Walsh heard arguments over more than 100 contested votes for the January special election to decide who will lead the city’s second-largest department through the end of the year.
Republican Planning Board chair Chuck Marshall received 1,760 votes. He was the only name on the ballot. At the beginning of court attorneys confirmed that interim commissioner Hank Kuczynski, a Democrat who mounted a last-minute write-in campaign, earned 1,663 uncontested votes.
Kuczynski was appointed to the role in October after his predecessor Jason Golub left the post in August. He launched his write-in effort after a dispute over the election’s timeline ended up in court. City Democrats failed to nominate any candidate and Judge Walsh ruled the election must move forward with only one official candidate.
There are 106 contested ballot to be reviewed by Judge Walsh. Attorneys were unable to break them up into categories. More than 60 of those objections were stipulated to have been caused by a voter writing “Democrat” or “D” on the ballot.
Sarah Burger is representing Kuczynski in the case. She argued that voter intent is at the core of the issue.
“Because a voter must, contrary to what they needed to do to vote for Charles Marshall, write words on the ballot to express their intent to cast a vote for Mr. Kuczynski. As of today, as was discussed, there are 106 disputed ballots. The overwhelming majority of those ballots contain words that clearly contain the intent of the voter to vote for Hank Kuczynski. It is our position that the intent of those voters should be honored because that is both reasonable and just. To not honor that intent by not counting those votes, we believe, violates New York election laws and supporting regulations as well as prior precedent considering intent going back 50 years in New York State,” said Burger.
Matthew Clyne, a former Albany County elections commissioner, is representing Marshall. He argued the court should be concerned with so-called legislative intent.
“The legislature is clear that markings, words, outside the appropriate voting squares void the ballot. And in this case as the court will see during the course of this proceeding the voters in many cases intentionally wrote extraneous matter outside the box that had been designated as the one appropriate for a write-in,” said Clyne.
Questions remain about 25 undervotes and up to 40 overseas military ballots. Depending on the margin following Walsh’s decision counting those votes may be solely academic.
Following court, Burger said it’s unclear whether further legal appeals will be necessary.
“We presented our case and got into evidence just about everything that we needed to. I think we got in what we needed to an a little bit of what we wanted to and from there we’ll submit briefs. I think this will come down to legal arguments about what we see and what we saw on the ballots,” said Burger.
Attorneys representing both parties and the elections commissioners must submit briefs to Judge Walsh by Monday.
