The Monroe County Board of Elections has certified this year’s elections. But there is one race that will still need to be recounted.
After the absentee and affidavit ballots were counted earlier this week, the Board of Elections workers had to finish with a hand-recount of a relatively small number of ballots, which they did.
Democratic Elections Commissioner Jackie Ortiz said that hand-recount did not change the outcome of the results announced earlier this week.
But, in the race for Monroe County Court Judge, where there were five candidates running for three open seats, incumbent Democrat Doug Randall, who was the 3rd place finisher to retain his seat, won by about 700 votes. But Ortiz said that was within the .5% margin that requires a recount.
And she said that has to be done by hand and there are about 145,000 ballots to be recounted in that race.
“And so we will have to put our teams together, and get going. So we plan to start on Monday to try to get this done as quickly as we can,” said Ortiz. “Unfortunately, there is no timeline as to when it will be completed; it will be however long it takes for us to get through that number of ballots.”
As things stand now, the County Judge winners are: Caroline Edwards-Morrison, who had the Dem., Rep., Cons. and Working Families lines; Julie Hahn, who had the Rep. and Cons. lines; and Randall, who had the Dem., and Working Families lines. He is leading over the 4th place finisher, Marty McCarthy, who had the Rep. and Cons. lines, by 701 votes.
This year’s election also included some close races for the Monroe County Legislature, and as a result, Democrats took control of the legislature for the first time in about three decades, but by a narrow 15 to 14 seat margin.
