Elections officials don't expect to get into the thick of counting the more than 1,300 write-in ballots cast in the village of Fairport mayoral election until late next week.
Unofficial results show write-ins outnumber ballots cast for Democratic candidate Heidi Woika, currently the village’s deputy mayor. A bipartisan team will assess how many of those are for Tracy Briggs, a town trustee who lost the Democratic primary then waged an aggressive write-in campaign.
As it stood Wednesday, 95% of the recorded write-ins would need to be for Briggs for her to claim victory. Mail-in and affidavit ballots still are being processed, so vote tallies could change.
Briggs is optimistic that her message will carry the day.
"I think people really know me as a person, and they've seen me out there doing the work, and I truly listen to them," Briggs said. "I never lost focus of why I got elected in the first place, and it really is to listen to the residents, to be their advocate and to be their liaison with their local government."
A message left for Woika was not immediately returned.
Elsewhere, the Chili town supervisor race also remains too close to call. Incumbent David Dunning, a Republican, leads Democratic challenger Emily Kalouch by less than 1 percentage point. No decision has been made on whether a recount will be necessary as that margin, too, could change with mail-in and affidavit ballots,
