Ballot Count Begins But Local Races Unlikely To See Results Until Next Week

Suffolk County Board of Elections officials on Monday finally began counting the approximately 168,000 absentee ballots that remain to be tallied in the state’s 2020 election.

Because the count is beginning with two hotly contested congressional races from western Suffolk, none of the races in which South Fork voters cast ballots are likely to land in the ballot counting machines before at least late in the week and some are unlikely to be settled until well into next week.

The closest local race is that for Southampton Town Justice. Republican candidate Patrick Gunn is leading Democrat Karen Sartain, who was appointed to the town bench earlier this year. About half of the more than 6,000 absentee ballots cast by town residents, came from Democrats.

In the race for the New York State Senate seat held by Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, Republican Anthony Palumbo holds a broad lead over Democrat Laura Ahearn. Absentees left to be counted are heavily Democratic, but trailing by more than 19,000 votes, Ms. Ahearn would still need to capture an outsized percentage of votes cast by voters not affiliated with one of the major parties to tip the balance in her favor.

The count of absentee ballots began with the 3rd Congressional District, a district that straddles the Nassau-Suffolk border, held by U.S. Representative Thomas Suozzi. Mr. Suozzi was trailing his Republican challenger, George Santos, after Election Day ballots were tallied, but has said he expects heavily-Democratic absentee ballots to tip the race comfortably in his favor.

Elections officials say the CD-3 count has been bogged down by “lots of lawyers” contesting ballots, and is going slowly. Only half the ballots to be counted had been completed as of Tuesday.

After CD-3, the vote counters will turn to the 2nd Congressional District, where Andrew Garbarino holds a broad but not unassailable lead over Democratic challenger Jackie Gordon in the race to replace longtime Republican U.S. Representative Peter King, who did not seek reelection.

The 1st Congressional District race between Republican U.S. Representative Lee Zeldin and democrat Nancy Goroff will be next. That race is technically not over, though Mr. Zeldin leads by only slightly fewer votes than there are total absentee ballots, making it highly unlikely Mr. Zeldin will not capture a fourth term in office.

Nationwide, there are 13 congressional races that are still officially undecided and hanging in the balance of ballots still to be counted. Eight of them are in New York.

State election laws prevented county Board of Elections staff from even starting to count absentee ballots until two weeks after election day — the deadline for ballots mailed by active duty members of military serving overseas who could have waited until Election Day to mail back their absentee ballot. This year’s enormous absentee ballot participation, because of COVID-19 concerns, has already spurred calls for the state to rewrite its vote counting guidelines. Other states, like Florida, that are allowed to tally absentee ballots as they are received, were able to declare winners in their elections on Election Day, despite huge numbers of absentee votes.