6 JULY 18, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Queens DA recount rolls on in Middle Village
BY MARK HALLUM
MHALLUM@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
After nearly a week of just
sorting over 91,000 ballots,
the recount phase has fi nally
begun in Democratic primary for
Queens district attorney.
Monday morning saw close to 60
people at the BOE facility in Middle
Village flipping through ballots
and watchers tallying for either
Borough President Melinda Katz
or Tiff any Cabán. Both campaigns
told the media on Sunday and
Monday that they wanted every
vote counted; Katz’s team said as
much during a Sunday conference
call with reporters, and Cabán’s
attorney echoed those sentiments at
a July 15 press conference outside the
BOE facility.
But Katz’s campaign threw the
first punch with attorney Frank
Bolz objecting to one ballot that
had a distinguishing mark. The
ballot, a vote for Cabán, was deemed
void by BOE staff and placed in an
“objected” folder.
Katz held a 16-vote lead over Cabán
as the recount got underway.
During the Monday morning press
conference, Cabán’s lead attorney,
Jerry Goldfeder, echoed the same
sentiment of not only the Katz
campaign, but the Queens County
Democratic Party: make every
vote count.
“The Board of Elections people have
been working diligently and I believe
they’ll render decisions that are fair.
We’ll look at intent of the voter and,
if the intent of the voter is clear, they
will be counted,” Goldfeder said
Monday morning. “The only voters
that shall not be counted by the
board’s rules are if there are stray
marks on the ballot.”
This means that any voters who
may have left “smiley faces” or other
marks that do not indicate a clear
choice, according to Goldfeder, will
not be valid.
State Senator Jessica Ramos
expressed confi dence that her own
organizational eff orts to help elect
Cabán would not be in vain and that
the fi nal count would yield victory
for the candidate that she not only
supported, but her Jackson Heights
district voted for heavily, according
to maps.
“For me, making sure that Tiff any
Cabán is the next district attorney is
about doing everything that we can
in Queens to ensure that every single
neighbor is protected,” Ramos said.
“It was a campaign that we worked
very hard to grow grassroots support
for, it was a campaign that came from
the people not from the machine.
Because of that, I do believe that we
will be able to see Tiff any as the victor
from this ordeal.”
Election reform as well as campaign
fi nance reform have been debated
for years in Albany, but Ramos said
the new Democratic majority in the
state Senate is now beginning to
make strides. Ramos may have been
referring to a bill that’s already been
passed, among other reforms, that
removes barriers to affi davit ballots
being counted as over 2,000 were
deemed invalid in the Democratic
primary for DA.
Read more on QNS.com.
Attorneys Frank Bolz (for Melinda Katz) and Jerry Goldfeder (for Tiff any
Cabán) exchange words as the recount kicks off Monday morning.
Photo: Mark Hallum/QNS
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