MURPHY OVERTURNS TEDISCO ADVANTAGE, LEADS BY 4 POINTS

Don Moore

ccSCOOP ANALYSIS

03-27-09 - With just four days until Tuesday’s Special Election in the 20th Congressional District, Democrat Scott Murphy has gone from 4 points behind Republican James Tedisco to a 4 point advantage, now leading by 47 to 43 percent, according to the Siena Research Institute (SRI) Poll of likely voters released Friday morning. Eric Sundwall was at 3 percent, but is now off the ballot as the result of a Republican and Conservative challenge to his ballot qualification petitions. In the last SRI poll on March 23, Tedisco led Murphy by 45 to 41 percent.

Voters were also asked which candidate is waging a more positive campaign, and Murphy leads Tedisco by 42 to 25 percent. Asked the opposite question, which candidate is waging a more negative campaign, Tedisco prevails by a 44 to 25 percent margin. The margin of error for the poll is ±3.2 percent

Murphy is also much more popular among Democrats than Tedisco is among Republicans. Murphy holds 84 percent of Democrats, while Tedisco only retains 64 percent of Republicans. The SRI poll lumps all other voters—minor parties and unaffiliated voters—into a category it calls “Independents,” not to be confused with the registered members of the Independence Party. Here the two candidates are in a virtual tie with Murphy at 45 percent and Tedisco at 44 percent.

The SRI pollster distinguishes three geographic regions in their survey of the ten-county 20th District. In Columbia/Delaware/Dutchess/Greene/Oswego, Murphy turned a 7 point deficit into a 2 point lead. Tedisco retains his lead in Rensselaer/Saratoga, but it has dropped from 51 to 35 percent on March 23 to 49 to 43 percent on March 27. In the northern counties of Essex/Warren/Washington, Murphy holds a substantial 58 to 29 percent lead. The four counties in the 20th Congressional District with the highest number of registered voters are Saratoga with 154,596, Rensselaer with 46,437, Columbia with 46,182, and Warren with 45,526. 

In separate actions on March 25, the New York State Board of Elections invalidated 58 percent of Libertarian candidate Eric Sundwall’s 6,944 petition signatures filed to qualify him for the March 31 Special Election ballot, and the Board also agreed to comply with the relief sought in a U.S. Department of Justice suit that maintained military and other Federal employees eligible to vote by absentee ballot were given insufficient time to return their ballots. The Board agreed to extend the absentee ballot return date from April 7 to April 13, although absentee ballots must still be postmarked by March 30, 2009.

The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department brought the suit, alleging a violation of the Federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA). Administered by the Department of Defense, UOCAVA requires that eligible military and federal civilian voters living outside the district, in the U.S. or overseas, be given 30 days from the time their ballot is mailed to them to return them. The Boards of Elections of the ten counties that make up all or part of the 20th Congressional District mailed the ballots, according to the Justice Department, between 24 and 26 days prior to the original April 7 deadline. Hence the suit.

Absentee ballots are not counted until after the deadline—now April 13. The outcome may be in doubt for up to three weeks after Election Day. New York State Board of Elections officials and representatives of the ten counties told ccSCOOP in interviews that 2,145 absentee ballots were sent to military and civilian personnel, with a total of nearly 10,000 absentee ballots issued. In the 2008 General Election, 321,604 people voted in the Congressional race. With absentee ballots representing potentially between 2 and 5 percent of the total vote, in a close election, absentee votes could determine the outcome. 

Regarding Eric Sundwall, New York State election officials reported that his ballot petitions were challenged for validity on various grounds from improper signatures to residences outside the Congressional District. Every signature was reviewed manually before the Board reached its decision to disqualify Sundwall, according to Board spokesman Robert Brehm.

But the Sundwall story does not end there. Board of Elections officials, led by Columbia County’s Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin and Republican Commissioner Don R. Kline, are declining to comply with a New York State Board of Election edict that they replace software flash memory program chips in the computer voting machines available for disabled voters. They are joined in this action by Greene, Essex, and Washington counties. According to Martin, the conventional lever machines can be reliably changed to remove a candidate, but the computerized equipment has too many variables to trust a last minute change.

Don Moore is a writer and communications specialist living and working in Hudson, New York. Among his career turning points are stints as an education journalist, congressional staffer, arts administrator and lobbyist, and higher education communications and development manager.