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Reported by: John Treanor Wednesday, Nov 4, 2009 @05:19pm EST Election night might have passed, but the race for county executive is far from over.
With only a few hundred votes separating two candidates, it’s still too close to call. The experts predicted this race would be close, and they were right. 341 votes separating republican Mike Kerner and democrat Barry Grossman - it's going to come down to the last hand-counted ballot. Grossman has a slight 341 vote lead after the polls closed last night, but hundreds of votes are still out there. If you remember the absentee ballot machine was broken; now 1250 votes have to be hand-counted by election staff at the courthouse. That process has been going on all day. Even when they're done counting, they have to plug all the numbers in and then work on counting seven voting machines that weren’t counted last night. With so many unknowns, it’s still very much anybody's game. Brad Moore of the Erie County Republican Party says, "I think it would be premature for either candidate to claim victory. We learned that lesson four years ago, and it could close even closer that the 341 difference last night." Cathi Zelazny of the Erie County Democratic Party says, “People don’t think absentee ballots matter, but in a very close race, yes it can." Again, this process is going to take some time. Clerk of Elections Doug Smith tells us they’ll start plugging in the numbers tomorrow, and it looks like we'll have an idea who won this race on Friday at the earliest. |