A state appellate court ruled Tuesday that 94 Queens voters must get a chance to “cure” their invalidated ballots in order to be counted in the Assembly race where Democratic incumbent Stacey Pheffer Amato leads GOP challenger Tom Sullivan by just a single vote.
The New York City Board of Election must inform the voters they can file paperwork to get their ballots counted, per a law enacted earlier this year, as long as they affirm they cast them in the first place, according to the three-page ruling.
“Each of the 94 absentee ballots was received by the Board with an unsealed ballot affirmation envelope inside a completely sealed outer mailing envelope. Therefore, the defects were curable under Election Law,” reads the ruling by the four-judge panel in the Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department based in Brooklyn.
Sullivan had argued that the votes ought to get tossed because of the unsealed inner envelope.
“They were identified with major defaults and the law as I understand it, and as read is if they’re identified to have major defects, they cannot be cured,” Sullivan told The Post Tuesday ahead of the ruling that upheld an earlier state Supreme Court decision.
He hopes that a group of four other unsealed ballots – which he said were from two registered Republicans, one Democrat and an independent – might get him the two votes he needs to pull ahead of the three-term incumbent if the other 94 ballots stay sealed.
Stacey Pheffer Amato is running for a fourth term in the Assembly.
The court disagreed that an unsealed inner envelope was hardly a fatal error on the part of voters considering that the ballots arrived in a sealed outer envelope.
“The regulations promulgated by the New York State Board of Elections to implement the Election Law distinguish a ballot received in an unsealed ballot affirmation envelope from a ballot that is in an unsealed ballot affirmation envelope and received in a fully sealed outer mailing envelope, and clarify that the latter “shall be treated as a ballot filed without an affirmation envelope and shall be curable by the filing of the cure affirmation,” the ruling states.
Sullivan said Tuesday evening he was still considering whether or not to appeal the ruling to the Court of Appeals weeks after his three-vote lead over Amato began evaporating amid litigation.
“No amount of extreme rhetoric will stop us from ensuring that every valid vote is counted, and we’re once again thankful to the courts for continuing to follow the law and ruling that these ballots can be cured and counted,” Matthew Rey, a campaign spokesman for Amato, said following the ruling.
Tom Sullivan has said he would accept the election results win or lose. Ryan Schwach, The WaveThe outstanding election to represent Assembly District 23 covering the Rockaways, Howard Beach and Ozone Park is one of three outstanding legislative races that remain up in the air more than a month after the Nov. 8 election.
Incumbent state Sen. John Mannion is up by just a few dozen votes in a race for a Syracuse-based district ahead of a final certification of votes.
Assembly Democrats meanwhile have scheduled a Dec. 21 hearing to consider whether or not to recommend to the full chamber to block Republican Lester Chang from taking a Brooklyn-based Assembly seat following reports that his legal residence is in Manhattan.
Win or lose, Sullivan said Tuesday he would accept the results of his own race against Amato despite ongoing concerns about “voter integrity” in the recent Nov. 8 election and purported fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
“I’ve never used the word stolen. I don’t think it’s stolen. They just use the process better than us,” he said.
