DA vote ‘kosher?’
Blaz: Need state to check Caban’s charges
Mayor de Blasio called on state officials Monday to step in and “make sure everything is kosher” in the hotly contested Democratic race for Queens district attorney, giving credence to the Tiffany Caban campaign’s unsubstantiated allegations of voter disenfranchisement.
Speaking at an unrelated press conference in Manhattan, de Blasio acknowledged he hadn’t seen any evidence that voter fraud or disenfranchisement had occurred, but said the state should look into the matter regardless, considering “really troubling” past incidents involving the city’s Board of Elections.
“We’re talking about the New York City Board of Elections. If someone makes an accusation about the New York City Board of Elections, I take it on face value,” de Blasio said. “I would urge the State of New York to get all over this right now to make sure everything is kosher, to make sure everything is being handled properly, so that when the outcome finally becomes clear, the people of Queens believe it’s accurate.”
The city board has a history of improperly purging voters from the rolls in violation of state and federal law.
The state Board of Elections, which oversees the city board, did not return a request for comment.
De Blasio’s call for state intervention came a day before lawyers for Caban were set to square off in Queens Supreme Court against attorneys for Melinda Katz, the borough’s president who currently holds a frail 16-vote lead in the DA primary election, which took place June 25.
The Tuesday court proceeding will deal with the fate of 114 affidavit ballots that were tossed out by city election officials over voter registration issues, including constituents failing to list their party affiliation.
Meanwhile, due to the razor-thin margins, a manual recount of the more than 90,000 ballots cast in the DA contest is set to get underway Wednesday. The recount could take upward of three weeks. Whoever comes out victorious is all but certain to win in the general election in November.
The Caban campaign initially suggested without evidence that more than 2,000 votes could have been inappropriately purged after Katz unexpectedly took the lead by merely 20 votes after thousands of paper ballots were counted last week.
Caban had at that point already declared herself the winner, holding the lead by more than 1,000 votes with 99% of precincts reporting.
The Caban campaign has in the past few days zeroed in on the 114 ballots that will be dealt with in court Tuesday.
In a statement Monday, Caban spokeswoman Monica Klein said all those ballots were “wrongly invalidated” and called on a judge to allow them to be counted.
“We will be in court Tuesday morning to make sure these voters are not disenfranchised,” said Klein.
The Caban campaign also suggested — again without concrete evidence — that “conflicts of interest” exists within the Board of Elections and the courts that could somehow end up benefiting Katz.
“For decades, county judges and BOE commissioners have been hand-selected by the Queens County party machine, and the party machine has a significant amount of money and influence at stake,” the campaign said in a statement.
Matthew Rey, an adviser for Katz, blasted the Caban camp’s allegations as being “created out of thin air” and said the borough president’s goal all along has been for “all valid votes to be counted.”
“Their attempts to mislead the public are corrosive to democracy and shameful,” Rey said of Caban’s supporters.