City finally starting absentee vote count

Let the mail-in madness begin!

After more than two weeks of waiting, city election workers started tabulating absentee ballots Wednesday from the contentious primary on June 23.

Although every politico in town has a theory about how the absentee ballots will break down, it’s anyone’s guess if the results will differ significantly from the in-person results and who might benefit.

Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney was hoping to widen her 1% lead over challenger Suraj Patel in their fight for a district that stretches from her Upper East Side base into gentrifying waterfront slices of Brooklyn and Queens.

But no ballots from that race were expected to be counted Wednesday.

City Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-South Bronx) is looking to expand on his bigger margin in the crowded race to succeed longtime Rep. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx), who retired over poor health.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Bronx, Westchester) lost the in-person vote in a shocking nearly 2-to-1 landslide to upstart progressive Jamaal Bowman.

It would take a stunning turnaround in the absentee ballot count to get Engel, who’s been in Congress for more than three decades, back in contention.

The count could yield surprises because in some races more absentee ballots were cast than in-person votes as voters played it safe amid the coronavirus pandemic.

It remains to be seen how many of the absentee ballots will actually count as New York has quite strict rules governing the counting of the ballots, and in the past, many were tossed for minor errors like failing to check the party registration or forgetting to sign the envelope containing the ballot.