The Riverhead News-Review is reporting that Republican Randy Altschuler has conceded to incumbent Democrat Tim Bishop in the race for the House seat from New York District 1. This concludes the last House race still under contention from the 2010 midterm elections, and leaves Republicans with a net gain of 63 seats.
District 1 was an extremely close race. Like most close races, it was marked by all sorts of electoral funny business. Also like most close races, the Democrat ended up winning. It’s funny how that works out.
In this particular case, wealthy Manhattan socialites with homes in both New York City and Long Island were caught red-handed voting twice by Fox News. This follows an embarrassing Election Night in which “human error” somehow caused the voting machines to give over 3800 extra votes to Bishop. Apparently the same machines were used in 2009, producing similar errors in 7 out of 11 counties. Couldn’t they have gotten anyone who worked with the machines last year to teach the crew in New York District 1 how to avoid those “human errors?” Oh, well. It’s not like they were doing anything really important that requires perfect accuracy, like selling lottery tickets.
According to a timeline provided by Altschuler consultants, Bishop initially ridiculed Altschuler for wanting a hand recount of the 184,000 ballots scanned by the machines, but suddenly turned on a dime and became the world’s foremost advocate of hand recounts after those pesky “human errors” surfaced and put Altschuler a few hundred votes ahead.
America then learned of the heartwarming patriotism of those Hamptons residents, who love democracy so much they voted twice. Evidently the local government wasn’t aware of the double votes, but luckily Fox News was on hand to invest the grueling minutes of computer searching necessary to uncover them. Since double voting is a felony, I assume the people Fox caught have been arrested and indicted, but I can’t seem to find any confirmation. I’m not too worried about it. No one escapes the long arm of our stern election laws. That’s why our elections are so clean and unambiguous!
Altschuler finally decided to throw in the towel with Bishop 263 votes ahead. “Although Newsday, The New York Times and the Bishop campaign have all called for a hand recount of all the ballots cast on Election Day, I will not support such an action as I feel its cost will place an unnecessary burden on the taxpayers of Suffolk County,” Altschuler said in a statement Wednesday morning. Does Tim Bishop owe his razor-thin margin of victory to voting irregularities? Who knows? That’s the point, isn’t it?
Altschuler promises to remain active in Suffolk County politics, saying “I entered this race because I was worried about the future of our nation. The problems America faces are many and will not be easily solved. I plan to stay active in politics and continue to speak out on the issues that affect the residents of Suffolk County, our state and our nation. Those issues include high taxes, runaway spending and an ever-growing deficit. I intend to play an active role in building the Republican and Conservative Party voices in both Suffolk County and New York State.” He should make a party-building trip to Manhattan. Some really energetic voters live there.
