Count tallies differ in the Heights

The Suffolk County Board of Elections results for the Shelter Island town justice race do not match results recorded by poll watchers election night in just one district: Election District (ED) 3 in the Heights.

Newsday’s posting of election results by districts, based on the Board of Elections’ unofficial results, shows that in ED 3, Tom Carr received 213 votes to Mary-Faith Healey’s 23 votes. Poll watchers recorded 109 votes for Mr. Carr to 179 for Ms. Healey . All other Shelter Island district results posted by Newsday match those recorded by poll watchers.

The local data shows Ms. Healey receiving 61 to 63 percent of the vote in all four districts. The county’s data for ED 3 gives Mr. Carr over 90 percent of the vote in that district. The county’s numbers for ED 3 add up to 236 votes; poll watchers recorded 288 votes for that race.

Further suspicion of a problem arises in the Board of Elections tally for ED 3 showing Joseph Huff (Rent is Too Damn High Party) defeating Kirsten Gillibrand for one Senate seat and satirist Randy Credico (Libertarian) out-polling Charles Schumer for the other.

Congressman Tim Bishop, who received 58 to 61 percent of the vote in all districts according to the local count, won 89 percent of the vote on the county tally for ED 3. And Marc Alessi, who received 61 to 65 percent of the vote in the local counts won only 36 percent of the ED 3 vote, according to the county.

Wade Badger, who read the numbers off the voting machine tape to poll watchers from both the Democratic and Republican parties at ED 3, said during an interview after the election, “I was reading it out, loudly. I feel really confident I was reading it carefully.”

He thinks that discrepancies between local and county results occurred when the votes were called in to and recorded by the Board of Elections. Election staff in Yaphank asked for ballot numbers in a different sequence than was used on recording forms provided to local election inspectors.