The Rensselaer County Courthouse in Troy. The 43rd Senate District includes all of Rensselaer County. Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The race for the 43rd State Senate District, covering all of Rensselaer County and parts of Albany and Washington counties, was still headed for a mandatory hand recount in mid-November, with Democrat Devin Lander ahead of Republican Sen. Jake Ashby in unofficial returns and Ashby declining to concede. CBS6 reported on Nov. 12 that state law requires a recount when the margin is this narrow, and that the state has until Dec. 15 to certify the results.
The unofficial counts have moved as more ballots have been added. In an earlier WNYT report, after Lander declared victory on a Tuesday night, the unofficial totals were 60,536 for Lander and 60,395 for Ashby. A later WNYT account, on possible recounts, put the unofficial margin at 335 votes, 61,015 to 60,680. CBS6, on Nov. 12, described the candidates as only a couple of hundred votes apart, with a few hundred ballots still left to count, and did not publish its own precinct totals.
Lander, in the statement quoted by WNYT when he declared victory, said it was “now clear” he would prevail and that he looked forward to “representing every resident in this district and working to address the affordability and infrastructure issues” he had heard about on the campaign trail. CBS6 said he was introduced at Cohoes’ Veterans Day ceremony as the incoming senator. Ashby, in a statement to CBS6, said he would “honor that procedure” and comment further when the recount is complete, and thanked Board of Elections staff working overtime.
Rensselaer County Republican Elections Commissioner Henry Zwack told WNYT the county had finished counting on Tuesday, had 22 military ballots that could still arrive by Monday, and had no outstanding “cure” letters, and that a recount could start as soon as Nov. 17. In Washington County, Deputy Democratic Commissioner Mindy Suprenant told the station that remaining cure letters, sent to absentee voters who forgot to sign their ballots, were due Nov. 19, and that a recount would not start until those came back. WNYT said it had not heard back from the Albany County Board of Elections when it asked for an update.
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