The review and counting of Onondaga County’s 27,000 remaining absentee ballots won’t resume for another two weeks due to eight additional cases of COVID-19 among employees. The exposure started with one worker who hasn’t been at the office since November 5th, but was in contact with about 30 other colleagues.
Those same colleagues have been part of the counting process with more than 100 campaign staff and other observers, who are now getting tested. Democratic commissioner Dustin Czarny says they’ve worked out a plan to meet a statutory reporting deadline.
“We will do a partial certification of the presidential election on November 28th, and then resume the absentee ballot canvas on November 30th which will allow us to finish this canvas after the quarantine time period and after our staff that is positive gets by their isolation time period as well and are able to recover.”
Czarny says the plan has the green light from the state board of elections, but is still subject to court approval. He says they’re also asking a judge to limit the number of observers when the ballot count continues to reduce density in the building.
“We are meeting with the county health department next week to go over the floorplan. Right now, it is not believed that transmissions took place during the counting, but we’ll know more when testing comes back. It just happened at the worst possible time.”
Czarny and GOP commissioner Michele Sardo are also asking the court to rule on common ballot objections collectively rather than individually to streamline the process. There are still four undetermined races, including an assembly and senate seat.
