ONONDAGA COUNTY, NY (NCC NEWS) – It is six days after the polls closed around the country, yet some big races nationally are yet to be decided.
And here in the local Central New York area, that is no different. Three local elections still remain too close to call.
First is the race in the 22nd Congressional district. Republican Brandon Williams leads Democrat Francis Conole by 1.6% or nearly 4,000 votes, with over 96% in.
But there are still a lot of outstanding votes. According to a statement from Onondaga County Democratic Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny, there are still 3,600 ballots still to be counted between absentee and affidavit ballots, and an unknown quantity of ballots that were rejected by the vote counting machine that need to be counted by hand still left to be tallied.
The race for the 50th district in New York State is even tighter. Republican challenger Rebecca Shiroff leads incumbent John Manion by just 400 votes or .04%. This comes with at least 950 absentee ballots to be counted, and a known number of affidavit and rejected ballots left uncounted.
Also, if that race ends within .05% distance between the two candidates, then every vote will have to be re-counted by hand, which is over 120,000 ballots.
Lastly, the race for the Onondaga county sheriff is still not called. Although Republican Esteban Gonzalez needs 80-90% of the outstanding vote to come back and win, he says he will not concede to Democrat Toby Shelley until every vote is counted.