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New York's 22nd congressional district | ||||||||||||||||||||
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.svg) County Results Tenney: 50–60% 60–70% Brindisi: 50–60% | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Elections in New York State |
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The 2020 election in New York's 22nd congressional district was part of the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections in the state. The major-party candidates were Democratic incumbent Anthony Brindisi and Republican Claudia Tenney, with a third-party candidate, Libertarian Keith Price, also participating. In the 2018 House race in this district, Brindisi unseated the freshman incumbent Tenney by a margin of less than 1 percent. The rematch was expected to be just as competitive.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the candidates to adjust their campaign activities, holding many via videoconference. Due to the pandemic, New York State allowed any voter in the 2020 primaries and general election to request an absentee ballot and vote by mail: pandemic precautions also slowed poll operations and canvassing. At the close of polls on November 3, Tenney led by 28,000 votes, but up to 70,000 absentee ballots remained to be returned. As the absentee ballots were counted, Tenney's lead shrank to around 100 votes by November 20.
Errors by boards of elections in the district came to light in late November. Many of the boards were found to have marked disputed ballots in a way inconsistent with state election law. The Oneida County Board of Elections used sticky notes to mark disputed ballots, and those notes came unstuck from the ballots and attached themselves to other ballots, an incident called "Stickygate" by the media.[1][2][3] Oneida County was later revealed to have made two more serious errors: it incorrectly rejected 700 absentee ballots that should have been accepted under state election law, and failed to process 2,418 voter registration applications before Election Day. The other county Boards of Elections were also found to have made errors affecting dozens of ballots. In two separate instances, Chenango County misplaced absentee ballots and found them later.
After a partial recount of contested ballots, Tenney was declared the winner on February 5 by 109 votes, or 0.03 percent of the vote. Brindisi conceded three days later, and Tenney was sworn in on February 11, a month after the start of the 117th Congress and 100 days after Election Day.
Both commissioners of the Oneida County Board of Elections were forced to resign. The federal Department of Justice later sued the county over its errors. Despite the multiple errors, no evidence of voter fraud was found in court; instead, the errors seemed to result from incompetence. Donald Trump and many of his allies saw this race as a case of attempted voter fraud and connected it to Trump's false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Republicans also pointed to recent changes in election law that stressed the state's electoral system and may have caused the errors. Legislators and activists of various political alignments proposed reforms in response to the events of this election.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
NYT1202was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Pergram, Chad (December 4, 2020). "'StickyGate' roils tight Upstate New York congressional race". Fox News. Archived from the original on August 14, 2021. Retrieved August 14, 2021.
- ^ Ferré-Sadurní, Luis (February 6, 2021). "Last Undecided House Race Finally Goes to Republican, by 109 Votes". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on September 7, 2021. Retrieved August 14, 2021.
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