Trump refers to Brindisi-Tenney House race as he pushes baseless voter fraud claims
President Donald Trump gave a quick shoutout to Claudia Tenney at a rally Monday night and suggested that New York election officials “keep finding votes” in her undecided election for Congress.
Trump falsely claimed that he won Georgia in the presidential election and made baseless accusations of voter fraud in the state before briefly mentioning Tenney’s undecided election against Anthony Brindisi.
“We won 25 of 26 tossup House races, and I think we have one that we’re waiting for,” Trump told a crowd in Dalton, Georgia, where he stopped to rally voters ahead of today’s runoff elections in the state for two U.S. Senate seats.
Turning to the undecided 22nd Congressional District election, Trump said, “Did you see the one in New York where Claudia – a good woman – they keep finding votes? They keep finding votes. She’s up by 18. Oh, we just found 19 votes.”
Trump made his comments a day after a recording surfaced of a telephone call in which he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find” enough votes to reverse Trump’s loss to President-elect Joe Biden in the state.
In the undecided election between Tenney, a Republican from New Hartford, and Brindisi, D-Utica, both candidates have taken turns leading the vote count as election officials corrected mistakes and tallied a record number of absentee and affidavit ballots.
Tenney benefited from the one case involving ballots that were misplaced and found weeks later by election officials.
Tenney led by more than 28,000 after votes at the polls were tallied election night. But Brindisi steadily erased that lead as he won more than 75% of the absentee and affidavit ballots counted after Election Day in the eight-county district.
Brindisi was up by 12 votes before Herkimer County election officials found an error that gave Tenney the lead by 13 votes at the end of November.
The next day, Chenango County election officials told a judge presiding over disputed ballots that they had found 55 uncounted affidavit ballots that had been “mislaid” in their offices.
When those ballots were counted, Tenney increased her lead to 19 votes. Since then, she has increased her lead to 29 votes as both campaigns fought for disputed ballots to be counted.
Despite the changing vote totals, state Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte has said there is no voter fraud in an election where more than 318,000 people voted for Brindisi, Tenney or Libertarian Keith Price.
DelConte, the judge overseeing the court review of disputed ballots, wrote in a Dec. 8 ruling, “To be clear, there is absolutely no evidence or even an allegation before this court of any fraud on the part of the (election) boards or the campaigns.”
Tenney’s campaign lawyers in court today questioned whether one ballot was fraudulent because a woman’s last name did not appear to match a signature on her ballot.
Trump spent a large portion of his 90-minute rally in Georgia making baseless claims that he lost the state because of election fraud.
“There’s no way we lost Georgia,” Trump told the crowd. “There’s no way. That was a rigged election, but we’re still fighting it.”
Tenney thanked Trump for the shoutout in a tweet today but stopped short of alleging election fraud.
“We are up 29 votes but it’s not over yet!” Tenney wrote. “This election has proven our system is broken – we need free & fair elections – not last minute, partisan rule changes! Help us fight back and win!”
Pat Lohmann contributed to this report.
MORE ON THE NY-22 ELECTION
Court case to decide winner in NY-22 House race to take at least another week
Brindisi, Tenney argue, vote by vote, in epic nail-biter. How perfect does a voter have to be?
Tenney keeps lead in undecided NY-22 election as ballots go to judge
All eyes turned to court battle over NY 22nd election. Then it took a week off. Why?
Tenney’s friends question integrity of House election, raise money for recount
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