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Recount coming: Mannion leads by 27 votes over Shiroff in NY Senate race
State Sen. John Mannion, a Democrat, leads Republican challenger Rebecca Shiroff by 27 votes in the 50th state Senate District race.
Robert Harding
A recount will decide a central New York state Senate race in which the candidates are separated by 27 votes.
Democratic state Sen. John Mannion leads Republican challenger Rebecca Shiroff by a narrow margin in the 50th Senate District, which includes parts of Onondaga and Oswego counties.
Shiroff, R-Manlius, led by 396 votes on election night. Her lead grew to 500 votes earlier this week after Oswego County finished counting its absentee and affidavit ballots. She outperformed Mannion in Oswego, winning more than 60% of the vote — 18,984 to 11,025.
But Mannion, D-Camillus, was the top vote-getter in Onondaga County — the district's largest county. The Onondaga County Board of Elections counted its absentees and affidavit ballots on Wednesday and Mannion gained 1,354 votes, while Shiroff received 816.
According to the unofficial tally, he won Onondaga County by nearly 8,000 votes, 50,686 to 42,700.
Overall, Mannion leads Shiroff 61,711 to 61,684.
"This campaign never lets up and believes in the people of central New York!" Mannion said in a statement. "Today we surged ahead and have strong confidence we will seal a victory in the upcoming hand recount. It is absolutely vital to our democracy that every vote is counted and the results are honored and respected."
Shiroff did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Onondaga County Board of Elections said there are 114 ballots that must be adjudicated, but it wasn't disclosed how many of those are in the 50th Senate District. There are also 85 absentee ballots that can be cured by voters, meaning they can correct an error to ensure their vote counts. That's also a countywide total, so it's unclear how many of the ballots belong to 50th district voters.
The next step is for the local election boards to certify the election results and submit them to the state Board of Elections. The state will notify the boards that a recount is necessary.
Under state law, a manual recount is required if a race is decided by less than 0.5% or 20 votes. In the 50th district, Mannion and Shiroff are separated by less than half a percentage point.
Politics reporter Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding.