White Plains CitizeNetReporter - Jammed Voting Lever May Cost Delgado Reelection.

Sources advise WPCNR that incumbent Larry Delgado trails challenger Glen Hockley by 60 votes after counting of absentee ballots Wednesday. A stuck voting machine lever cost Mr. Delgado perhaps 100 votes. He is now reported to be mulling whether to concede to Mr. Hockley or to mount a court suit calling for another election.

Paul Wood, of the Mayor’s office, and a close confidante of the candidate, both advised your reporter Thursday that after the recounting Tuesday and Wednesday, Larry Delgado is still behind his challenger, Glen Hockley for the third and last Common Council suit. Mr. Wood, and the second source report Delgado behind by 60 votes.

Oh those old, old voting machines

Unfortunately for Mr. Delgado, the voting machine he was counting on for at least 100 votes could not deliver that, because it was found to have a faulty Delgado lever at the recount conducted Tuesday at Fire House Number 2 in White Plains.

On election night, when returns came in at literally the eleventh hour, Republican leaders were confidant a voting machine in District 18, at George Washington High School, showed Mr. Tuck and Mr. Amodio, Mr. Delgado’s running mates for council receiving approximately 150 votes and Mr. Delgado 50, according to our source. Leaders at that time felt the obvious (to them) Delgado gap was a callout error on the part of their district runner, or perhaps a print error.

Lever on Delgado Line, Goes Down But Disconnects

What was discovered on recanvas Tuesday this week, was the Delgado lever was broken and the condition undetectable at the time of the vote. Apparently, voters would depress the Delgado lever, it would go down normally, and they had no idea their vote was not counted. Unbeknownst to the district inspectors on the scene the lever mechanism had defaulted and according to our source the count rolled back to zero when it reached 100.

The Board of Elections reported to WPCNR Thursday that they expected to upgrade their site with the final totals of the recount possibly on Monday. They would not comment further.

2 Options for Mr. Delgado: Concede or Court

The sources close to Mr. Delgado, who did not return calls for comment on this matter, advise WPCNR that Mr. Delgado is contemplating whether to sue for another election, or concede. The Board of Elections, being Democratic Party-controlled, is expected not to concede Mr. Delgado 100 votes “on spec.”

White Plains old voting machines to blame?

The public should know that part of this problem may be due to the sheer age of the White Plains voting machines. Each machine is mechanically operated. They are not electric. Votes are entered by a “Rube Goldberg” contraption of pulleys and links and stamping devices. A man with personal experience with the condition of White Plains voting machines, told us last week that the machines are at least thirty years old, and that the company that manufactured them is out of business.

He said the machines require a lot of maintenance, and are very delicate. He advised us that the act of transporting machines to the locations of the polling places is rough on the machines, saying rolling the machines over thresholds can throw them out of alignment, or cause a number to “roll down.” Perhaps a bump in transit caused a break in the Delgado lever mechanism, and the doom of the Republican Party as we know it in White Plains.


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