The Queens County District Attorney’s race was the most exciting DA race in the city for progressives in many years because for the first time the issues of ending the discriminatory cash bail system, and a restorative justice approach was highlighted by a progressive Latina who seeks to redefine what a DA should do in a sharp contrast from being all about racking up convictions and imprisoning people.

The Progressive queer public defender Stephanie Caban lead main stream Democrat Melinda Katz by a 1000 vote margin when the polls closed in June, but since then the Queens County Board of elections has been busy at work tossing out affidavit ballots. Now Queens Borough President Melinda Katz leads by a meer 16 votes.

What’s happened is that 2300 ballots have been discarded without opening by the electoral commission controlled by machine democrats. The ballots in question were affidavit ballots used by people who recently moved or registered.

Election officials said in many cases they were cast by people who weren’t Queens democrats and therefore not eligible to vote. However at least 114 ballots were invalidated because the voters didn’t write the word Democrat on their ballot. Other ballots were invalidated for equally dubious reasons according to the NY Times. Additionally Jerry Goldfeder, the lawyer for the Caban campaign said that “"The machines failed to pick up approximately 400 votes that were cast, so that manual recount might change the result one way or another,””

The Manual recount, is slated to start today, could change based on all the disputed ballots including the 400 ballots.

Also in the background is the question of the fate of electoral reform laws passed last month in Albany, including ones addressing the issues at the center of the current election which Governor Cuomo has yet to sign into law.

The Working Families party called on people to Call Speaker Carl Hestie and Governor Cuomo the explain that

“ Legislation has already passed the state legislature this year that would modernize New York’s voting laws to remove certain barriers to the eligibility of affidavit ballots. We believe the bill could be implemented immediately simply with Governor Cuomo’s signature — but first, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (Hasty) must send the bill to his desk. Call Speaker Heastie at 718-654-6539 and Gov. Cuomo at 518-474-8390 to urge them to enact Assembly Bill A1320A immediately.”

Caban activists have called for several types of volunteers to step forward to observe the vote at every step of the recount process:

Non-legal volunteer sign up: https://twitter.com/ReneeParadis/status/1147740453531529216?s=20

Status:

https://twitter.com/emma_a_whitford/status/1148586337882300416?s=20

Call your Assembly representative:

call to action to call Speaker Heastie: https://twitter.com/LydiaGreenBK/status/1148274742027329539?s=20