Onondaga County legislature race likely headed to hand recount
A five-vote gap has pushed the Southside legislature race toward a hand recount, with absentee and affidavit ballots now in play.
A five-vote margin has put the Onondaga County Legislature’s 16th District race on a manual recount track after the county Board of Elections finished counting absentee and affidavit ballots Tuesday. Charlene Tarver now holds 427 votes to Nyatwa Bullock’s 422, a result that could decide who replaces Charles Garland in the open Southside seat, where the Republican Party did not designate a candidate.
New York’s recount rules require the board of elections, or a bipartisan committee appointed by it, to recanvass the contest first, comparing ballot scanner tapes with the return of canvass and giving written notice to the candidates and party chairs so they can send representatives. State law says that full manual recount cannot begin until that recanvass is completed and announced, and primary-election recanvasses must be completed within 20 days after the primary.
The ballots most likely to be challenged are absentee and affidavit ballots with envelope problems, including missing signatures, signature mismatches, missing witness information, or ballots returned without the proper envelope. New York’s cure rules allow some absentee defects to be fixed, and affidavit ballots can still be counted when the board can determine voter eligibility from the affidavit statement or its own records. Onondaga County’s online results archive reaches back to September 2016, giving campaigns and voters a public record to compare against as the count is checked again.
The Legislature has 17 members elected from single-member districts, each serving two-year terms, and its main annual duty is reviewing and approving the county budget. Whoever wins the 16th District seat will vote on the budget decisions that shape county spending on services tied to housing, public health, poverty and lead, all issues Tarver has put at the center of her campaign. Bullock, a former Syracuse City School Board member, and Tarver have both rooted their pitches in family ties to the Southside of Syracuse that go back generations.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
