Dan's Papers - November 16, 2007

Southampton and East Hampton political races are over, but the Suffolk County Board of Elections as of press time, is recanvassing (or recounting) the votes. On Tuesday, the last of the absentee ballots were accepted, all of which had to be postmarked from two Mondays prior to prevent people from mailing in after hearing the news of the race being so close. From there the recount will continue. It is important to note that this is a mandatory process that the Suffolk County Board of Elections has to do after every Election Day and, "Every election year in Suffolk County draws some close races where the recanvassing might make a difference," said Commissioner Cathy Grier of the Suffolk County Board of Elections. "We're recanvassing everything and the process takes as long as it takes, most likely a couple of days."

The races for Town Supervisor have been so close in the Towns of East Hampton and Southampton that being a reporter on the subject has drawn some very unusual information from people. For example, on election night for East Hampton, I put a call into the headquarters for the McGintee campaign and received a text later that night "McGintee definitely won."

"He won! It's official," I announced to the newsroom. "I just got a text."

"They haven't finished counting," said Janine Cheviot, our Features Editor here.

After a week, there was a report that McGintee was ahead by just eight votes and that the absentee ballots were going to make all the difference, but then the Suffolk County Board of Elections said that he was ahead by eighty votes. We'd get calls, we'd refer people to the Board of Elections website and I made a few calls myself. This past week and a half or so has been Democracy in action. Every vote really mattered and if you didn't vote, but you meant to vote, then you really screwed up.

We are in the newspaper business though and we need to keep people as up to date as we can on these matters. So here it goes, unofficially, Bill McGintee is the Town Supervisor of East Hampton and has won the position for a third term against Bill Wilkinson, in what was reported to have been a difference of just eight votes but was later determined that the eight votes was a mistake and that he was really ahead by around eighty votes. "Many people are going to find that race to not be as close as they thought," Commissioner Cathy Grier told me.

Is it safe to say at this point that Bill McGintee has won the Town Supervisor position for East Hampton? No it is not because the recount is not finished, but I can say that as of press time, he was ahead by more then eighty votes the day that all of the absentee ballots came in, so yes, he won, well...yes...well...most likely. To be honest, we're really just going to have to wait a few extra days, but as of right now, yes he won.

It's not easy to make a final call in Southampton either.

The supervisor race in Southampton was also unbelievably close, but it appears that Linda Kabot is the winner, ahead by 70 votes during the first count against the Democratic candidate James Henry. Trailing close was Patrick Heaney in the race, who won 29 percent of the vote. None of the candidates have conceded, which makes sense since nobody has officially won yet, and so the recount is what really matters. The same rules apply to this vote as well. Officially, Kabot is ahead as of press time, but you can keep biting your nails if you are rooting for Heaney or Henry, its all still very possible they could win, assuming that by the time you are reading this, they are still re-counting. Why can't they just do a first count and then a recanvass count and then make the official announcement instead of all of this confusion? Just hit the nail right on the head the first time? Well, then it just wouldn't be as much fun now, would it?