Tedisco's Friendly Judge Can Only Delay The inevitable

Jim Tedisco may be "hopeful" about the outcome of the still-contested race in the 20th district, but the facts are simply not on his side. With 1,800 approximate votes to count, Murphy's current lead of 273 and the fact that most of the remaining ballots were contested by Tedisco point to a nearly inevitable win for the Democrat. Although it would be great to seat the winner as soon as possible, the judge in the case doesn't feel that way.

From The Albany Project:

Judge Jim Brands, the "pizza stain" judge has just ruled that not only can ballots be challenged on a case by case basis, a move that could delay the seating of a representative for the 20th for quite some time, but that the campaigns can now have access to the applications for absentee ballots so that Tedisco's lawyers can try to argue that the voters that cast those ballots aren't actually residents of NY-20. That's pretty rich when one considers the fact that Tedisco himself is not a resident of NY-20 and couldn't even cast a vote for himself.

This is certainly a break for Tedisco, but I don't know of anyone that thinks that this have any effect on the outcome. That 273 vote lead is just too great a hill to climb.

Instead of the system allowing for the counting to be finished, Judge Brands is delaying the district the right to be represented in Congress and giving Tedisco as many tools as he can to strike already-validated absentee ballots. Unfortunately for Jimmy, the probability of overcoming Murphy's lead is slim to none given who has challenged what votes.