POUGHKEEPSIE – The margin of votes between incumbent Dutchess County Court Judge Peter Forman and his challenger, Jessica Segal was 8,299 on election night. Forman was leading the race but Segal has gained 1,193 votes after it was discovered that one machine’s votes were not uploaded correctly.
The winner of the race will be determined after the absentee/mail-in ballots have been received.
Prior to the votes being adjusted, Forman had 59,961 votes and gained nine more when the votes were added. Unofficially, Segal had 51,392 on election night. After the votes were added on Wednesday, she had 52,585, according to Dutchess County Board of Elections (BOE).
County Republican Elections Commissioner Erik Haight said on Monday that “One of the early voting memory cards on election night wasn’t uploaded properly. The upload was completed early Wednesday morning and the website has been updated accordingly with the in-person results.”
Haight noted that “All election night numbers are always unofficial until the commissioners certify the results in a bipartisan agreement that the results are 100 percent accurate.”
A total of 28,511 absentee ballots were received by the BOE as of election night. Of those paper ballots, 14,765 are from Democrats, 6,699 are from voters with no party affiliation, and 5,284 were returned from registered Republicans. The remaining 1,763 votes are from third-party registrations.
The counting of the absentee/mail-in ballots is slated to begin on Tuesday, November 10.
