Absentee vote flips Narrowsburg election

Adult home is again at the center of controversy

By FRITZ MAYER

NARROWSBURG, NY — Lawyers representing the Tusten Democratic Committee have filed papers calling for an investigation into the actions of Republican candidates and other activities at the Narrowsburg Adult Home in advance of the election on November 6. That’s according to Democratic committee chairman Norman Meyer, who said the papers were filed with the New York Attorney General’s office, the enforcement division of the New York State Board of Elections and with a federal agency.

This comes in the aftermath of the counting of the absentee ballots from Tusten, most of which were cast by residents of the home. The percentages were dramatically different from the machine votes. In the machine vote, Republican Lisa Dowling had 215, Democrat Chuck Hoffman had 210, Democrat Tom Prendergast had 208 and Republican Lewis Meckle had 180. In the absentee counting, Dowling and Meckle each received 29 votes, while Hoffman received three and Prendergast received six, bringing Meckle from last place to second, and giving him one of the two available seats on the council.

Democratic Sullivan County Board of Election Commissioner Tim Hill said that normally the mix in the absentee votes is expected to be similar to the mix in the machine votes, so the results were surprising.

Meyer said what made them even more surprising is that all of the residents of the home who voted for Republican candidates are registered as Democrats.

Hill said that he did not know if any laws were broken, but that, in his opinion, candidates should avoid even the appearance of impropriety, which this incident represents.

Tusten supervisor Ben Johnson said the Republicans did nothing wrong. He said that he, Meckle and George Kinch, who was running to retain his seat as highway superintendent, went to the home before the election, spoke to the residents about who they are and what they do and left. He said they were there “five or ten minutes.”

Several Democrats said that the administrator of the home, Nancy Price, invited the Republican candidates but not the Democrats. They speculated that this was a retaliatory move against Democrat Nancy Dos Santos, who was running against Johnson for the supervisor’s office. Dos Santos in April led a public campaign to prompt state authorities to take action against a few residents of the home, who were reportedly behaving inappropriately in public.

Price referred questions to the home’s attorney, Zachary Kelson, who said, “It appears that some people are claiming fraud. All people have a right to vote. It’s sad that the people who didn’t win are making these accusations.”