Some 137 absentee ballots are being challenged in the Town of Thompson by council candidate Scott Mace, who is 234 votes ahead of his opponent Jay Rubin. It is not yet clear whether the challenged ballots will turn the election, but at a hearing at the Sullivan County Court House on November 12, Judge Mike McGuire ordered that a temporary restraining order against counting the votes stay in place until all the other absentee votes are tallied.

The 137 voters claimed to have addresses that were were located in closed bungalow colonies, and Mace's attorneys argued that under election law these bungalow colonies could not be considered homes. Further, all of the applications for the absentee ballots were sent to a single post office box in Thompsonville, which was signed for by the owner and the manager of the Raleigh hotel.

McGuire invited Mace's lead attorney, David Holland, to explain how these circumstances were different than those in the Cochecton case, where the Appellate Court overturned the Supreme Court and the higher court said that residents who owned seasonal co-ops in the town did in fact have the right to vote.

Holland noted that the residences claimed by the Thompson Bungalow voters had permits from the New York State Department of Health to operate for only about two months during the summer, and thus were not the same as the Cochecton co-ops.

McGuire did not seem swayed much by that argument but later he seemed to become more open to the notion that there are significant differences between the addresses claimed by the Thompson bungalow voters and those claimed by the Cochecton voters.

Attorney Gail Rubenfeld, who successfully argued the Cochecton case in the appellate court, summed up the issues in a statement. She wrote, "Under the law, a residence claimed for voting purposes must be the voter’s principal and fixed home, to which the voter has 'legitimate, significant, and continuing attachments.' That is clearly not the case here. We believe the challenged voters in the Town of Thompson do not currently live in the claimed residences nor do they have any appreciable history in these buildings. The personal observations of Councilman Mace establish that the communities where the claimed homes are located are gated, chained, padlocked, and in some instances boarded up.

"This scenario is vastly different than the circumstances of the challenged voters in Cochecton who the appellate court found to be bona fide residents of Sullivan County. Those voters owned and occupied their Cochecton homes for many years, they maintained and made improvements to the homes, paid taxes on the homes, had continuous access to the homes, and formed deep, personal attachments to the homes and surrounding community. Those factors seem lacking with the challenged Thompson voters suggests an aura of sham."

In bringing up another point, Tom Cawley, the attorney representing the Sullivan County Board of Elections (BOE), said that because the ballots were challenged after they were cast, the BOE did not have the opportunity to do an investigation of the voters as they had with the voters in Cochecton and also of the challenged voters in three different elections in Bloomingburg.

Responding to this Holland said, in part, that Mace and Thompson Supervisor Bill Rieber had been "dissuaded" from filing a challenge before the votes by members of the BOE. He also said that having the 137 voters register just before the deadline, and also submitting absentee votes just before the deadline, prevented anyone from looking at the votes and is "the way to set up voter fraud."

Holland also touched on the controversial votes in Bloomingburg, which are now before the appellate court, and which many familiar with the case consider to be clear instances of voter fraud. He alluded to an agreement made between the BOE and a lawyer for the challenged voters when he said, "'Yeah, they cheated in the election but we're going to let them have it anyway' -- you can't have that."

Holland also said his client wants the case to go forward regardless of the outcome of the election

There are questions that remain to be answered: do the Thompson voters have access to the bungalows which they are claiming as residences; do they have any ownership participation in the bungalows or living spaces; are they intending to come back to the same places next year and for subsequent years; do they keep their possessions in the bungalows? In the case of the Cochecton voters, the answer to these questions was yes.

Mace's lawyer will try to get the answers to some of those questions before the next court appearance, which may be on November 25.

After the hearing, Holland issued a statement, which said, “More than just an election is at stake: the integrity of the entire voting process is ensured by such challenges so that only validly registered residents may vote and determine the future of the municipalities in Sullivan County."