Editor’s Correction: The original story stated that Rupert Barry was the only African/Caribbean-American in this race. Derefim Neckles is also African/Caribbean-American.
Rupert Barry, who finished third in the recent 6th Municipal District Civil Court judge race is contesting Elana Baron‘s victory, and filed a suit in the State Supreme Court to compel the city Board of Elections to let his team look at all the paper ballots that were scanned.
“Rupert is absolutely looking into the results of the election because based on the numbers from that night and the history of the district’s other judicial races, the numbers are weird,” said a source close to Barry. “We’re most interested in the EDs [election districts] where there were apparently no scanned ballots, but numbers came in for Baron.”
According to the BOE official results, Baron received a healthy 11,248, while Hemalee Patel finished second with 6,660 votes, then Barry with 6,571 votes and Derefim Neckles finished with 4,265 votes.
The source noted several things the vote seemed very strange starting with the number of voters. If you look at the past elections for the same 6th Municipal District judicial seat, not nearly as many voters turned out, the source said.
For example, Michael Gerstein won with 7,609 votes in the 2015 election, and in this election over 32,000 people turned out to vote and over 26,000 voted in the municipal judicial race, the source said.
The source also noted that Baron didn’t mount a strong campaign effort compared to the other candidates and appeared last on the ballot – which in a judicial race where candidates aren’t as well-known it’s a hard spot to be at.
It’s also interesting that the race was very close and then there was a surge of 4,000-5,000 votes for Baron at the end of the night out of nowhere, the source said, so some of the scanned ballots have to be checked and the voting machines need to be checked to see if they were properly prepared.
The source also noted that Baron carried several largely African- and Caribbean-American assembly districts including the 43rd (Assemblywoman Diana Richardson‘s district), the 57th (Assemblyman Walter Mosley‘s District), the 58th (Assemblyman Nick Perry‘s district) and the 42nd (Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte‘s District).
Rupert Barry received a lot of support in these districts and spent a lot of time campaigning there. Perhaps some voted for Baron because they may have confused her last name with the Barron’s from East New York, but it still seems strange.
But another longtime election operative, who worked for one of the candidates in the race, who refused comment on this story, noted that both the City Council Members Laurie Cumbo and Mathieu Eugene had competitive races that drew a relatively high voter turnout. Both their councilmatic districts are part of the 6th Municipal Civil Court District so that may have driven up the turnout, the source said.
Baron could not be reached at post time.
In the meantime, Barry has retained election attorney Jack Carroll, father of Assemblymember Robert “Bobby” Carroll, and Kings County Supreme Court Judge Edgar Walker is expected to make a ruling on the request on Thursday, Sept. 28.
“Everybody knows there’s something wrong but we’re just trying to prove it,” said the source. “After all this is Brooklyn and it wasn’t very long ago that supporters of Bernie Sanders were up in arms when over 100,000 registered Democrats were purged from the rolls.”
