Public defender Tiffany Cabán‘s campaign team has refuted any claims of harassing Queens Borough President Melinda Katz or of calling the election for the Queens District Attorney’s Office rigged in favor of the public official as the race continues with a recount.
“There has been significant confusion over the state of the Democratic primary,” according to Cabán’s team. “While we have not found any evidence of fraudulent activity committed by the BOE, we have found that a significant number of invalidated votes were wrongly discounted by the BOE, and our team is working diligently to restore their validity.”
Despite squarely maintaining her concerns on uncounted affidavits, some followers of Cabán have left lewd remarks, threats of jail time and have resorted to referring to Katz in derogatory terms on Twitter.
“The increasing recklessness of the Cabán campaign is deeply troubling for a candidate running for the borough’s top law enforcement job,” said Katz spokesman Andrew Kirtzman. “Tiffany Cabán’s supporters have been issuing veiled threats of violence and invoking Melinda Katz’ children in a continuing tide of menacing online attacks. This, as the campaign itself, continues to try to undermine confidence in the electoral process and manipulate the recount.”
Cabán’s team has sustained that their only interest is to make sure that all votes, including affidavits, military ballots and absentee paper ballots are tabulated.
“We have identified 114 valid and legitimate ballots that were improperly discarded by the BOE. Many more valid votes may be found during the recount process that begins this week,” said Cabán’s team.
After the primary on June 25, approximately 2,800 affidavits and 3,500 absentee ballots were reviewed, but only 487 of those votes were considered valid by the Board of Elections resulting in Cabán’s 1,130-vote lead dropping to become a 20-vote trail behind Katz after the tabulation of the unscanned ballots, according to the public defender’s team.
An additional six votes were tallied bringing Katz lead over Cában down to 16, but the public defender’s campaign believes that along with the 114 votes that are up for debate another 359 votes may be eligible for review and tabulation.
“We are engaged with the BOE and all parties to ensure that the final vote count is correctly tallied and that all valid ballots are included,” Cabán’s team said. ” We believe that when all valid votes are restored and counted, Tiffany Caban will have won the Primary Election.”
In the meantime, social media users have been sending Katz gifs of a dead donkey and the guillotine.
“The Cabán campaign’s persistent efforts to portray a rigged electoral system have triggered an avalanche of conspiracy theories and created a mob mentality,” said Kirtzman. “We urge Cabán to unequivocally condemn her supporters’ behavior, get her campaign under control, and let this election be determined by a count of every vote.”
