Close race in New York

After all the votes were counted in the special election last night in New York Democratic candidate Scott Murphy was leading Jim Tedisco by 65 votes.

After a frenzied, bruising special election, a New York congressional race that became linked to President Barack Obama's economic recovery efforts won't be decided for at least two more weeks.

Democrat Scott Murphy led Republican Jim Tedisco by a scant 65 votes out of more than 154,000 cast Tuesday.

After the count of machine votes in 610 voting precincts spread over the mostly rural, 10-county district, the unofficial count was 77,344 for Murphy to 77,279 for Tedisco. That puts the focus on the more than 10,000 absentee ballots mailed to voters who are registered in the district but were unable to vote in person on Tuesday.

It can be a laborious process to count all the paper ballots and those being mailed from overseas aren't due in New York until April 13. A lawsuit filed by state Republicans Tuesday night required all ballots to be impounded to ensure accuracy. It's not an unusual step in close elections.

Of the ballots mailed out, nearly 6,000 were returned by Tuesday but most had not yet been counted.

I would think most absentee ballots would lean conservative. So hopefully Tedisco can pull this one out after all of the absentee ballots are paid. Hopefully this doesn't turn into another Coleman v. Franken race that drags out for months.