In It For The Voter Suppression

By this point, Jim Tedisco could be out of the race, but at the very least, he has admitted defeat, if privately. Now he's playing a long game for 2010, and for upstate New York Republicans far and wide.

A GOP source on Capitol Hill said Thursday afternoon that Republican Jim Tedisco’s camp has abandoned hope of winning New York’s 20th district special election but that the former state Assembly Minority Leader won’t concede the race to Democrat Scott Murphy until technical legal questions surrounding voter residency issues are resolved.

The source said that Tedisco believes the residency issues that came up during absentee vote counting after the March 31 contest could have a bearing on future races in New York. As such, the source said, Tedisco wants to see those issues resolved before ending the legal battle.

He's trying not just to get voters disqualified in his district, but throughout the upstate New York region. As Hudson noted in the comments to the last Tedisco post, state law appears to be on the side of those with dual residencies deciding where they want to vote: "New York State’s highest court found in Ferguson v. McNab, 60 N.Y.2d 598 (N.Y. 1983) that someone who has more than one residence 'may choose one to which she has legitimate, significant and continuing attachments as her residence for purposes of the Election Law.'"

Not that "the law" matters to the GOP. So I assume they'll fight this one out. At least this time, unlike with Norm Coleman, the loser is admitting that he's only stretching out the race to test the limits of voter suppression and delay the entry of the winner into Congress. It's refreshing, in a way.