After months of uncertainty, the winner of the NY-22 congressional election has been decided. The race was one of the closest elections the country witnessed from Nov. 2020.

On Feb. 5, Justice Scott DelConte of the New York Supreme Court 5th district ruled Republican Claudia Tenney to be the winner of the NY-22 House of Representatives seat over incumbent Democrat Anthony Brindisi. The district covers a portion of central New York, including Binghamton and Binghamton University. This seat was the last House race to be decided and comes after months of legal challenges from both candidates. Tenney will be sworn in this Thursday, Feb. 11. All of the other members of the 117th Congress were sworn in on Jan. 3.

Tenney, who had previously won the seat in 2016, released a statement on Twitter the day of the ruling.

“I’m honored to have won this race,” Tenney wrote. “It was a hard-fought campaign and I thank [Brindisi] for his service. Now that every legal vote has been counted, it’s time for the results to be certified. The voters need a voice in Congress, and I look forward to getting to work on behalf of [NY-22].”

The legal challenges began on Nov. 4, one day after the election. Tenney’s campaign filed a lawsuit asking for court supervision of mail-in ballot counting and to ensure the validity of the ballots being counted. On Nov. 6, Brindisi’s campaign filed a counterclaim asking for the same measures.

Over the next several months, the tally of votes remained in flux. Initially, Tenney was up by 28,422 votes. This lead dwindled to 264 votes by Nov. 20. Over the next month, the race shifted in Brindisi’s favor twice, with a lead of roughly a dozen votes each time. By Dec. 30, Tenney led by 29 votes — which increased to 122 at the end of Jan. — finally coming to the 109 vote lead which gave her the victory on Feb. 5. The final count shows Brindisi with 155,989 votes and Tenney with 156,098.

On Feb. 8, Brindisi released a statement on Twitter concerning the final results of the election. He congratulated Tenney on her victory and thanked his constituents while also touching upon the many issues which delayed the calling of this race.

“Unfortunately, this election and counting process was riddled with errors, inconsistencies and systematic violations of state and federal election laws,” Brindisi wrote in the statement. “My one disappointment is that the Court did not see fit to grant us a recount. Sadly, we may never know how many legal voters were turned away at the polls or ballots not counted due to the ineptitude of the Boards of Election, especially in Oneida County. My hope is some authority steps in and investigates the massive disenfranchisement of voters that took place during this election.”

Brindisi can still challenge the decision in an appeal and could also seek intervention from the House itself.

Brindisi’s statement alluded to the numerous issues in the election process which came to light during the legal battle. He specifically mentioned Oneida County, which had failed to process the voter applications of over 2,400 residents, thus making them ineligible to vote on Election Day. There was also an issue with the use of sticky notes to denote the reason a ballot was being challenged. A batch of disputed ballots had the notes fall off, causing election officials to be unsure whether the ballots had been counted or not.

Reagan Ingalls, a junior double-majoring in political science and psychology, was the social media coordinator for Binghamton Students for Brindisi, an organization that worked to help Brindisi get reelected. She believes the issues in the election system highlighted by the NY-22 race need to be remedied to ensure fair elections.

“I feel that the election boards across the district need to be better equipped for absentee turnout,” Ingalls wrote in an email. “This specific election may have been one of kind, in terms of the extent of absentee voting, however, we do not know how much longer COVID-19 will be a threat to a lot of in-person activities, and therefore our district needs to be better prepared for any absentee turnout.”