Hoffman, talking absentees, doesn't have his facts right

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman was on Glenn Beck's radio program Monday where, in a two-minute span, he managed to get three facts about the 23rd Congressional District election results wrong.

Mr. Hoffman told the conservative commentator that he's within "a little over 2,000 votes" from Democrat Bill Owens. In fact, he was 3,176 votes behind Mr. Owens before absentees were counted and allegedly 2,951 after absentees in three counties he won were counted. (I only say "allegedly" because I haven't had an opportunity to get these numbers myself.)

The candidate then said twice that there were 10,000 absentee votes to be counted - although there were never more than 7,419 absentee ballots returned and, according to the Gouverneur Times, there are 6,123 left.

Finally, Mr. Hoffman says "there's a lot of military votes coming in and militaries tend to go with the conservative." But Jefferson County had the largest segment of military voters, and they received a less than 8.5 percent return. (Six hundred five ballots were sent out; 51 were returned.)

Mr. Hoffman said he needs to win between 56 and 65 percent of the absentee vote to win, although I've previously discussed how impractical, yet technically possible, a win will be to achieve.