— — The last unresolved election in New York state was finally settled Friday afternoon as erstwhile City of Tonawanda Councilman Richard Slisz snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

Slisz, the Democratic incumbent in the city’s Third Ward, grabbed headlines in November after losing by just one vote to Republican challenger Augustine Beyer. In light of the slim margin, the matter has since been tied up in court.

All of that changed on Friday when lawyers for both sides abruptly opted to simply recount 861 ballots still sealed inside the voting machine. The final count: 436 for Slisz, 435 for Beyer.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Beyer said. “I sat at a table and Richard won. More power to him.”

 In a dimly lit room at the Erie County Board of Elections in Buffalo, just around the corner from the court house where the candidates had gathered for a court appearance, Slisz’s lawyer, Peter Reese, found what he was looking for: two votes for Slisz.

“I didn’t expect to find it but that was the thing I was looking for,” Reese said of one missing ballot that machine never scanned, and one incorrectly completed ballot indicating support for his client — support neither election commissioner nor Beyer’s attorney Emilio Colaiacovo object to.

The second vote found is at the center of what Reese said is wrong with the new voting machines used in New York state for the past two years — in which a resident voted by circling the target area but not filling it in.

“That’s an example of a vote than cannot be scanned by a voting machine. God only knows how many have been cast like that in the last two years in New York state.”

Of the vote that was never registered, Reese said there’s no good reason other than flawed machines.

“Nobody knows, it’s a mystery why the machine didn’t scan it. These machines don’t scan every ballot. They miss votes,” he said.

State law requires that voter intent be considered, whether or not the machines register the vote.

Reese, Colaiacovo and elections commissioners Dennis Ward and Ralph Mohr were present for the roughly two-hour recount. During a counting of votes in the fourth of four districts making up the city’s third Ward, the two objectionable ballots were found.

“All it takes is one vote,” Slisz said. “My contention was always that there were two missing ballots. I guess they found them.”

The revised outcome has not yet been certified, as Colaiacovo said he’d like to take the weekend to discuss the matter with Beyer, before Judge Walker will also be asked to review the results.

But Colaiacovo didn’t object when Reese asked him flatly whether he had any issues with what was uncovered.

“The vote speaks for itself,” he later said. “My client always wanted to make sure that everything went properly and that a representative was in place. This was probably the only way to circumvent the circus that this would have become.”

An appeal for a recount of the results was initially denied by Walker in December, before being sent to the state’s appellate division, where after weeks of review, the case was handed back down to the lower court.

But as far as the courts are concerned, Walker made it abundantly clear the outcome would not constitute a precedent for future state elections where razor-thin win/loss margins are concerned.

“It’s a settlement. No settlement is binding on a future court,” attorney James Ostrowski, who was present in court, said.

That’s troublesome for Reese, who contends the lack of a state protocol to automatically warrant a recount of such close races constitutes a major flaw in state elections. Further, he argued that a differential standard is created since it’s routine to physically inspect paper ballots such as absentee and affidavit votes, but not the paper trail created inside of voting machines.

“It’s a perfect example of what’s wrong with election law, and what’s next is we go to the legislature and demand that there be some changes made,” Reese said. “This is an example of why we need to be able to look at (paper ballots), and if we can’t look at them then why do we have them? How many other close elections in the last two years in New York state have been decided incorrectly because these machines can’t do what they’re supposed to do?”

Beyer, who took the news about as well as could be expected, said he will inevitably stay involved in local affairs going forward.

“We put a lot of time and effort into an election I probably had no business even coming close in,” he said. “I’m 27 years old. I’ll be a strong supporter of this community. You haven’t seen the last of me,” he said.