Patricia R. Doxsey is reporting for the Daily Freeman acting state Supreme Court justice Edward McLoughlin has ordered the Dutchess County Board of Elections to open seven absentee ballots cast in the town of Stanford elections last month. The validity of those ballots had been challenged by the Republicans, prompting the attorney for the Democratic candidates to withdraw his objection to five contested absentee ballots cast by the GOP, according to Democratic Elections Commissioner Hannah Black. Black said McLoughlin decided the seven ballots contested by Republicans had to be opened because there was no legal challenge to their validity. “The seven should have technically been opened … before we went to court,” she said. The votes cast on the 12 ballots in question did not change the outcome of the election, Black said. Following the court's ruling, Dutchess County Republican Elections Commissioner Erik Haight released a statement in which he said he was “gratified the court ordered the Board of Elections to count all the ballots. The Democrats tried to pull a stunt to only count the Democratic absentees and discard the Republican ballots,...” Haight said. Committee or candidate challenges to the validity of absentee and affidavit ballots are not unusual. Those ballots are sometimes set aside for three days, then counted, provided no court action has been filed. In the Stanford case, Treybich filed an order to show cause in state Supreme Court involving the five ballots he challenged, which he and Black said blocked the Board of Elections from opening the ballots until a court determined their validity. There was no court action filed challenging the validity of the seven ballots to which Republicans objected. Read more in the Daily Freeman.