Greenport Village to Count 2027 Election Ballots by Hand

Greenport, the North Fork’s only village, will count ballots for its 2027 elections by hand rather than using machines called tabulators, according to Village Clerk Candace Hall.

“The Suffolk County Board of Elections made a decision to stop providing the ballot counters, or they’re called tabulators, to villages in Suffolk County,” Hall said to Dan’s Papers. “They also this would also include school board votes and basically any election that the Suffolk County doesn’t run themselves. So we fall under that umbrella and made the decision to hand count our ballots, as opposed to purchasing very expensive equipment to count the ballots for us.”

According to Hall, it’s not necessarily new for the village, as for its 2025 elections – which saw Trustees Mary Bess Phillips and Julia Robins re-elected – Greenport counted ballots by hand.

“We had a viable write-in candidate,” Hall added. “And by viable, I mean she came within under 20 votes of becoming a trustee. So with that said, it’s, again, not uncharted territory. It’s not something totally new. There are other villages across the island and in the county that do this practice as well.”

Greenport is only home to roughly 2,500 year-round, voting residents, with only a couple hundred coming out to vote in the elections.

“It’s totally manageable process and definitely an efficient process,” Hall said.

The village anticipates higher turnout in 2027 compared to 2025, however, as 2025 was a race for two trustee seats; 2027 will be a race for mayor and two trustee seats.

No candidates have currently announced plans to run for Greenport’s top job in 2027. Incumbent Mayor Kevin Stuessi, who defeated former two-term Mayor George Hubbard in 2023, told Dan’s Papers that same year that he had committed to only running for one term, then “hopefully handing off the keys to somebody else.”