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| Members of the Kepi team demonstrating the list of Albanians who were denied the vote |
Marko Kepi, the Republican candidate for the New York City Council, in a statement to the media has clarified the public opinion about the clash in the Counting Commission, the lawsuit for racism and manipulation of results as a result of not counting the Albanian votes.
Marko Kepi accuses Georgia Kontzamanis, with the position of Director of the CEC in New York, which according to Marko has tried every possibility inside and outside the law that Albanians in Staten Island New York should not have their votes counted, as Illyria reports.
A direct attack on Kepi along with other Greek-American politicians has made it possible to deny the vote count of 370 Albanians, while Albanian politicians in New York are silent. Georgia, according to Marko Kepi, is an activist of the Greek Community in New York and one of the Leaders of the Greek Parade in Manhattan where every year they march with slogans "Vorio Epirus" and various propaganda.
One case worth mentioning is when Marko organized the Parade for Chameria in the heart of New York, he says that Georgia used its power within the Republican Party itself to get Senator Golden to fire Kepi from office and his premises, where Kepi has long been part of Senator Marty Golden's staff, but the latter has categorically refused to take action.
In the Assembly campaign that Kepi ran against Michael Tannousis, Kepi says she ran the Greco-American campaign against Kepi and did everything she could to prevent newly registered Albanians from voting in the "primary" vote, which cost to Kepi about 800 votes.
While this year that mathematically Kepi has won, he says that Georgia Kontzamanis has stopped counting 370 Albanian votes and the CEC gave Kepi only 7 days to contact 370 Albanians to sign the form where they confirmed that they have voted and the vote of to be counted. Due to the short time frame and many Albanians were on vacation, Kepi's team secured 330 firms out of 370 which again secured to Kepi the victory with 130 votes more. The New York State CEC ordered that each vote be counted on July 15. When the counting of the 156 envelopes that opened, 155 votes belonged to Kepi. At that moment, the local CEC Staten Island stopped counting the remaining 175 votes and called them "invalid". Today Kepi's opponent is only 41 votes ahead which takes this race under the law to court and to recount each vote from the start of the process.