In Ulster County, election commissioners are preparing to launch a recount in the race for Ulster County DA. This comes after Republican candidate Mike Kavanagh announced Tuesday he would allow a county mandated recount.

The Ulster County Board of Elections declared Democratic Candidate Dave Clegg the winner last Wednesday by just 77 votes pending appeal or a hand count. 

The recount is required by an Ulster County law that says if candidates of an election of this size come within .2 percent of votes of each other, then an automatic recount will be launched unless the candidate with fewer votes waives that recount. 

Election commissioners tell us the recount could be a long difficult process for their staff of 12 that could cost their department at least $16,000. They ask the public be patient with the process. 

"With the full recount we will now count all the paper ballots that were cast in the voting systems so all 50,000 plus votes that were cast for this election will be recounted once again just for the DA's race," said Republican Elections Commissioner Tom Turco.  

"I know it is very frustrating, people don't understand all of the complexities of what goes into putting on elections but we have a very vigorous system that we follow very closely," said Ashley Dittus, the Democratic election commissioner. 

Election commissioners told us they hope that recount will be completed in early January, but If the election is not decided by January 1, Kavanagh will take over as acting DA since he is the current assistant DA.