Teamster Vote Count Crawls Along

Vote counting in the bitter fight for the Teamsters presidency is proving painfully slow, prompting supporters of challenger James P. Hoffa to question the integrity of the process.

By today, a federally appointed overseer had tallied less than 1 percent of the votes cast in the race between the son of labor legend Jimmy Hoffa and self-styled reformer Ron Carey, the incumbent.

Officials had expected 10 percent of the estimated 486,000 ballots would be counted Tuesday. Returns from several locals were counted out of order and some counts were left unfinished until today.

“All of this gives me continued reason to be concerned about the integrity of the process,” said Hoffa campaign manager Tom Pazzi.

The Hoffa campaign filed a complaint with the election officer today, saying that several irregularities “threaten to undermine the confidence of rank-and-file members in the accuracy and integrity of the count.”