The special election in NY-26, which has been dominated by headlines about the Paul Ryan budget to end Medicare, will end at 9pm ET tonight. Jane Corwin isn’t waiting to take precautions: she’s already got herself a court order barring certification of a winner.

Jane L. Corwin this afternoon obtained a court order from State Supreme Court Justice Russell P. Buscaglia barring a certification of a winner in the special 26th Congressional District race pending a show-cause hearing before him later this week [...]

Chris Grant, a spokesman for the Corwin campaign, said the court action “is very typical” in such close elections.

“We recognize the closeness of the race and we want to make sure that every legal vote is counted fairly and accurately,” Grant said.

Paul B. Wojtaszek, Buscaglia’s law clerk, said such prospective court actions are permissible under the state’s Election Law when a close vote is borne out by pre-voting polling.

While this is just a preliminary measure in the event of a close race which could trigger a recount, it shows that Corwin is ready quite early for the post-election gamesmanship. However, with the polls trending against her in the final week, she may not have the opportunity to use that court order, if the margin is so big that no recount is required.

Meanwhile, for some comic relief, treat yourself to this story from Ian Murphy at the Buffalo Beast. Murphy is the Green Party candidate for this Congressional seat, but in a stunt, he posed as a campaign worker for Corwin and actually made phone calls on her behalf yesterday. The response shouldn’t be encouraging to the Republican candidate:

“Hi, sir, my name’s Steve and I’m a volunteer for the Jane Corwin campaign–”

“Jesus!” a guy screams at me. “You know, I was thinking about voting for Corwin, but this is too much! You people have called me a dozen times in the last two days! I am sick of it!”

“But Jane Corwin wants to rule over you with an iron fist,” I calmly relay. “Don’t you crave strong leadership?”

“What?!” he balks. “An ‘iron fist’?”

“Yes,” I assure him. “These phone calls are just the beginning. When Jane’s in Congress she will do everything in her power to crush you mentally and physically.”

“Don’t call me again!” he says and slams down the receiver.

Genius. Again, we’ll see the results of the race between Corwin, Murphy, Democrat Kathy Hochul and Tea Party candidate Jack Davis tonight.