A reminder that these are the kinds of tactics to expect from a typical Republican running for election:

(From the article)

The Republican voters argued in their lawsuit that Democrats couldn’t claim Krommidas was dead because authorities still considered him a missing person. They pointed to a New York state law that someone is presumed dead after being “absent for a continuous period of three years”.

Better a dead democrat than a live republican...?

It's pretty obvious Krommidas has met an unfortunate fate. This law on the books about assuming an individual dead only after being missing for three years is surely meant for when a husband goes out for cigarettes, not when all the worldly possessions of a person training for a triathlon are left waiting by the water.

The judge's Ballotpedia is lacking recent information, but in 2017 he ran in an election under the republican banner so just based on that, it's not surprising to me he chose to follow the letter of the law here as doing so will ultimately benefit the republicans on the ballot come November.