Voters in one Connecticut community are scheduled to go to the polls next week in a mayoral election for which the results of the Democratic primary were thrown out Wednesday.
Superior Court Judge William Clark tossed out the results of a Sept. 12 primary in Bridgeport after video emerged showing an individual who was alleged to have been a supporter of Democratic Mayor Joe Ganim stuffing multiple ballots in an absentee ballot drop box.
Ganim defeated challenger John Gomes by 251 votes, trailing him in the in-person voting but riding the absentee ballots to victory, according to WNPR-FM in Connecticut.
“The volume of ballots so mishandled is such that it calls the result of the primary election into serious doubt and leaves the court unable to determine the legitimate result of the primary,” Clark said in his ruling.
The results, he wrote, “are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties.”
Connecticut law requires that only a voter or a voter’s designee can drop a ballot in an absentee ballot collection box.
The case went to court after Gomes sued to have the results of the primary thrown out.
This is the OUTRAGEOUS video of the Democrat Clerk stuffing illegal ballots into the City drop box and visiting it multiple times in one day
This video was leaked by a whistleblower inside the City and @gatewaypundit helped share it with the world pic.twitter.com/XRUl52PtYZ
— George (@BehizyTweets) November 1, 2023
As if there wasn't already enough evidence against them, the City's Registrar of Voters admitted under oath in court that she had been violating the law on mail-in ballots for years (she has been in her position for over 20 years) pic.twitter.com/JSXsNtLJ9c
— George (@BehizyTweets) November 1, 2023
“At the end of the day, the videos don’t lie,” said lawyer Bill Bloss, who represented Gomes.
“The videos showed substantial, massive absentee ballot misconduct,” he said. “And that was certainly a substantial reason why the judge ruled the way he did, I think.”
“This is a victory for the people of Bridgeport,” Gomes said, according to The Associated Press. “Our campaign always believed that the integrity of our democratic process must be upheld, and Superior Court Judge William Clark agreed.”
The judge has no authority to halt an election, so voting is still set for Tuesday, according to the Hartford Courant.