A Connecticut judge was forced to throw out the results of a Democrat mayoral primary after surveillance videos showed possible ballot stuffing that a local judge said rendered the court "unable to determine the legitimate result."
This week, Superior Court Judge William Clark ordered a new Democratic primary due to the misconduct. He claimed that the number of tampered ballots found changed the results of the original election, according to NBC 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 wrote in his ruling, adding that the videos “are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties.”
Security footage allegedly shows people stuffing ballot boxes with numerous absentee votes.
According to Connecticut law, it is a state felony to be in possession of someone else’s ballot unless you are a “designee” for that person. Any individual who requests more than five absentee ballots must report to the town clerk where voters received the ballots.
Following the election results, Wanda Geter-Pataky, vice chair of the Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee, exercised her Fifth Amendment right in court several times after being asked if she was the person in the surveillance video stuffing “hundreds of absentee ballots” into a drop-box in the run-up to the September 12th primary.
It is worth pointing out that Geter-Pataky supports incumbent Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim.
More from NBC Connecticut:
The video evidence, exhibits, and testimony prove election fraud on a scale not seen in Connecticut – or anywhere else in the country – in recent history. Not only does the record prove election tampering, it was caught on video,” Gomes’ lawyers had written in a legal brief. They noted Gomes identified “multiple violations” of absentee ballot violations, including “hundreds of absentee ballots” cast by “party operatives,” which show the reliability of the primary results to be “seriously in doubt.”
Mayor Ganim was convicted of corruption during his first term in office but was elected again after being released from prison.
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