Yesterday was the first court date for the challenged ballot in the recount in the Sixth Worcester District. You may recall that the election between Geraldo Alicea and Peter Durant looks to be a dead tie, if all ballots are counted. The details are here. Interesting reading for political junkies. Here is the link to the photographic image of the “spoiled ballot.”
There are other threads here and here in which there is some discussion of the issue.
It is worth noting that the lawyer for the Republican candidate is alleging irregularities. It would seem that in this case the remedy for irregularities would be to hold a new election, not to invalidate a specific ballot.
Do you know anyone in Southbridge or the surrounding towns in the district? Start getting them register to vote! It looks like we’ll be hitting the campaign trail soon. It will be a great chance to build our ground game!
The normal procedure if a voter does an overvote as this voter did in the governor’s race, (which causes the machine to spit the ballot out) is to mark the ballot as spoiled and give them a new one. Obviously you cannot do that with absentee voters and the correct procedure is to hand count any absentee ballots that the machine rejects. I can excuse the poll workers for making a mistake. There are a lot of rules to remember. I cannot, however, excuse the Southbridge election commission for not correcting their error. It’s their job to be the local experts on election matters. That they would think this ballot was actually “spoiled” because of an overvote in one race is ridiculous. Spoiled ballots refer to ballots that election workers discard. There’s no way that an absentee voter’s ballot could ever be spoiled.
Durant won on November 2nd. He won the recount. Now you need to “flip a few more votes.” Perhaps a few more voters that claim they were denied in Southbridge? It’s clear that Alicea wants a new election since he didn’t take the first one seriously and has more in his account than Durant. The voter did not vote for Patrick/Murray. He only filled in 10-20% of the oval for Alicea. But we should count it, because we’re 100% sure that was his intention right?
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p>Face it. Durant won. Barely, but he won. The voters voice was heard on November 2nd, and they decided that they didn’t want Alicea to serve them anymore. These recounts and crying in court reveal his true colors. He’d be better served to admit defeat, repair his image and run again in two years.