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The magic of absentee ballots miraculously overturning an in-person election was on full display in Bridgeport, CT, on election day. But this is not just another “miraculous” come-from-behind win by a Democrat in the wee hours of the morning. Not just another case of just enough votes being found in the drop box and PO Box to squeak out another victory from the jaws of defeat. Nor is it another reminder that the quaint notion of showing up at the polls on election day, while adorable, isn’t what pushes candidates across the finish line in the after-hours counting.
The winner of Tuesday’s election in the largest city in Connecticut is incumbent Democrat Joe Ganim, who seems to have found 175 more absentee ballots than his opponent and former assistant John Gomes. It was just enough to overturn Gomes’s win in the in-person voting. But in this case, the voters may actually get another bite at the rotten apple that is Bridgeport politics, a redo of sorts.
The courts found last week that egregious drop box cheating may have given Ganim the win in the Democrat primary, so they have ordered a new primary. But the court couldn’t order a new general election. It seems city surveillance videos caught some purported Ganim supporters shoveling handfuls of ballots into drop boxes before the primary. “The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all of the parties,” Superior Court Judge William Clark wrote. “These instances do not appear to the court to be random.” Ya think?
Bridgeport has a reputation as the slowest vote counter in state-wide elections, and in a close race always manages to push the Democrats over the finish line. In a tight race a few years ago, the city supposedly ran out of ballots on election day, so an obliging judge ordered polls to remain open for two hours after the rest of the state had finished voting as bags of new ballots were transported to the polls.
