Mayoral Primary Tossed over Absentee Voter Fraud in Bridgeport
| Absentee Voter Fraud in Bridgeport, CT Prompts New Election |
Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city has been in the news for years due to apparent rampant voter fraud. In the latest development, a judge has thrown out the results of the September 2023 mayoral primary election after video evidence and other documentation of irregularities came to light indicating significant absentee ballot fraud and illegal ballot harvesting. The originally reported results had incumbent mayor Joe Ganim defeating his challenger for the Democrat nomination, John Gomes by just 251 votes.
Not so fast, said Judge William Clark, who said he had seen enough evidence of malfeasance to order a redo of the razor-thin election.
Video evidence submitted to the court reportedly shows several people stuffing multiple absentee ballots into outdoor ballot collection boxes.
“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.
Incumbent mayor Joe Ganim, had previously been convicted of corruption during his first term as mayor, but astoundingly, was reelected to the post after his release from prison.
Though Ganim denies any wrongdoing by his campaign, one person seen depositing multiple absentee ballots in the video evidence was identified by challenger Gomes as Wanda Geter-Pataky, a known Ganim campaign staffer and vice chair of the Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee. In court, Geter-Pataky invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to answer further questions, according to the Associated Press.
Under Connecticut law, ballot harvesting (submitting the ballots of other people) is expressly prohibited.
See other examples of Voter Fraud in the News.
