In January, voters in Bridgeport, Connecticut, will head to the polls for an unusual contest: a court-ordered redo of the city’s Democratic mayoral primary.
The Jan. 23 election will determine whether Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim fairly won his party’s nomination for mayor. If he loses, the city will have another mayoral general election in February, with his rival running as the Democratic nominee.
Ganim won in the September Democratic primary for mayor by 251 votes, but opponent John Gomes quickly alleged election fraud, releasing surveillance video of a Ganim supporter allegedly dropping stacks of absentee ballots into a drop box.
In Connecticut, there are strict laws on who can return a voter’s completed ballot, and the practice of collecting large numbers of ballots and returning them for others — often called ballot harvesting — is illegal.
In early November, a state judge said there was “shocking” evidence of wrongdoing — enough to call into question the results of the primary race. The judge ordered a new primary election, while acknowledging that he couldn’t stop the general election from taking place days later, which Ganim won.
Ganim has led the city on and off for decades: He served five terms as mayor before he was convicted of corruption crimes in 2003, and then was elected twice more after his release from prison. He won again in November, but he’ll need a third victory in January to secure his eighth term.
Ganim did not respond to a request for comment, but he has accused his rival of similar election wrongdoing.
“I own the fact that the court found people connected with my campaign engaged in serious voting irregularities,” Ganim told reporters in December, according to the Connecticut Mirror. He also demanded his opponent admit that “multiple people associated with his campaign engaged in clearly unlawful ballot behavior in the primary as well.”
In an email to NBC News, Gomes said that the city and mayor had declined to…
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