Connecticut Judge William Clark nullified the Sept. 12 mayoral primary election results in Bridgeport on Wednesday due to voter fraud, according to the Connecticut Mirror.
The general election was scheduled to take place Nov. 7 but will be pushed back until a Democratic primary reelection occurs. The court ruling requires a date to be set within 10 days of Nov. 1.
The Democratic mayoral candidates were businessman John Gomes and former Mayor Joe Ganim.
Ganim served as mayor of Bridgeport from 1991 to 2003 and at the end of his fifth consecutive term served nine years in prison for 16 felony accounts, including mail fraud, racketeering, bribery, conspiracy and “filing false income tax returns,” according to a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office District of Connecticut.
Leading up to the Sept. 12 primary election, 420 people cast 1,255 absentee ballots at four drop boxes, the Deseret News reported. Under Connecticut law, absentee votes must be delivered either by relatives and caregivers or sent by mail, but surveillance footage shows a woman on Ganim’s campaign staff, allegedly Wanda Geter-Pataky, stuffing a ballot box with white envelopes.
Connecticut Superior Court Judge William Clark wrote in the Nov. 1 court ruling, “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.”
“The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties,” he added.
Clark wrote, “To disregard the significant mishandling of ballots by partisans that were caught on video flouting the provisions of Connecticut law ... endorse(s) this blatant practice of ballot harvesting.”
Geter-Pataky pleaded the Fifth multiple times in court, remaining silent when asked if she was the woman in the surveillance footage. ABC 7 NY also reported that a current city council candidate also refused to answer when asked if Geter-Pataky was the woman in the videos.
The court ruling “is a victory for the people of Bridgeport,” Gomes told The Associated Press. “Our campaign always believed that the integrity of our democratic process must be upheld and Superior Court Judge William Clark agreed.”
Connecticut Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, a Republican, said in a statement, “These videos confirm our fears about how absentee ballots can be misused. Now the court has spoken.”