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.