Did Danbury Republicans Violate State Election Laws?
The Secretary of State's office are pointing fingers at Danbury Republicans for keeping Gregg Seabury's name on the ballot for today's general election.
State officials, who are Democrats, are threatening legal action against the Danbury Republican Committee if any of the votes cast for Gregg Seabury, who passed away on Saturday, are counted by election officials. The Democrats may even seek a court injunction and other civil action if officials attempt to count Seabury’s votes.
According to newstimes.com, the law states that any candidate who dies within 24 days of an election but not before 24 hours should either be replaced on the ballot or their name be removed. Seabury, the City Council candidate, died on Saturday afternoon, and Republicans are claiming that no one at the State level could be reached over the weekend, and the first chance they had to contact anyone was Monday, well within the 24 hour limit to have to change or remove a candidate from the ballot.
City Council President, Joe Cavo, reacted to the possible threat of legal action by the town's Democratic Committee.
Since Seabury died on Saturday afternoon, all the ballots for the city had already been printed and distributed out to all the voting locations, everything was already in play. There's no way to retract and reprint 28 thousand ballots for the city of Danbury between Saturday Night and Tuesday.
I'm sure our city attorneys are involved in this, and they have looked at this from a legal standpoint. We're all very sad that Gregg passed away, but no one knew that was going to happen and we were going ahead with a full campaign that we normally would.
Danbury Democratic Town Committee chairman Gene Eriquez told newtimes.com that the Republican plan violates the law:
They can’t just replace the position like a vacancy if Seabury were to win, state law doesn’t allow for that. It’s a very tragic situation that has brought us here, but we have a responsibility to make sure the elections are fair for everyone.
Cavo speculates that this is just a political ploy by the Democrats to take advantage of a situation that's very sad.
I think it's very disgraceful of the democratic leadership to take this approach in this hour of the game, it really shows desperation as far as I'm concerned. It's typical of our state government, it's such a disaster. This is the type of thing that makes people so disgusted in politics.
As for the final outcome of this debate between the parties, Cavo is sure it will be decided by the lawyers.
We'll follow whatever the state law is, it's all going to have to get sorted out after the election, however this is late game politic's at it's worst.
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