Judges Deciding Elections

In San Diego, on February 2 a judge ruled he would not overturn incumbent Mayor Dick Murphy's re-election., despite the fact that more voters intended to vote for Councilperson Donna Frye than Murphy or Republican challenger Ron Roberts on Election Day, and actually marked their ballots clearly, they did not follow state election law which insists that for write-in ballots to be counted, the voter must allow fill in an oval next to the write-in option.

In New York, also on February 2, a judge ruled that 228 of 550 contested ballots must be counted in a contested State Senate race between the third most powerful incumbent Republican in the State Senate and Democratic Westchester County legislator Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Currently Spano has a 58-vote lead out of nearly 127 000 votes cast. Almost all of the 228 provisional ballots which the judge ruled to be counted are from registered Democrats, though Democrats have held a 20,000 thousand registration edge in the district held by Nicholas Spano for decades.

In Washington State today, a judge refused to dismiss Republican Dino Rossi's challenge to the election of Democrat Christine Gregoire as Governor of Washington. The judge also refused to cede jurisdiction to the State Supreme Court of Washington. Gregoire won the election after trailing on election day and in a machine recount. Her margin of victory after a hand recount of 2.9 million votes was 129. The judge also later ruled that regardless of his decision on the merits of their case, he will not order a re-vote of the gubernatorial election.