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Matthew Ritter Defeats Ken Green by 2 Votes in Recount.

by Kevin Rennie

Hartford City Councilman Matthew Ritter has defeated State Representative Ken Green by 2 votes in the completed recount of the 1st House District Democratic primary. The 2-day recount concluded this afternoon in Bloomfield, left Green two votes shy of forcing a re-vote among the district’s Democrats. Ritter picked up 4 votes in Hartford on Monday.  Bloomfield’s vote count remained the same after 8 hours of counting.

5 comments

1 EdMfromBranford { 08.17.10 at 5:03 pm }

Now that is a shame. Ken Green is an excellent legislator who works very hard for his district and he’s an honest and decent guy.

I hope he comes back in two years and forces a primary.

2 grackle { 08.17.10 at 5:29 pm }

Any challenged ballots or rejected absentees locked away?

3 EdMfromBranford { 08.17.10 at 9:30 pm }

grackle, those all would have been taken into consideration during the recanvass.

4 Ken { 08.18.10 at 7:44 am }

The challenged ballots would NOT be reviewed during a recount.

5 EdMfromBranford { 08.18.10 at 10:18 am }

Ken, the proper terminology is “recanvass” not a “recount.” If you had said that challenge ballots would NOT be reviewed during a recanvass, you’d be correct but if there is a court ordered recount under 9-329a, I believe that challenge ballots would be reviewed.

I do remember a situation with a Democratic primary in Groton in 2006 where there was a one vote difference and there was a challenge ballot in a sealed envelope that was not counted on primary day. At some point, either during the recanvass or during a court ordered recount, the challenge ballot was indeed opened and counted making the primary a tie and the winner was decided by the flip of a coin.

So please forgive me if I was wrong but I do know that at least in that case, the challenge ballot was ultimately counted after the primary. The ballot ended up being a challenge ballot because the voter had registered to vote by mail and had never produced identification to the Registrars which is fine but his name was denoted with an asterisk on the voters list. He voted absentee for the primary and since no one had ever seen a proper ID from him nor did he include a photocopy of one in the outer envelope with his absentee ballot, his ballot wound up being a challenge ballot on primary day and was not initially counted.

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