Republican nominee Tom Foley has just conceded the Connecticut gubernatorial race to Democrat Dan Malloy. And he went the extra mile at his press conference, too, telling all of his supporters that despite some irregularities and errors in the vote-counting process, Malloy positively did win the race by a narrow margin. And as such, he will not legally contest the election.
Foley said that his campaign team examined various irregularities that did occur, particularly in the city of Bridgeport — where an under-printing of ballots resulted in non-regulation photocopied ballots, polls being kept open longer, and various problems in the count that even included a bag of ballots being found — to determine whether changes to the totals in that city or elsewhere could potentially reverse Malloy’s lead of several thousand votes. In the end, he said, they determined that the vote totals could not change by more than several hundred votes.
“Once all this information was available to me this morning, deciding what to do was easy,” Foley said. “I have told my team that I am not willing to pursue a legal challenge to exclude photocopied ballots. Despite their irregularity, I believe that they do represent the will of well-intentioned voters, and should be included in the results.”
Foley further explained that the election was a genuine victory for Malloy, “And this result should not be questioned. I hope my supporters will accept my word on this. As soon as I am done with this press conference, I will call Dan Malloy to congratulate him on winning the election, and wish him good luck.”
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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