Judge upholds re-election of San Diego mayor

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Thu, Feb. 03, 2005

Judge upholds re-election of San Diego mayor

By MICHELLE MORGANTE
Associated Press


SAN DIEGO - A state judge on Wednesday upheld the disputed re-election of Dick Murphy as mayor of the nation's seventh largest city, rejecting arguments that election officials improperly excluded thousands of write-in ballots for his closest challenger.

Superior Court Judge Michael Brenner heard arguments by supporters of City Councilwoman Donna Frye that the San Diego County registrar of voters should have counted 5,551 ballots, which could have tipped the Nov. 8 election. Murphy won by 2,108 votes.

After a series of legal challenges, Murphy was sworn into office on Dec. 8.

On the disputed ballots, voters had written Frye's name in a write-in space but failed to darken an optical-scan bubble.
(snip/...)

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/state/10805442.htm

[mandyky]

1. CA has a recall law

If Frye has thesupport, I say start collecting signatures for that!

[HawkerHurricane]

2. She wouldn't win.

Much as I admire Ms. Frye, and think she'd make a marvelous mayor, the truth is that she only did as well as she did because the two people she was running her write in campaign against were both Republicans. The Repubs split thier votes, and she got all the Dem/Left/Liberal votes. A revote or run off would have a united Repubican party vs. Donna Frye. A recall would face two hurdles; getting enough votes (50%+1) to get Dick Murphy out AND then getting a majority of the votes, with every Repub voting to keep Murphy and for whatever Repub that was running for the office.
Not to mention that this was the run off election: that should tell you something, that the run off after the primary had two Repubs facing each other.

[Moderator]

3. duplicate topic

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1207678