CT-02: Dem Courtney Loses 100 Votes Due To Error
The ultra-tight race for Connecticut's second district just got a heck of a lot closer. Dem Joe Courtney has lost some 100 votes due to a newly-discovered vote-counting error in the ongoing recount of the contest between him and GOP Rep. Rob Simmons, Connecticut's Norwich Bulletin is reporting:
The town clerk announced that “human error” provided 100 extra votes to Democratic challenger Joe Courtney in the 2nd Congressional District, narrowing the margin of his lead to 65 votes over U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons.One machine had 263 votes for Courtney, not 363, as recorded on election night, said Town Clerk Susan Coutu.
The total count for Courtney in Lebanon is 1,353 and 1,585 for Simmons, she said. “It was strictly human error,” Coutu said.
Thirty-five towns are set for a recanvassing today.
Courtney's previous lead of around 165 votes had led him to declare victory, but now his lead looks to have been shaved to 65. Updates on the other nine oustanding House races here.
I think it's somewhat disingenuous to say that the error caused him to "lose" votes. The error caused him to *gain* votes. Fixing the error just restored things to where they should have been. I mean, I hope he hangs on, but it's a good thing when votes are counted accurately.
November 13, 2006 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yikes! Hope no one else miscounted in Simmons favor.
November 13, 2006 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
This fails to comment that Democrats will certainly pick up 2 more seats, one in LA-02 when the run-off election between Jefferson & another Democrat occurs, and the second if John Barrow GA-12 is declared the winner.
Whatever happens in CT-02, it looks like 30 seats.
With CT-02 it's 31. The rest of the races look like close losses.
WI-08 seems totally up in the air right now with 50,000 votes to cast. Since Reichert is ahead by 3,120 votes Darcy Burner would need not quite 52% of the remaining absentee ballots to win. Not impossible, but it depends on where the ballots are from.
November 13, 2006 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is another issue we can thank Joe Lieberman for. Not only should Courtney have had an easier time of it, but Joe's vanity run also helped to turn out the Repugs for Shays. Next time HOJO threatens to caucus with the Repugs, we should tell him to go ahead and do it or we are going to see this again and again and..... He's going to turn on us anyway and the sooner we get rid of him, the better. EVEN IF WE LOOSE THE SENATE! Mark my word, his duplicity will come at the worst possible time AND SnowJob will AGAIN use Joe's statements as a validation of something really rotten. In the end, Joe will run and caucus with the Repugs, but not until his tricks have done more harm than having declared that he was a Repug, right after the election (or to be accurate, before).
With Joe as an example, Courtney will lose, because the voters of CT are (insert your own words here).
November 13, 2006 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink