At the November 8, 2011 in Derby, Connecticut, one of the Democratic Party nominees for a seat on the Board of Apportionment and Taxation was James R. Butler. However, whoever prepared the ballots erroneously listed him as James J. Butler. It happens that the town does have a resident by that name, and he is the son of James R. Butler. According to this news story, the Connecticut Secretary of State has ruled that James J. Butler has therefore been elected, even though he apparently doesn’t want the job.
The Connecticut Secretary of State’s ruling seems faulty. There may be other relevant facts that the news story doesn’t mention. One wonders what the Secretary of State would have said if no one by the name of James J. Butler lives in Derby, or if there were several people in the town with that name. Thanks to Randall Hayes for the link.
How about Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, etc. errors ???
One more vacancy special election ???
More expansive articles say that the Democratic Party’s Certificate of Nomination named the son; and that the SOS was making its ruling based on what they were told by the registrar in Derby. It makes a more entertaining news article to focus on the son who doesn’t want the office.
A pretty funny paragraph from one article says that the father noticed his son’s name on the ballot, but didn’t pursue it because he had ‘family matters’ to attend to.
“In fact, he noticed the error on the ballot on Election Day and brought it to the attention of party members and elections moderators, but he had family issues to attend to and it was not resolved, he said.”
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I live just a couple towns over — I will get a copy of the Certificate of Endorsement on Monday. My suspicion is that the party put no initial and someone in the town-side process added one (the old practice in CT, which was changed this year, was for the Town Clerk to change whatever the party listed to conform with whatever it said on the voter registration list.)
#4 That might be possible. The father and son live on the same street, and have the same birthday, so someone could have looked it up and picked the wrong one. All the candidates on the ballot were shown with a middle initial, so maybe they “have to have one”.
Or it is possible that someone might have been aware that though they had the same name, they had a different middle initial (sort of like the Adams or Bush presidents) but got them confused.
Most sane regimes send a copy of proof ballot to the candidates listed in the candidate paperwork.
One more INSANE regime — among many ???