A Superior Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a South Windsor Democratic candidate for Town Council who said he was denied a seat despite the will of the voters on Election Day.
Harrison Amadasun, a Democratic candidate for Town Council, is named as a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in November against Town Clerk Bonnie Armstrong.
According to the dismissal issued this week, Superior Court Judge Susan Cobb concluded that Amadasun did not establish that he was aggrieved by Armstrong’s decision, which is required under state statutes.
Members of the Democratic Town Committee said at the time of the filing that voters elected six Democrats and three Republicans to the Town Council. Voters had also approved charter revisions that Democrats say were not meant to take effect until the next election cycle.
Republicans countered that the charter revisions were in effect, and now restrict a supermajority, so Democrats could only maintain a 5-4 majority, which they currently do. Democrats said this basically nullified thousands of legitimate votes and stripped Amadasun (3,847 votes) of his seat, and handed it over to Republican Rick Balboni (2,937 votes).
Amadasun received the sixth largest number of votes of a nominated Democratic candidate for the town council, according to the decision, but because the charter revision limited the number of members to nine, only five members of the majority party, in this case the Democratic Party, could be seated, leaving Amadasun without a seat.
“The town clerk’s determination occurred after the election was over, the votes were counted and there were no claims regarding the number of votes each candidate for town council received. Her decision was not applicable to ‘the election process’ but involved an after-election application of the revised charter, the effective date provision,” Cobb wrote.
While the state legislature does allow candidates to access the courts in limited election-related cases, Cobb wrote, “This is not the type of determination or ‘ruling’ in connection with the election process that the legislature had in mind when they created the expedited election procedures.”
Armstrong’s determination was made in conformity with the charter revisions, according to the decision, “and the defendant was merely applying and abiding by the law,” the decision states.
That ruling aligned with the argument made by Armstrong’s attorneys, Richard D. Carella and Brian C. Hoeing, had made in their motion to dismiss.
“Defendant was not acting as an election official when following the Charter’s Section 203 mandate that: ‘At no time will there be more than a bare majority of any one political party on the Town Council’ or the Section 1005(b) requirement that the amendment was effective the day following passage of the referendum,” the two wrote.
Democrats said on Wednesday that they are still looking at their options, including an appeal, since they said the judge had not ruled on the core merits of the case.
“What is not in dispute is this: on Election Day, voters across South Windsor cast their ballots, those ballots were counted, and the result was clear. Voters elected Harrison Amadasun to the South Windsor Town Council,” South Windsor Democratic Town Committee Chair Anitha Elango said in a statement issued Wednesday.