A judge has ruled against a motion made by legal representation of Jennifer Gilliland-Vanasdale but has also left the door open to revisit the ruling.
Judge Kenneth Valasek dismissed the emergency petition to stay election certification pending investigation into voter irregularity Thursday afternoon but he did so without prejudice meaning the motion can be re-filed.
At issue is language in the election code that only gives a judge standing to rule on requests like this if at least 10 petitioners swear that they experienced a violation of voting rights. Currently only one person has made such a claim to the court.
Attorney Sean Logue is Vanasdale’s representation in this filing.
“Since election day, many voters throughout Butler County have reached out to my client and have told us about all these different problems they had voting. We have one person who showed up on election day and was denied the right to vote and my client has a multitude of emails in which they say that they showed up trying to vote and that negative things happened. My goal right now is to go back to the office, reach out to these other people, and see if they’d be willing to put their name in writing to the court system to explain what has happened.”
According to attorney Matt McCune who is representing candidate William “Wink” Robinson, the current six vote margin for Democratic nominee for Butler County Court of Common Pleas should stand.
“What we’ve seen since Friday to this point, has become nothing but a disgrace and embarrassment. This is just someone who can’t accept a loss. What started out as misguided zeal has turned into a cycle of futility and a perversion of law. It’s over. It should be. This is someone who just can’t handle that. For the community and the voters and county employees and all the attorneys that are here, we should just end this, the voters spoke.”
The deadline for the election results to be certified is Tuesday so any motion regarding those results or official request for a recount would need to be made before then.