State Sen. Len Suzio, R-13th, who lost his Senate seat to Democratic challenger Dante Bartolomeo on Election Day by a 1 percent margin, has petitioned the secretary of the state for a recount based on errors and a conflict of interest.
In a two-page letter to Suzio acknowledges the margin between his and Bartolomeo's votes does not automatically qualify the race for a recount.
"The election for State Senate District 13 was an historically close election with an apparent difference of only 238 votes out of nearly 40,000 ballots separating my opponent and I," Suzio writes to Merrill.
"I am aware that the current count difference exceeds the threshold for an automatic recount of 198 by a mere 40 votes."
Suzio, however, raises three main areas of contention:
- That he and Bartolomeo ran on five different party lines as opposed to the traditional two categories, possibly causing confusion, he says.
- The secretary of state's new procedures and a new system for allocating and compiling “unknown” votes was so novel, it created a "much higher potential for confusion and mistakes by election officials."
- The head moderator in Meriden was the campaign treasurer for Bartolomeo, which he considers a conflict of interest.
Suzio goes on to say there were vote tally problems in Middletown, a disabled vote machine in Meriden, and a double-counting incident in Cheshire of Bartolomeo's Working Families votes. No mention is made in the letter of any such incidents in Middlefield.
"We believe the above facts demonstrate a reasonable cause to review the vote counts in District 13," Suzio writes.
