The runner up
The May 8th Republican primary for OH-12, the open seat being vacated by Pat Tiberi at the end of his term, was won narrowly by Troy Balderson, who hails from Muskingum County. Balderson and his principal opponent Melanie Leneghan, each more “true conservative” than thou, ran negative campaigns, each seeking to out-Trump the other. Leneghan was the Trumpiest, and was endorsed by the Orange One. She did not take her loss lightly, and over the last weeks has been calling for recounts and alleging various election irregularities.
Well, now she has filed an “action of mandamus” in the Ohio Supreme Court asking to overturn the primary result and of course be awarded the nomination by acclamation bigly.
It seems like a lot of nonsense, but nice to see the GOP’s autoimmune deficiency in action, with accusations of ballot box stuffing and vote destruction no less, with Ohio Secretary of State John Husted named in the complaint.
Upon further review of historical data, the voting irregularities and recorded results, supports that the votes were tampered with by stuffing the ballot box and destroying or throwing away a large number of ballots.
The seat is currently “lean R” for the general election. Maybe this kind of chaos could tip the scales away from the party of deplorables.
FWIW, her complaint boils down to allegations that the Muskingum County Board of Elections horribly botched the recount by unsealing the ballots in selected precincts two days before the date of the official recount, and presorting the ballots into piles for each candidate. Since these are grievous felonies, she says, citing various sections of Ohio election code, all the ballots involved are assumed to be “tampered with” and fraudulent and should be just thrown out.
It’s hard to believe that voters’ ballots would be thrown out over this kind of nonsense, but let the infighting continue!