16,000 registered voters in Peoria’s Mesquite District City Council race should now have received a third special ballot crafted to solve problems after a candidate’s name was left off the initial, and then the second replacement ballots.
Peoria City Clerk Rhonda Germinisky told Your West Valley.com voters who have cast their votes on one of the previous two ballots, and don’t vote on the new ballot with the purple lettering, will have their votes counted.
Calling it a “confusing situation,” Germinisky said “every voter has been given a chance to vote for any of the three candidates in the Mesquite District.”
And, if voters want to “vote for the person who wasn’t on the other two ballots, they’re going to vote that third ballot,” she added.
The latest purple lettering ballot will not have the other races or issues on it.
Ken Krieger, the candidate whose name was left off the first two ballots, is not satisfied with the solution the city came up with to solve the problem, so his attorneys have filed a request for a temporary restraining order to stop what they perceive as a flawed election from taking place in the Mesquite District council race.
In a press release from the public relations firm representing Krieger, the temporary restraining order request states: “The ongoing election for the Mesquite District of Peoria City Council is irretrievably broken. Absent immediate judicial intervention, the defendants will continue conducting, and counting votes in, an election that would not meet the minimum legal standards in any democratic society.”
UPUDATE: New polling locations open in Peoria for botched ballots
