Five days into the voter-initiated recount, incumbent Councilmember Manh Nguyen still trails the challenger Lan Diep by the same tally - 12.
His various challenges on the absentee ballots so far were not successful. He is most likely to again challenge the duplicate ballots (ballot that was manually duplicated from the damaged original ballot). And then there are the provisional ballots that he still want to contest again. He had challenged them unsuccessfully in the first recount.
If all else fails, he can opt for a lawsuit to have this election invalid on technical reasons, e.g, missing ballots, disqualified ballots, or other procedural mistakes that the ROV is struggling through.
Nguyen is famous or infamous (depending if you are his foe or friend) for his tenacity. The only thing that will stop him from a lawsuit if the second recount does not overturn the election is money. He will not be able to see beyond the fact that the public backlash on such a lawsuit will be so great even if he is successful with the lawsuit to have the election invalid.
His various challenges on the absentee ballots so far were not successful. He is most likely to again challenge the duplicate ballots (ballot that was manually duplicated from the damaged original ballot). And then there are the provisional ballots that he still want to contest again. He had challenged them unsuccessfully in the first recount.
If all else fails, he can opt for a lawsuit to have this election invalid on technical reasons, e.g, missing ballots, disqualified ballots, or other procedural mistakes that the ROV is struggling through.
Nguyen is famous or infamous (depending if you are his foe or friend) for his tenacity. The only thing that will stop him from a lawsuit if the second recount does not overturn the election is money. He will not be able to see beyond the fact that the public backlash on such a lawsuit will be so great even if he is successful with the lawsuit to have the election invalid.
