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There’s good news and bad news following sham state Senate candidate Olivia Cortes’ announcement that she’s withdrawing from the LD18 Russell Pearce recall race.
For starters she’s no longer a candidate (not that she was ever an actual candidate). The bad news: she hung in there long enough to keep her name on the ballot because the ballots have already been printed.
See our story on the matter here.
According to the Secretary of State’s Office, notices will be posted at the polls and on the SOS’ website advising the public that she no longer is a candidate for office. Votes for her will still count, though.
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LD18’s a fairly small district, though — and the turnout for a recall election is expected to be relatively small.
In other words, let’s say 150 people who don’t know any better — or don’t pay attention to the SOS’s attempt to alert voters that she’s no longer a candidate — vote for Cortes in an attempt to vote against Pearce, and Pearce wins by a margin smaller than 150 votes; assuming a vote for Cortes is a vote against Pearce, Cortes’ sham candidacy would have done what it was intended to do: push Pearce back into office in one of the sleaziest acts of voter manipulation we’ve ever seen.
In a perfect world, LD18 voters would be informed enough to know that Cortes is nothing more than a fraud put in place by Pearce to detract voters from casting their ballots for his opponent, Jerry Lewis. But this isn’t a perfect world.
We want to know what you think: can Cortes still effect the election even though she’s no longer a “candidate?”
Cast your vote below.
