A big surprise today in San Diego: Mayor Dick Murphy announced his resignation, effective July 15.
Last fall Donna Frye should’ve been given the mayoral office chair, but Dick Murphy held on to it despite the fact a majority of San Diegans didn’t vote for him. In fact, there was some question as to how many people actually voted for him or for Frye, something that was unclear due to the arbitrary way votes were counted.
In his opening statement Woocher showed Brenner examples of two ballots: On one the voter had crossed out the name of Murphy and candidate Ron Roberts and had clearly written in Frye’s name, But the bubble was blank, and the vote was excluded.
“This is a ballot on which the intent of the voter could not be more clear,” he said.
He then showed an enlargement of a second vote that was counted. It was actually a sample ballot−one sent to voters before the election−that had check marks and other markings and was counted for Murphy because the registrar determined what was the voter’s intent. “Registrar questioned on vote-counting”, February 1, 2005, SignOnSanDiego.com.
Doesn’t seem fair to me. Doesn’t seem like an accurate assessment of voter intent, either, but Judge Brenner ruled otherwise.
It’s too bad Mayor Murphy didn’t cede the victory to Donna Frye before Time Magazine declared him one of the three worst big city mayors in the United States. Too bad Murphy’s replacement, Deputy Mayor Michael Zucchet, is facing trial May 3 on federal corruption charges.
I hope the city council appoints Donna Frye.
(There’s some good coverage on this topic at Indepundit.)