A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit in which five candidates who ran unsuccessfully were seeking to throw out the territory’s 2012 General Election results. Senior District Court Judge Raymond Finch on Thursday issued a memorandum opinion and order dismissing the case on a number of grounds. He ruled that the plaintiffs – senatorial candidate Lawrence Olive, Senate At-large candidate Wilma Marsh-Monsanto, Delegate to Congress candidate Norma Pickard-Samuel and Board of Elections candidates Harriet Mercer and Diane Magras – failed to articulate specific wrongs in their December complaint. “Plaintiffs’ allegations do not distinguish their concerns – about the use of certain voting machines in the election or the election results in general – from concerns of other voters or even other candidates,” Finch wrote.
The lawsuit was based on allegations of widespread irregularities in the V.I. Election System in 2012 and earlier; many focused on the acknowledged failure of the Election System to use voting machines in the 2012 General and primary elections that were certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, despite a 2011 Virgin Islands law requiring the use of EAC-certified machines for all elections.
But Finch characterized the plaintiffs’ claims as “phrased generally, as amorphous due process claims, without requisite concreteness; and they are phrased as ongoing claims that will harm voters in the future, without the requisite imminence.
Full Article: Judge dismisses lawsuit filed by 5 losing candidates – News – Virgin Islands Daily News.