Pete Gleason's lawyer, Ray Dowd, just called with his take on what happened at the courthouse today (see the last post). It should come as no surprise he''s not buying the Gerson campaign's argument that the mistakes made on the petitions were merely technical errors. He says it has became apparent that pre-printed petitions with Alan Gerson's wrong address were passed out to campaign workers collecting signatures. Dowd contends that, since those people altered the petitions by correcting Gerson's address, the petitions are "mutilated" documents, and therefore illegal. He says this is a clear case of fraud – justifying the disqualification of Gerson from the September ballot.
Dowd said he was not able to fully cross-examine Gerson and other witnesses about the alleged alteration of the cover sheets after the Election Board alerted the Gerson campaign to the problem. He will seek to question Gerson and other campaign staffers and surrogates Thursday.
Dowd expressed frustration that media coverage of yesterday's court hearing highlighted the judge's apparent reluctance to remove a candidate from the ballot for a "cover sheet issue." Dowd thinks, once he heard the argument that issue is really the "alteration of signatures," the judge changed his tune.
