After losing the Fort Lauderdale mayor's race to incumbent Dean Trantalis by 12,820 votes, candidate Ken Cooper is dropping a lawsuit he filed to contest the results of the Nov. 3 race.
In the complaint, Cooper claimed that all the mail-in ballots cast in the election—a total of 43,803—should be tossed out. He alleged there was evidence to suggest that some of those ballots were illegal, citing various reasons.
Trantalis said he was not surprised by the failure of the lawsuit and argues that Cooper never had a legitimate case.
"First of all, it was a frivolous lawsuit to begin with," Trantalis told the Florida Record. "That alone would be grounds for sanctions against an attorney."
The suit, filed Nov. 23 in Broward District Court, claimed that some ballots were missing applicant signatures, while others did not have a notarization date. Cooper also alleged that in at least two instances, the application for the ballot was not witnessed by two people as required by law, making those votes invalid.
Trantalis was named as a defendant, along with Peter Antonacci, the supervisor of elections in Broward at the time of the election, and Canvassing Board members Michael Udine and Daniel Kanner.
While the lawsuit only drew attention to 106 specific mail-in ballots, Cooper argued that none of the mail-in ballots should have been validated.
"I don't think most of them are valid," he told the Sun Sentinel.
Cooper also sued the county, the city and the election supervisor's office. All three of those entities waged an aggressive defense, pointing out holes in each of his claims.
According to Trantalis, if a court had ruled in Cooper's favor, then every other election held in Broward County on Nov. 3 would have also had to have been overturned.
Cooper later requested to amend the complaint, but he did not do so and ultimately asked to drop the lawsuit. While Trantalis was asked if he wanted to pursue damages for attorney fees, he declined, stating that he did not wish to engage in protracted litigation.
"[Cooper] was trying to ride the wave of the Trump hysteria, claiming fraud at the ballot box and mishandling of the election," Trantalis said. "Nothing could've been further from the truth, especially in Broward County. In the end, it backfired."