CT here…
Throw the book at them.
Greater Hartford checking in. This really seems more like a “people didn’t know how to do their job correctly” situation but when your job is running a fucking election, you better know how to do it right.
Also this was for a primary that (convicted felon) Joe Ganim won by 251 votes? Seriously, throw the book at them.
Bullshit article
I’m betting someone paid them to do this and get caught.
Yeah, their boss, convicted felon mayor ganim.
Good idea idiots give the Republicans ammo.
“2019 Bridgeport Democratic mayoral”
This was a year before the 2020 nonsense.
Existing gives Republicans ammo.
Duh she’s black
If they did the crime, they can do the time.
Probably the stupidest thing to come out of the Big Lie is stupid motherfuckers thinking it’s easy to commit vote fraud. It’s not. We have a pretty good system. You are going to get caught.
The aspect that bothers me is that this will be blown up into proof that all elections are full of fraud when the reality is that our elections are pretty decent at catching it. Thanks for providing ammo for conspiranuts (edit: them, not you).
I’m glad they got caught and hope they are prosecuted to the fullest extent.
The problem is indeed that ballot harvesting is not legal in Connecticut. The problem is the wrong person put the ballots in the ballot box… We should respect the law, but I don’t really agree with any law that potentially prevents legit ballots from being cast or counted.
Here’s a better article.
Thanks. AP is a faaaaar more reliable source than the Independent
This is a very poorly written article. I’m really confused as to what happened here.
It says they took absentee ballots and put them in the drop boxes. Are absentee ballots not legitimate ballots? Is the drop box not where ballots go? Is the problem that the absentee votes were put in the drop box before being validated? This happened in 2019, but they weren’t charged until 2023 and the primary was said to be re-held. Was it re-held in 2023 or 2019?
Also, this is for a primary election for local office, not a general election for federal office. Prosecute them to the extant allowed, but let’s not give fuel to the fake election fire.
There are often rules about who can return an absentee ballot. Only a few states allow people to collect ballots and return them
And the article didn’t go into any of that detail. What they talk about sounds perfectly normal and legal to me. Why couldn’t you take an absentee ballot and put it in the ballot box? It’s a vote, right?
I know it isn’t that simple, but since every single state has different voting rules then it’s a bad assumption that a typical reader will know why this was illegal.
Gomes then sued, alleging absentee ballot mishandling and supplying video footage showcasing Geter-Pataky, a member of the Democratic Town Committee, repeatedly dropping absentee ballots into drop boxes or handing them to others, who then did the same.
If I’m interpreting this correctly, it sounds like a couple of election officials just put absentee ballots in with regular ballots instead of… I assume they should have been set aside for vetting? The article doesn’t say what should have happened. The article doesn’t really go into the impact- seems like they just really, REALLY wanted to print a headline about Democrats meddling in the elections process.
When I think of “stuffing” I think of people creating wholly illegitimate ballots, which does not seem to be what happened here.
Also worth noting that this was for the Democratic primary for a mayoral position in 2019, and some of that info probably should have been in the headline.
When I think of “stuffing” I think of people creating wholly illegitimate ballots, which does not seem to be what happened here.
That’s exactly what ballot stuffing is and why what these folks are charged with is not ballot stuffing:
https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_stuffing
Ballot stuffing or ballot box stuffing is a form of electoral fraud in which a greater number of ballots are cast than the number of people who legitimately voted. The term refers generally to the act of casting illegal votes or submitting more than one ballot per voter when only one ballot per voter is permitted.[1]
If the absentee ballots they handled were either fabricated or if the voters they were from already voted, then yes it would be “ballot stuffing” but I didn’t see that in the article. Just “mishandling”.
Still best that absentee ballots are handled properly as to show the voter hasn’t voted in person.
From the AP version of the story:
Under Connecticut law, voters using a collection box must drop off their completed ballots themselves, or designate certain family members, police, local election officials or a caregiver to do it for them. Clark wrote in his decision that the volume of “mishandled ballots” left the court unable to determine the legitimate result of the primary.
It’s a state law that they aren’t supposed to drop off someone else’s ballot except under very specific circumstances. It’s a dumb law that makes it more difficult for people to vote if they can’t easily get to a polling place or a ballot drop off. But it’s the law so, charge and prosecute them, and redo the election I guess. But hopefully the people of CT will work to change the voting laws.
