Legislature 2019 | CTVotersCount.org

VotING fraud via Absentee, this time in Stamford

When Connecticut passed public financing of elections a major part of the justification was a history of campaign finance scandals. Avoiding expanded mail-in voting can be justified by the similar pattern of AB abuse. We do favor a form of early voting for Connecticut we call in-person absentee voting – in-person at the municipal clerk’s office, where officials can be expected to easily detect a single person attempting to vote 14 times under different names!

From the Stamford Advocate: Former Stamford Dem Party boss charged with falsifying absentee ballots <read>

STAMFORD — John Mallozzi, the city’s former Democratic Party chief, was arrested Wednesday on charges of absentee ballot fraud in the 2015 municipal election. He allegedly forged ballots for relatives, Spanish-speaking residents and Albanian-Americans new to the election system, according to the State’s Attorney’s Office.

Mallozzi was charged with 14 counts each of filing false statements and second-degree forgery. He turned himself in to Stamford police on the charges, both Class D felonies punishable by up to five years in prison and/or a fine of up to $5,000 per count…

Hoti told investigators that on Election Day 2015 he was rejected at his District 8 polling place in the Cove by a monitor who told him the record showed he’d already voted by absentee ballot. Hoti said he had not. The monitor allowed Hoti to vote after Hoti filled out a form attesting that he did not vote by absentee…

On Jan. 10 a state forensic science analyst determined that signatures on 14 absentee ballots “share common authorship” with the handwriting samples provided by Mallozzi, according to the affidavit. None of the 14 voters whose names were on the ballots had requested them, the affidavit states.

Allegations, convictions, and enforcement penalties for AB fraud are regular occurrences in Connecticut. There are likely many more that are not discovered. Just lucky that one of these voters attempted to vote legally and through diligence of the election officials the fraud was discovered. If that one voter had not attempted to vote, if may never have been discovered and continued in subsequent elections.

Editorial

This is why we oppose expanded mail-in voting, such as no-excuse absentee voting. If might be safe in other states, yet Connecticut has an ongoing record of absentee votING fraud (as opposed to votER fraud) by insiders or candidate and party officials. This year and last we have cases in Hartford and Bridgeport as well.

Election Committee Does Not Understand Election Administration

On Friday the Committee on Contested Elections met to determine who they would hear on the election contested. The election was decided by some 16 votes while some 76 voters were given the wrong ballot and thus were disenfranchised in the election. I was there. Listening to the Committee members and their lack of knowledge of election administration was painful/disappointing for me:

They did not seem to know how many moderators there are in a polling place, and if one of them was the head moderator. (Generally there is one moderator and if the town has more than one polling place, as Stratford does, there is one head moderator in headquarters that is responsible of the election and the results.)…

They did not seem to know how many moderators there are in a polling place, and if one of them was the head moderator. (Generally there is one moderator and if the town has more than one polling place, as Stratford does, there is one head moderator in headquarters that is responsible of the election and the results.)
They were to subpoena the moderator’s log notes, from the moderator. (Those notes are in the moderator’s return, filed with the town clerk.)
They just seemed confused about the whole election process. They said there was no need for testimony from the Secretary of the State’s Office. They did briefly consult a General Assembly Attorney who read a few lines from the law. They could have used some help from the Secretary’s office or even from any of the several hundred certified moderators in the state who would know all the answers they did not have.

We were not enamored with other aspects of the process:

They started by agreeing that they would mostly focus on the facts of what happened. They need to assess those facts and not rely on media reports etc., yet the likely outcome will be confirming that those 76 voters were disenfranchised. But there is a lot more to consider;
The arguments of the two sides seem important to us. The Committee seemed almost as an after thought to let the lawyers for both sides have 10 minutes each to speak.
To us, precedent and the arguments of both sides seem to be the crucial information. I would call for additional experts and witnesses on the law and precedent, perhaps chosen by those same lawyers.
It might be nice to hear from some of those voters as well.

You can read more about it from the CTPost: Committee will quiz Stratford election witnesses <read>

You can also watch the meeting at CT-N <video>

See a problem, propose a solution you want that might make the problem worse

There were long lines for Election Day Registration (EDR) and it took a whole 10 hours to count enough votes to determine the Governor in Connecticut. Our EDR is a problem, but waiting ten hours for result is just a concern hyped up by a overly impatient press and used as a opportunity by advocates to promote early voting as a solution.

As of this time the states of California, Colorado, Florida, and Georgia are still counting votes. They all have mail-in early voting. California has a Friday deadline to receive mail-in ballots postmarked by election day and counts them for weeks after election day. As of Friday all those other states were still counting.

There real are problems and there are reasonable solutions.

An example is this article in the CTPost: Changes to Connecticut’s voting laws could streamline elections<read>

It took nearly 10 hours after the polls closed for Connecticut voters to learn who won the hard-fought race for governor, and by the time Ned Lamont was named the next governor, voters were beginning a new day.

It’s not the first time election results have been delayed — Connecticut’s cities have developed a reputation for holding up the process — but with a broader majority in the state Legislature, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill hopes changes in the state’s voting laws could be on the horizon.

Merrill plans to again propose a change to allow early voting, as well as create no-excuses absentee voting. She also plans to propose automatic registration for 16-year-olds, who could be registered when they visit the state Department of Motor Vehicles for their learners permits.

“There’s more optimism for passing early voting,” said Gabe Rosenberg, a spokesman for Merrill’s office. “I think that there’s a real hunger for early voting. So many people want to vote early, especially when they see how many people in other states do it.”

Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia allow early voting in person, which cuts down lines on Election Day, especially in highly populated cities, and helps results come in faster. A record 36 million people across the nation voted ahead of Election Day.

That last statement is blatantly untrue. As of this time the states of California, Colorado, Florida, and Georgia are still counting votes. They all have mail-in early voting. California has a Friday deadline to receive mail-in ballots postmarked by election day and counts them for weeks after election day. As of Friday all those other states were still counting.

It seems that whenever there is an apparent problem, the Connecticut response is to claim that the cure is whatever you have been proposing all along. There real are problems and there are reasonable solutions:

EDR is a problem caused by a too restrictive process unique to Connecticut. And by the Secretary of the State unilaterally declaring that persons in line at 8:00pm for EDR have no right to an opportunity to register and vote. <see our coverage and opinions>

Yes, New Haven and many towns in Connecticut should spend more on staffing polling places and EDR for these large elections.

However, New Haven should be applauded for taking the necessary time to count votes by hand that could not be counted by machine. Perhaps they should even have given their pollworkers more time to rest and resume counting, extending the time to get accurate results to maybe 24 hours.

Compare New Haven 2018 to Bridgeport in 2010 where, under pressure, they rushed hand counting and missed many votes in a somewhat comparable emergency. Those votes were counted by the CTPost and the Citizen Audit – yet were never counted or recognized by the Official system. <read>

Connecticut dodges EDR bullet. How long will EDR dodge the Civil Rights bullet?

In this election as in recent elections, we issued our Election Day Registration Warning to voters. We have been issuing warnings to the General Assembly for several years as well. We have warned that it is a “Civil Rights violation waiting to happen.” since the Secretary of State declared that voters in line at 8:00pm could not have the opportunity to register and vote unless officials completed their registration by 8:00pm.

Yesterday, there was great concern when for the third time in three even year elections, voters were deprived of registering and voting due to Secretary Merrill’s ruling and inadequate work by registrars. Read the New Haven Independent’s story: Ballot Pandemonium: Machines Break All Over Town; Voters Wait Hours; Stefanowski Seeks Injunction

By day’s end it appeared that hundreds of the people in line — mostly Yale students — wouldn’t be able to register in time (8 p.m.) to cast ballots. “Let us vote!” they chanted.

Sadly, our history with election concerns is to quickly move on from concerns, once a clear winner has been determined.

Here is our latest testimony to the General Assembly: <read> And that of Fairfield Registrar Matt Waggner’s which I support <read>

Meanwhile, the city was overwhelmed by hundreds of voters at a time who wanted to register and vote Tuesday under the state’s Election Day Registration (EDR) program. It was the third straight year that people waited in line to register and vote.

People waited four hours to vote.

By day’s end it appeared that hundreds of the people in line — mostly Yale students — wouldn’t be able to register in time (8 p.m.) to cast ballots. “Let us vote!” they chanted.

The secretary of the state’s office — which was aware that New Haven had had the same crisis in the last two even-year elections — dispatched “every volunteer attorney we had down there to help them,” said the office’s spokesperson, Gabe Rosenberg.

The attorneys advised New Haven to separate first-time voters from the rest of the line. Under the law, those first-time voters were allowed to attest en masse that they’d never voted before in Connecticut, and move right ahead to step three. Officials had those students attest all at once by voice. That got rid of the back-up.

“Out of an abundance of caution,” officials had set aside that special group’s votes in case questions get raised later.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski’s gubernatorial campaign filed an injunction in Hartford Superior Court to make sure ballots cast after 8 p.m. by voters who registered that day were segregated from the totals.

Stefanowski’s campaign hired Herb Shephardson to file the injunction to make sure New Haven and Mansfield [where the Secretary also sent help] segregated those ballots.

While some might applaud the Secretary sending help, it also adds to the charges of a civil rights violation if there were other towns with voters in line, where similar help was not offered.

The General Assembly has been concerned with this issue for the last three years, but likely due to pressure from our 340 Registrars, no bill has come close to consideration for a vote in either chamber.

After this third debacle, associated publicity, and finally some concern by the state ACLU, perhaps there will be a change. Do not count on it, since by morning it was clear that the EDR votes would not matter as there was a clear winner in the Governor’s race followed by a prompt concession by the other candidate. sadly, our history with election concerns is to quickly move on from concerns, once a clear winner has been determined.