The ‘ million- dollar question’
Mrs. Daly and I voted the other day.
We trust the United State Postal Service — my father was a carrier for decades — and had intended to support the vote- by- mail effort, but it was such a crisp, beautiful day we decide to drive to Fairfield’s Old Town Hall and put our ballots in the drop box outside.
We don’t fear going to the polls on Election Day. In fact, I’ll most likely be at many polls on Election Day. Old habits die hard. I’ll be something of a poll- watcher watcher.
Election Day in prepandemic times, particularly in a city like Bridgeport, would buzz with building electricity. The usual suspects would hover around the polling locations, the political guys and dolls of the city, huddled in conspiratorial intimacy, or shouting greetings, pressing palm cards into palms, or $ 20 bills, dropping off senior citizens, and so on.
In other words, the exercise of democracy at street level.
At one time, it might have made sense to require people to vote in person between 6 a. m. and 8 p. m. on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November.
After all, at one time in Connecticut it seemed to make sense that commerce and working on Sunday was forbidden.
Times change. Bravo to Gov. Ned Lamont for adding COVID- 19 to the list of reasons that let people vote by absentee ballot. Those exemptions, by the way, are as outdated as the Blue Laws that kept stores closed on Sunday. As a lawabiding friend of mine who votes by absentee ballot in every election asked me, “How do I know if I’m going to be here on Election Day? Or not sick?”
Connecticut, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, is one of only six states that has no allowance — except for limited absentee ballot voting — for early or mail- in voting.
That has to change. I loved my Royal typewriter, but I’ve gotten over it. Connecticut needs to do the same with its voting procedures.
This year, of all years, voting is imperative. So, it was disheartening to read in the Connecticut Post last week a report that this year, given the cascade of woes the year 2020 has dumped on us, people have much more than voting on their mind. As the headline said, voters are “just tapped out.”
So sad, because that’s exactly why voting this year is so important:
We have to get out from under the weight of so much that has gone wrong. And that is just another reason why limiting voting in Connecticut to a 14- hour window — on a work day, let’s remember — is in its own way a form of voter suppression.
After dropping our ballots, we headed down to Fairfield beach. ( Retirees get to do such things on weekdays.) Long Island Sound was sparkling. A ferry to Port Jefferson was gliding out of Bridgeport Harbor and another was visible coming in the opposite direction.
The Bridgeport skyline and shoreline sparkled. The Fayerweather Island lighthouse, the red- and- white striped utility tower, St. Mary’s. It was a tableau that may have inspired Mark Twain. In “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” the dazed Yankee approaches a beautiful city and asks his knight escort, “’ Bridgeport?’ said I. ‘ Camelot,’ said he.’”
A Camelot that has knaves at the Round Table.
Last week, David Dunn, the city’s former acting personnel director, and Armando “A. J.”
Perez, the former police chief, pleaded guilty in federal court to cheating in the test that led to Perez’s appointment as chief of police by Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim.
Dunn, 73, has been in Bridgeport City Hall, with only a brief interruption, since the mid- 1970s. As federal investigations into Bridgeport City Hall came and went, Dunn stayed out of the fray. I have been dealing with Dunn for more than 30 years. I would call him periodically, even after retirement, to chat and, of course, pry a little. I’d ask him why he wasn’t retiring and he’s laugh and say something like “Yeah, pretty soon.”
“Well,” said Mario Testa, Bridgeport’s Democratic town chairman and a longtime friend of Dunn, “now I might have had something to do with that. I’d say, ‘ David, hang in there and we’ll retire together.’”
I called Testa to see if he wanted to talk about the matter.
“I will tell you I don’t know anything about it,” he said. Testa said he had had a lunch date with Dunn and a couple of other Democrats. The arrest intervened. “I haven’t talked to him since this happened,” Testa said.
I asked Testa what would make a guy at this stage of his life and career do something like this.
“That’s the million- dollar question,” he said.