Appeal unlikely to delay election
With Supreme Court’s decision doubtful in coming days, 4 candidates prepare writein campaigns
BRIDGEPORT — While the team of attorneys representing city activists scramble to keep alive their effort to overturn the controversial Democratic primary on Monday in the state Supreme Court, state Sen. Marilyn Moore is confronting the major obstacle of showing voters how they can cast ballots for her on Tuesday.
Because of Moore’s inability to collect the number of signatures needed to get her name on the Election Day ballot, her supporters will have to look down toward the bottom of their ballots — both absentee and at the city’s 22 polling places — to fill in the bubble four lines below Mayor Joe Ganim, who won the primary by 270 votes out of 10,338 cast.
Unless the Supreme Court makes the longshot decision to stop the mayoral election, the city’s routine, hourslong tallying of ballot totals is likely to stretch even further into the night on Tuesday. Four candidates are staging writein efforts, including Moore; Jeff Kohut; failed Republican primary candidate Ethan Book; and newcomer Mary Ann McLaine, a Republican whose initials are identical to Moore’s by either coincidence or design.
Voters throughout the city were recently mailed illustrated details of Moore’s effort. And despite a request from Moore’s campaign that Secretary of the State Denise Merrill make a special effort to oversee Election Day activities, it’s likely to be just another day of voting in a city where political shenanigans are a public art form.
Merrill’s office said that election night procedures will include writein votes being tabulated at each polling place, while the accumulated absentee ballots will be counted by a special moderator, Tom Errichetti, in the Margaret Morton Government Center on Broad Street.
Ballots where the writein bubbles are not filledin will be disqualified. The handwritten name of the candidate must be clear, but the location of the name is not as important as is the “clear intent” of voters, according to Merrill. Once the polls close at 8 p. m., the public will have access to the counting process at each polling place and with Errichetti, the absentee ballot moderator
While the secretary of
the state will not have a presence in the city, the Connecticut Bar Association runs on a statewide volunteer attorney program to address any issues that crop up on Tuesday.
As of Friday, 1,821 absentee ballots have been mailed out or picked up in person at City Hall, while 1,171 ballots have been completed and sent to Town Clerk Charles D. Clemons Jr., who like Errichetti, testified during the threeweek primary challenge funded by advocate organizations Bridgeport Generation Now Votes and PT Partners.
On Sept. 10, Ganim lost on the voting machines, 4,721 to 4,337, but won the election because of a hefty edge in absentee ballots, 967 to 313. As of Oct. 29, there were 4,500 Republican voters registered in the city; 48,117 Democrats; and 20,922 unaffiliated voters.
On Friday, Prerna Rao, the attorney for the unsuccessful primary challengers, filed a short appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court, asking for an expedited review. Within hours, if was accepted by the high court.
“We hope the Supreme Court will find this as an opportunity to address what has been a longstanding problem in
Bridgeport,” Rao said Friday afternoon. “If they do not, then Bridgeport will be faced with the same issues again in the future.”
Rao asked for a ruling on whether Superior Court Judge Barry Stevens applied the correct legal standard in his decision.
While he rejected the appeal, Stevens stressed that the plaintiffs presented evidence that the absenteeballot process has been exploited. In a rare statement from his courtroom, he asked the General Assembly to consider several new laws, including early voting; prohibitions against party workers circulating applications for absentee ballots; and limiting the handling of absentee ballots to election officials, voters and people designated as caregivers for disabled voters.
The legal challenge, as well as an active investigation into the primary by the State Elections Enforcement Commission, came in the wake of a Hearst Connecticut Media report on widespread irregularities in the primary’s absentee voting, including voters being coerced by Ganim workers and ineligible voters casting ballots.