GOP chief cries foul as state readies massive absentee ballot effort
Hugh Mitchell, a lifelong Democrat, was among roughly 16,000 Enfield voters to show up at the polls on Nov. 6, 2018.
At least that’s what the solid checkmark next to his name in the voting records indicated.
Mitchell had not voted in a general election since he cast an absentee ballot in 2012. That’s because he died in December of that year at the age of 86, after a decadelong battle with Alzheimer’s, according to his obituary.
Republican Chairman J. R. Romano took to Twitter upon the discovery of Mitchell’s vote. He slowly leaked the information in an attempt to trap Democratic elected officials into saying voter fraud doesn’t happen in Connecticut.
He finally tweeted, “the day has come. Because of how weak CT voter infrastructure is, according to
state records Mr. Hugh Mitchell of Enfield passed away in 2012 but voted in person in 2018.”
Romano thought he’d found it. The Mitchell case could be the great example of an illegal, fake ballot, an actual fraudulent vote cast in an election. Actual fraudulent votes are elusive, despite constant claims from President Donald Trump and his supporters that they are rampant — and despite a vigilant search by some Republicans to help make Trump’s case.
As the state and the country prepare for the first election that could be conducted largely by mail as a result of the COVID- 19 global health pandemic, proof of a fraudulent vote could call into question the integrity of the system — and, some Republicans hope, slow the tsunami of absentee balloting.
In Connecticut, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill will mail absentee ballot applications to all voters on the active voter list ahead of the August primary — with authorization from an executive order in May by Gov. Ned Lamont. Under regular law, citizens may vote absentee only for cause, such as illness or absence from the town or state.
Romano says the state isn’t ready for broad mail- in balloting, citing lengthy inactive voter lists and a low number of purges from the rolls.
As it happened, Mr. Hugh Mitchell did not vote in person in 2018, and, in fact, no one else showed up pretending to be him. His name was on the active voter list — an error — and someone had checked it off as though he voted, a second error.
Fraud or not, Republicans who discovered the discrepancy say Mitchell shouldn’t have remained on the active voter list. They are using his alleged “vote,” six years after his death, as an example that indicates voter fraud can easily
happen in Connecticut, though they admit it’s not a pure example.
“In all likelihood, this was a clerical error,” Romano said. “I don’t think someone walked in and voted for him or as him, but the fact that he remained on the rolls since 2012 is the real problem. All we’re doing is exposing the weaknesses in the system.”
Undermining democracy
Scott Bates, deputy Secretary of the State and former senior policy adviser to the U. S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, slammed Romano’s claims that voter fraud happens in Connecticut as “baseless allegations.”
“At the very moment in time when it’s most important for all of us to work together, it’s discouraging that Mr. Romano fails to understand how wild charges can undermine faith in democracy,” Bates said. “Baseless allegations impugn the integrity of local elections officials from both parties who work tirelessly with little pay because they believe in the democratic system.”
Bates called Romano’s attack “a classic case of ‘ ready, fire, aim,’” and said “it’s not OK in this day in age when America’s adversaries are actively trying to spread false information to undermine the integrity of the elections systems.”
Romano’s charge: Rampant errors, if not outright fraud, represent the threat to democracy and the rush to absentee ballots invites trouble. Errors can and do happen, and in close elections like many of the state House and Senate races in 2018 or in several 2019 municipal races, a few votes can make a difference in the outcome.
Need security
Romano has called on the state to “clean up the voter rolls,” as well as end the legal practice of “ballot harvesting” and invest in elections security and technology upgrades to prevent what he suggests is rampant voter fraud.
“Right now, if someone steals another persons vote they don’t even know,” Romano said.
He’s renewing those calls as the state prepares for widespread mail- in voting. Lamont’s emergency powers are set to expire in September so it is unclear if the November election will be impacted in the same way as the August primary.
Romano’s charges and calls for reform echo those of Trump, who has alleged with no evidence that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election. Trump has also railed against ballot “harvesting,” a legal practice in most states that allows voters to fill out an absentee ballot and entrust it to another person who drops off the ballot.
“Get rid of ballot harvesting, it is rampant with fraud. The USA must have voter I. D., the only way to get an honest count!” Trump Tweeted in all caps on April 20.
Romano has said he’s not opposed to mail- in balloting, but he doesn’t believe Connecticut is prepared to implement the system, citing the 2019 Democratic primary in Bridgeport, when a Hearst Connecticut Media investigation found numerous examples of irregularities in absentee ballots there.
“I’m all for access, but we should have security surrounding that access,” Romano said.
Meticulous detail
Elections and election law are about meticulous attention to detail, in which discrepancies can have huge consequences.
There is no way to know who would have won the 2018 state House race in Stratford between incumbent Democrat Phil Young and Republican challenger Jim Feehan, for example, if election officials had not given the wrong ballot to 75 voters. And other than a new election, which House Democrats refused to sanction, there was no way to fix the problem.
Gabe Rosenberg, a spokesman for Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, said there’s a number of
ways a deceased person could end up on the active voter list and all of them are attributable to human error. In Mitchell’s case, it’s unclear how he ended up on the list, but it’s likely he was checked off as having voted by accident.
The error has been corrected and Romano said he has no plans to file a formal complaint as a result. Criticisms of mail- in voter fraud haven’t been lodged at Republican- strongholds like Idaho, for example, which held a 100 percent vote- by- mail primary on May 19. Unofficial results showed record participation in the primary and there do not appear to be any reports of voter fraud there.
Bates pointed out that in Connecticut, the elections are administered by the municipalities, which each have one Democratic and one Republican registrar of voters. Bates said that is the strength of Connecticut’s elections system, and is an effective way to prevent fraud.
“They all work together every year and sometimes even more than that to keep the rolls current,” Bates said. “I’d stack up Connecticut’s system with any in the country in terms of the accuracy of our lists and the integrity of our local elections officials.”
The voter rolls
Romano and other Republicans such as Dominic Rapini, who last ran for U. S. Senate in 2018 but lost in a Republican primary, express particular concern about the status of the state’s voter rolls and who is on the active or inactive list. Rapini has started an organization called “Fight Voter Fraud,” dedicated to investigating possible cases of voter fraud.
Rapini has alleged, based on his own analysis, on multiple occasions, usually via Twitter, that the state is not adequately purging its voter rolls.
Connecticut’s voter rolls are stored centrally, but maintained locally by the state’s 169 towns and cities. The town clerks receive
death notices and are responsible for passing that information along to the registrars.
But if the clerk never receives the notice, or there’s a spelling error, or the registrar makes a mistake, or the death notice is lost in transmission, or any other number of possible scenarios, the person could remain on the voter rolls — like Hugh Mitchell.
There are several checks even after an error is made that could catch a rogue name. As a result, the rate of error appears to be relatively low.
Merrill has said the system could be improved through reforms that include expanding the state’s automatic voter registration, which would cut down on human errors by creating a system where, anytime a person interacts online with a government agency, they can register to vote. That would largely eliminate paper registrations which must be entered manually into the computer system, a prime opportunity for error.
“This is also why so many towns are interested in electronic poll books,” Rosenberg said. “The technology isn’t quite there yet, but it is one of the things we talk about. Errors can happen, but ultimately the system is guided by voter participation. We don’t want someone to be denied right to vote because of clerical error.”
Romano is concerned the state is investing money in broad absentee balloting before it invests in appropriate security upgrades. And that, he believes, will result in excessive voter fraud in the upcoming election.
“They’re not talking about any added security measures that other states have as though there’s no weaknesses in the system,” Romano said. “They need to end the practice of ballot harvesting before we can even think about doing this.”