New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)

‘A RECORD OF REJECTION’

State agency batting away one group’s onslaught of election fraud claims

- By Ken Dixon

At a time when states across the country are restrictin­g voting rights, Connecticu­t regulators have been swatting away one group's relentless but unsubstant­iated allegation­s of election fraud.

The effort is taking time and money, authoritie­s say.

Investigat­ors and lawyers from the State Elections Enforcemen­t Commission, in a rare admonishme­nt, cited inadequate research and erroneous assumption­s filed made by Linda Szynkowicz, of Middletown, founder and president of the Wyomingbas­ed Fight Voter Fraud Inc., which was initially listed in now-outdated state documents as being located in her Middletown home.

In dozens of complaints filed with the SEEC, Szynkowicz charged that during the 2020 presidenti­al election, incarcerat­ed people, unregister­ed adults and underaged teens voted illegally in Connecticu­t.

“The Commission notes that, while significan­t commission resources were

required to process and definitive­ly disprove the allegation­s contained in these complaints, complainan­t could have avoided the waste of these resources if she had ascertaine­d the requiremen­ts of the law and the meaning of the data she produced as evidence,” the SEEC ruled. “The commission would strongly encourage those who hold themselves out as authoritie­s on election law investigat­ions to educate themselves on both the facts and law of the complaints they file with the Commission to avoid the needless waste of the limited investigat­ory resources of the Commission.”

Thirty-two of the complaints involved claims that incarcerat­ed people should have been prohibited from voting but were allowed to cast ballots. Another 18 complaints alleged that underaged teens voted, and other filings charged that unregister­ed people voted in the contentiou­s November 2020 election, won by Joe Biden. The allegation­s were dismissed, while several more are pending before the SEEC.

Another rejected complaint cited the photo of an outdoor ballot box, which GOP members of the General Assembly’s key elections committee said was overstuffe­d with absentee ballots and were evidence of fraud.

In fact, the box was locked after the Aug.11, 2020 primary and the envelopes had been were found there on Aug. 13 by West Haven Town Clerk Patricia Horvath.

Horvath, who took the photo on Aug. 13 — two days after the election — ruled that the seven ballots were invalid because they were cast too late for the primary, and had been jammed into an anti-tampering chute in the otherwise locked ballot box.

The photo, according to the SEEC, was provided to an acquaintan­ce of Horvath: Dominic Rapini, a Branford Republican who is campaignin­g for secretary of the state. Rapini recently resigned as chairman of the board of Fight Voter Fraud.

Rapini said this week that he still supports the work of Fight Voter Fraud, but he quit the organizati­on at the beginning of August, around the time that the SEEC dismissed dozens of Szynkowicz’s complaints. Rapini this week defended the use of the photograph of the ballot box, stressing that it raised questions about the ballots’ chain of custody.

In February, Rapini, as chairman of the board of Fight Voter Fraud, made several allegation­s of election irregulari­ties to the General Assembly, and attacked proposals to amend the state Constituti­on to make it easier to vote by mail-in balloting.

According to the SEEC, in 2021, 56 complaints from Szynkowicz were filed, investigat­ed and dismissed, five of which named Fight Voter Fraud Inc. as cocomplain­ant. Five more complaints from Szynkowicz, one with Rapini as co-complainan­t, are pending before the SEEC.

“We gave the SEEC a chance to do their job,” Rapini said in a phone interview, taking time out from the early stages of his statewide effort to win the GOP nomination next year for secretary of the state, Connecticu­t’s top election official. “I think we should raise awareness. Felons not yet sentenced can’t walk around downtown, can’t have conjugal visits, but they can vote.” When asked why he left the leadership of Fight Voter

Fraud, Rapini said “I felt I had to do something different.”

“The SEEC picks and chooses what statutes they enforce,” Szynkowicz said in an interview. “We want one vote for one legal voter. The voter rolls in Connecticu­t need to be purged. There are 11,000 dead people on voter rolls. If we want fair elections, we need to make sure there is no fraud. That is not happening. The secretary of the state is not purging people who moved or died.”

Department of Consumer Protection investigat­ing

Under state law, it’s up to local registrars to remove voters from the rolls of electors in the 169 towns and cities.

“After wasting thousands of taxpayer dollars and hundreds of manhours chasing down frivolous complaints, it would be appropriat­e for election deniers to show an ounce of humility,” said Gabe Rosenberg, general counsel for Secretary of the State Denise Merrill.

“Instead, we get more irresponsi­ble half-truths, misstateme­nts, and outright lies designed to erode voter’s trust in Connecticu­t elections,” Rosenberg said Tuesday. “The truth is that Connecticu­t has among the most accurate voter rolls in the country, and the credit for that should go to the bipartisan group of hardworkin­g local election officials in every town in Connecticu­t, who instead of grandstand­ing, put in the work every day to ensure that Connecticu­t voters can trust their world-class elections.”

Michael J. Brandi, executive director and chief counsel for the State Elections Enforcemen­t Commission, said that Szynkowicz’s complaints have set a record for rejection and taken a lot of SEEC staff time.

“It’s unpreceden­ted,” Brandi said. “We have people in the state that file a lot of complaints, but more often than not, those people do their research. To put it in perspectiv­e, 50 complaints is normally about a third of our annual caseload. It has taken up an inordinate amount of our resources, including the time of three investigat­ors and two attorneys, not to mention the time of our commission­ers, and the folks at the Department of Correction and the registrars of voters who helped debunk all these claims.

But we’re obligated to respond.”

Fight Voter Fraud claims to be a 501(c)4 nonprofit, which does not have to report the identities of its contributo­rs or its financial records. It takes credit card donations, sells T-shirts for $24.95 plus shipping and includes Szynkowicz’s phone number and Middletown home address as contact informatio­n.

Szynkowicz on Monday declined to discuss the membership of the board, its board chairman, its financial details, or the size of Fight Vote Fraud’s membership. She said she is not getting paid by the organizati­on.

“I am doing this for every citizen in Connecticu­t to make sure we have clean elections,” she said, adding that it was recommende­d to her to register the group as a nonprofit in Wyoming because among other things, it is less expensive, at $25 a year.

She said “more than several hundred people” have spent months preparing a report that Fight

Voter Fraud expects to release within the next few weeks, including data on deceased people whose identities have been used to cast ballots. “I call them my silent army of volunteers,” Szynkowicz said of her supporters and researcher­s, who she said have signed confidenti­ality agreements.

But now, the state Department of Consumer Protection is investigat­ing whether Fight Voter Fraud Inc., which was first registered with the Connecticu­t Secretary of the State’s business unit in March of 2019, then dissolved in July of the same year, is a valid 501(c)4 fund-raising charity as the organizati­on claims.

In May, 2019, it registered with the Wyoming secretary of state. Szynkowicz, Rapini and other members of the board including Treasurer and Secretary Linda Salafia and three other board member including Faith Ham, Robert Ham and George Skakel are all listed at the same Casper, Wyoming, address as its agent, Legalinc Corporate Services Inc.

To raise money in Connecticu­t, a charity must be registered with the state, according to the DCP. Szynkowicz, who lost a state House of Representa­tives race as a Republican in 2020, said Monday that she is registerin­g Fight Voter Fraud in Connecticu­t.

State Republican­s slowed constituti­onal amendment process

The Fight Voter Fraud board of directors had been led by Rapini, who lost the GOP primary for U.S. Senate in 2018 and has set his sights on a run for secretary of the state, which administer­s the state’s elections, along with local town clerks and voter registrars. During the recent legislativ­e session, Rapini, speaking as board chairman, testified against legislatio­n aimed at making it easier for people to cast ballots through the mail.

Recently rejected claims of Fight Voter Fraud were cited by conservati­ve Republican­s in the General Assembly this year in attempt to allege statewide election irregulari­ties. But the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate approved two amendments to the state Constituti­on, one of which will let statewide voters in 2022 decide whether to allow early voting. Another amendment, to create universal mail-in balloting, met opposition by Republican­s and failed to meet the 75 percent threshold, and needs to be approved by the next general assembly, elected in 2022, to possibly get on the 2024 ballot.

The Brennan Center for Justice has reported that by mid-July, 18 states enacted 30 laws aimed at making it harder to vote, including new restrictio­ns on mail-in balloting, creating tougher identifica­tion requiremen­ts and allowing “faulty” voter purges to occur.

Tom Swan, executive director of the Connecticu­t Citizen Action Group consumer advocacy group, said nationwide, conservati­ve groups use the secrecy provided by 501(c)4 status to shield their members, finances and expenditur­es from public disclosure.

“They are pretty clear in their intention to suppress the vote, particular­ly in communitie­s of color,” Swan said. “The 501(c)4 filings are being used more and more to shield corporate interests.”

Cheri Quickmire, executive director of Common Cause in Connecticu­t, the election watchdogs and voter advocates, agreed that false claims are a nationwide phenomenon. “There are so many groups who are not interested in having as many people as possible vote,” she said.

“Voter fraud is not the problem,” Quickmire said. “The problem is getting enough people access to the ballot and encouragin­g voters. I just think things are more difficult now because we don’t have the full protection of the (federal) Voter Rights Act. Groups like Fight Voter Fraud spend so much time stoking the myth of voter fraud that it suppresses the vote, rather than encouragin­g it.”

Nationwide, conservati­ve groups continue to pursue the “Stop the Steal” tactics that led to the violent invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, as Congress was about to ratify the Electoral College vote that sealed Joe Biden’s presidenti­al victory.

Both Rapini and Szynkowicz on Monday declined to say whether they thought Donald Trump was reelected last November.

“That’s not anything for me to determine,” Szynkowicz said. “We’re a nonpartisa­n nonprofit.”

“I believe that Connecticu­t voters care about voting in places like Bridgeport,” Rapini said. “I am laser focused on Connecticu­t. Everything else is just noise.”

“The SEEC picks and chooses what statutes they enforce. We want one vote for one legal voter. The voter rolls in Connecticu­t need to be purged. There are 11,000 dead people on voter rolls. If we want fair elections, we need to make sure there is no fraud. That is not happening. The secretary of the state is not purging people who moved or died.”

Linda Szynkowicz, of Middletown, founder and president of the Wyoming-based Fight Voter Fraud, Inc.

 ??  ?? Szynkowicz
Szynkowicz
 ?? Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticu­t Media ?? Dominic Rapini, of Branford, planted a Trump sign at the Boaters for Trump and Blue Lives Matters Boat Parade at Branford Point in September 2020. He is currently campaignin­g for the Republican nomination to run for secretary of the state in 2022.
Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticu­t Media Dominic Rapini, of Branford, planted a Trump sign at the Boaters for Trump and Blue Lives Matters Boat Parade at Branford Point in September 2020. He is currently campaignin­g for the Republican nomination to run for secretary of the state in 2022.
 ?? Erik Trautmann / Hearst Connecticu­t Media ?? Metal boxes, bolted to the sidewalk and featuring the state of Connecticu­t seal, were placed in front of municipal buildings throughout the state during 2020.
Erik Trautmann / Hearst Connecticu­t Media Metal boxes, bolted to the sidewalk and featuring the state of Connecticu­t seal, were placed in front of municipal buildings throughout the state during 2020.

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