Are CT legislators serious about absentee ballot reform?

Given the 2023 absentee ballot stuffing scandal that rocked Bridgeport’s mayoral race, the Connecticut General Assembly has a clear mandate to reform how our state administers absentee voting during this legislative session.

The question is, will they seize the opportunity to protect all Connecticut voters and our democracy from “bad actors” or will they default and continue to give bad actors a legal way to manipulate the absentee voting process, thereby manipulating the outcome of our elections?

A healthy democracy requires that voters have confidence that our elections are a reflection of the will of the people. Yet in the largest city in Connecticut, it is an open secret that state and local elections are won by absentee ballot fraud, abuse, and manipulation. Political operatives target and manipulate some of our most vulnerable voters by inserting themselves into the absentee ballot voting process, all for the purpose of controlling the outcome of our elections.

This abuse of Bridgeport voters is not new, it goes back decades as was reported in the New York Times article from January: “ Election Fraud Is Rare. Except, Maybe, in Bridgeport, Conn.”

Sadly, Bridgeport’s anti-democratic, election stealing, absentee voting operations have now made international news. In December, The Connecticut Mirror published an investigative story into how absentee ballots defined the outcome of Bridgeport’s 2023 primary for mayor. Documents showed that Wanda Geter-Pataky, who was caught on video stuffing ballots into a dropbox, assisted voters with at least 537 absentee ballot applications ahead of the September election, which was decided by only 251 votes.

The Mirror also reported that campaign workers were so persistent that at least 370 Bridgeport residents eventually had two or more absentee voting applications submitted in their names. In Bridgeport, 22% of all votes cast in the 2023 primary for mayor were absentee ballots, by far the highest in the state.

Finally, it was reported that Geter-Pataky, who backed Mayor Joe Ganim and the other candidates endorsed by the local Democratic Party, assisted more people in filling out absentee ballot applications than anyone else. She signed at least 12% of all applications that were submitted, despite the fact that records indicate she never registered to distribute those forms, as state law requires.

It’s evidence like this and what a 2019 Hearst Connecticut Media Group investigative probe described as Bridgeport absentee voting rife with irregularities that prompted Superior Court Judge Barry Stevens to direct the state legislature to take up major reforms to address the “illegal and disturbing” behavior that came to light after the 2019 mayoral primary during the Lazar v. Ganim trial. In particular, Judge Stevens called for prohibitions against party workers circulating absentee ballot applications.

“Legislative consideration,” Stevens said, “is warranted as to whether the handling of applications for absentee ballots, as well as the absentee ballots themselves, should be limited solely to election officials, electors and statutorily designated individuals identified to assist electors, and nobody else.”

Reforming state law to ensure that the processes associated with absentee voting is strictly between voters and election officials is a commonsense reform. Voters don’t need middlemen to distribute absentee ballot applications to them. The state of Connecticut has multiple ways for voters to access applications on their own or with the help of a family member.

Unfortunately, the commonsense approach advanced by Judge Stevens in 2019 doesn’t seem to hold much weight with our state legislators. Instead they are advancing an absentee ballot reform bill, HB 5498 that, although takes important steps in the right direction, doesn’t adequately address the problem of political operatives acting as intermediaries between voters and election officials. The current version of the bill states that no one is allowed “more than five absentee ballot applications at a time earlier than 90 days prior to the first day of issuance of absentee voting sets.”

To our understanding that may mean that in the year leading up to an election, political operatives like Geter-Pataky will still be able to take out hundreds of applications, they will just do it five at a time. We are waiting for clarification on that point from state legislators. It also means that 90 days prior to absentee ballots being issued, we’re right back to the reality we face now — that anyone can walk into the Town Clerk’s office and walk out with hundreds of applications.

If lawmakers are serious about fixing the issues in Bridgeport and ensuring free and fair elections in every town in Connecticut, they will re-think this provision in HB 5498. As it stands now it is not a reform.

The right thing to do for Connecticut’s democracy is to look seriously at Judge Stevens’ directive. Massachusetts already has the blueprint. Their absentee voting statute makes it clear that absentee voting, just like in-person voting, is between a voter and election officials — and no one else.

Gemeem Davis and Callie Heilmann are Co-Directors of the civic organization, Bridgeport Generation Now.

Related Stories:

1. How the battle for absentee ballots defined the Bridgeport election
2. State appoints temporary election monitor in Bridgeport
3. Bridgeport primary election overturned; new vote ordered