A modest response in Hartford to ballot scandal in Bridgeport

The House of Representatives voted unanimously Friday for limited reforms inspired by the absentee-ballot scandal that resulted in a court-ordered repeat of the 2023 mayoral primary and general election in Connecticut’s largest city of Bridgeport.

“This episode was a black eye for the city, for the state, and for the vast, vast majority of election officials, candidates and campaign workers in this state who follow our laws with the utmost integrity and competence,” said Rep. Matt Blumenthal, D-Stamford, the bill’s sponsor.

House Bill 5498 would, among other things, require publicly available video surveillance of absentee-ballot drop boxes and a quicker referral to police and prosecutors of election complaints involving potential criminality.

It stopped short of measures that would more aggressively address the habitual reliance on “absentee ballot harvesting” in Bridgeport, such as banning the mass distribution of absentee ballot applications and stripping campaigns of the ability to identify and pursue voters who received them.

“This bill does no harm to our elections, and I fully support it,” said Rep. Gale Mastrofrancesco of Wolcott, the ranking Republican on the elections committee. “But I don’t think this bill goes far enough. Everything in here is addressing voter fraud after it happens.”

Mastrofrancesco said after the vote that she would have preferred a ban on campaigns distributing applications for absentee ballots, even though that would infringe on what she acknowledged were legitimate, if limited, get-out-the-vote efforts elsewhere in Connecticut.

“That’s the only way to stop it,” she said.

Scandal erupted in Bridgeport after leaked surveillance videos showed Wanda Geter-Pataky, the vice chair of the Democratic Town Committee, delivering ballots to the drop boxes and assisting other people in dropping off ballots for the primary — apparent violations of state laws outlining the limited circumstances when a person can deliver another voter’s ballot.

The combination of the videos and the fact that Mayor Joseph P. Ganim’s margin of victory over challenger John Gomes came in votes cast by absentee and not at the polls, as also was the case four years earlier in his win over Marilyn Moore, was explosive.

As Superior Court Judge William Clark wrote in his order for a new primary, “The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all of the parties.”

There was an immediate cry for reform but a paucity of specific suggestions.

Blumenthal said it would be difficult to bar the aggressive pursuit of absentee ballots without infringing on free speech and legitimate electioneering.

It may be done to an extreme in Bridgeport, but it’s not uncommon for campaigns throughout the state to identify supporters who had obtained absentee ballots and then make sure they had cast them, much as they track which voters have yet to turn out at the polls.

“Ultimately, we determined that, and I think this is just the truth, that what are often called ‘absentee ballot chase operations’ are just essentially part of campaigning,” Blumenthal said.

Ganim won the do-over primary and general election.

Absentee ballot harvesting is legal in some states, but not Connecticut. Essentially, one must be a family member, caregiver or police officer to collect and deliver absentee ballots without breaking the law.

William Bloss, the lawyer who won Gomes a new primary, said Connecticut needs vigorous enforcement of existing laws, not the passage of new ones.

“I am very skeptical that Connecticut can legislate its way out of the message that happened in Bridgeport,” Bloss said. “The laws prohibiting ballot harvesting are on the books. We’ve seen the misconduct from 2019 not subjected to any enforcement action.”

The same is true of 2023, though the case was quickly referred to prosecutors. It remains under investigation.

“I think Connecticut has two choices — either enforce the laws on the book in some meaningful way, or legalize ballot harvesting,” Bloss said.

Bloss said the State Elections Enforcement Commission is understaffed and tasked with too many functions other than investigations into potential criminality, such as audits of campaign finance reports and pursuing complaints of civil violations of elections law.

The video evidence cited by Clark in ordering a new primary pointed only to ballot harvesting  — meaning it was illegally collected and delivered but still presumably cast by an actual voter.

“It’s important that we refer to the issues around election security and transparency with precision and accuracy,” Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal noted that voter fraud typically means more than harvesting, such as the outright theft of absentee ballots or illegally influencing how they are filled out.

“As it stands today, no credible evidence has been put forward to the public that that happened in this episode,” Blumenthal said.

Similarly, Blumenthal said no evidence has emerged to show that the videos depicted “ballot stuffing” —packing the ballot box with fraudulent ballots.

Mastrofrancesco said the videos showed illegal ballot harvesting, which she considered “tampering,” even if the videos only showed the deposit of harvested ballots and not what else might have happened off-camera.

“I believe, and I believe many people in the state do believe, there was credible evidence that there was tampering, as we had shown with the video,” she said.

In addition to the provisions inspired by Bridgeport, the bill offers protection to election workers against “any person who influences or attempts to influence by
force, threat or harassment any election worker in the performance of
any duty.”

“We want people to freely be able to go out and vote,” Mastrofrancesco said. “We don’t want anybody being intimidated. That should never happen.”

Election workers in other states reported incidents of harassment and intimidation after Donald J. Trump baselessly asserted before the 2020 election that he could only lose through fraud.

With no mention of Trump, Blumenthal said the provision was aimed “at the spiraling and completely unacceptable trend of threats addressed to election workers for the performance of their duties, and this portion of the bill will hopefully deter anything like that from happening to our election workers here in the state of Connecticut.”