(Updated 2:28 p.m.) Despite lingering questions about ballots in three major cities, Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz said “unofficially” it looks like Democrat Dan Malloy was elected Connecticut’s 88th governor by a slim 3,103 vote margin.
And there won’t be a recount because it’s likely the margin of victory is more than the 2,000 votes, which is the threshold to trigger an automatic recount in a statewide contest. Bysiewicz said that even if the 500 votes taken between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. in Bridgeport were discarded, Malloy would still be in the lead.
But Republican Tom Foley said in a phone interview that his campaign had internally compiled the numbers from every voting district except for one in Windsor Locks and arrived at a number, which put him in the lead. Foley said the lead was only by a small margin within the 2,000 vote automatic recount trigger.
Foley said he was waiting for the Secretary of the State’s office to release town by town results so the disparity between the two numbers could be reconciled. His campaign will decide how to move forward after the official results were released, he said.
GOP Chairman Chris Healy also seemed to doubt the numbers Bysiewicz announced and said the key qualifiers she used were “unofficial” and “apparent.“ He said the numbers are not official and he’d like to wait until the numbers are official to decide whether to move forward with legal action.
“It’s odd for the person in charge of voting to be talking about unofficial numbers,” Healy said in a phone interview.
The unofficial vote tally in Bridgeport on Wednesday was 19,148 votes for Malloy and 6,502 votes for Foley. In New Haven, officials were finishing counting 1,400 absentee ballots, but Bysiewicz reported that Malloy received 21,108 votes and Foley received 3,500 votes in the Elm City. There were also three polling places in Hartford that ran out of ballots and needed to have ballots photocopied. Election officials said less than 200 votes were cast using the photocopied ballots, which were hand counted Tuesday evening.
“After a long night I am confident that when the Secretary of the State certifies the results of the election, Nancy Wyman and I will be declared the winners, and that a recount will not be necessary,” Dan Malloy said in an emailed statement. “Our count shows us with a lead of more than 11,000 votes (approximately 1%), which will likely increase because the precincts that have yet to officially report — in Bridgeport, New Haven, and a few other towns — are ones in which Democrats have traditionally outpolled Republicans. I want the people of Connecticut to know that I am committed to working on a smooth, orderly transition with Gov. Rell – and that we will announce a transition team that will lead that effort in short order.”
Click here from the latest on the New Haven tally.