Connecticut policymakers will look this year to adjust the state’s absentee ballot laws in response to the high-profile primary do-over scheduled Tuesday in Bridgeport, where evidence of absentee ballot abuse led a Superior Court judge to order a new election.
“The situation in Bridgeport has revealed gaps and areas for improvement in our laws with regard to election transparency and security,” Rep. Matt Blumenthal, a Stamford Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s election policy committee, said Monday — one day before a scheduled special primary election.
Democrats in Bridgeport will once again choose whether to nominate incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim or challenger John Gomes. Ganim won a first primary election in September, when he edged out Gomes by 251 votes, largely cast via absentee ballots.
Gomes challenged the results after videos surfaced, appearing to show Ganim supporters making deposits of numerous absentee ballots in city drop boxes, in apparent violation of state election laws restricting who may handle a voter’s absentee ballot.
The evidence and a subsequent trial convinced Bridgeport Superior Court Judge William Clark to order the new election.
Eligible voters in Bridgeport have had access to absentee ballots since Jan. 2 and last week Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas asked election regulators to investigate new allegations that an individual associated with the Gomes campaign had been circulating ballot applications without registering with the town clerk’s office.
Allegations of fraud dominated much of a final debate between the two candidates, who appeared Monday morning on WICC 600 AM. Ganim stressed the new allegations while Gomes used his closing statement to accuse the mayor of stealing elections, saying he won in-person votes during both the primary and a subsequent and potentially voided general election.
“We lost when the absentee ballots came in,” Gomes said. “We’ve asked for safeguards.”
The court-ordered do-over has attracted media attention from mainstream outlets like the BBC and the New York Times, which ran a weekend report under the headline “Election Fraud Is Rare. Except, Maybe, in Bridgeport, Conn.”
The allegations of fraud are related to ballot harvesting, or the collection and submission of absentee ballots by unauthorized third parties. Connecticut law already tightly controls who may handle an absentee ballot, largely limiting that authority to the voter, or in some cases allowing them to designate others — like family members, police or caregivers — to return the ballot for them.
In the legislative session that begins on Feb. 7, Blumenthal said his panel would attempt to thread a needle as they craft a response to the situation in Bridgeport.
“Our priority will be taking whatever measures we can to prevent the very concerning situation that we’ve seen in Bridgeport from ever happening again, while ensuring that we do not impede or infringe on anyone’s access to the ballot,” Blumenthal said.
Already, Connecticut’s constitution restricts who may apply for an absentee ballot by requiring voters to qualify for a handful of excuses. Lawmakers have attempted to ease those restrictions in recent years.
Legislators are likely to consider changes to how election laws are enforced, Blumenthal said.
A key figure in the Bridgeport incident has been Wanda Geter-Pataky, a city employee and Ganim supporter who was apparently filmed making multiple deposits at Bridgeport drop boxes. State election regulators referred her name to prosecutors for possible criminal violations related to Ganim’s 2019 campaign, according to CT Insider.
Blumenthal said Monday that enforcement should be quicker.
“We want to make sure that our laws cover every situation and prevent the possibility of misconduct wherever possible but we also need to ensure that enforcement happens in a way that’s fast enough and forceful enough to deter unlawful conduct,” he said.
Thomas, the state’s top election administrator, will also be making legislative recommendations for the coming session, according to Tara Chozet, a spokesperson for the secretary of the state.
“We’re finalizing our legislative agenda for the coming year,” she said. “We’re certainly looking to address some aspects of the absentee ballot process, including potentially making suggestions based on the improvements in Judge William Clark’s order for the new Bridgeport mayoral primary.”
Republican legislators, meanwhile, have sought substantial changes to both absentee ballot policy and enforcement of violations.
In an interview Monday, House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora called for the removal of the ballot drop boxes first installed around the state during the COVID pandemic as well as a new mandatory minimum sentence of at least one year for people convicted of ballot fraud.
“People get a slap on the wrist for committing significant voter violations,” Candelora said. “Meanwhile, the impact of it has such huge ripple effects with election integrity, with the perception of Connecticut. These things have now gone national. There needs to be criminal ramifications for the activity.”
Blumenthal said that leaders of the Government Administration and Elections Committee would not back proposals to eliminate ballot drop boxes, arguing the change would limit access for some voters.
In an interview, Sen. Mae Flexer, a Windham Democrat who co-chairs the elections panel, said the committee would need to enact policies to give voters in every town confidence their local officials and people working campaigns were following the law.
“We want to make sure we’re not making it harder for anyone to vote, but we’re holding the people who are part of this process to account,” she said. “People who commit offenses that violate the public trust should be held to a very high standard of justice, especially in this moment, when across this country, democracy feels like something we have to fight for every day.”
