Wanda Geter-Pataky, the woman at the center of the Bridgeport election fraud scandal, has been arrested again, this time accused of violating the conditions of her release by contacting some of the witnesses expected to testify against her.
Geter-Pataky appeared briefly in Bridgeport Superior Court on Friday and was charged with one count of violation of conditions of release in the first degree. She was released after posting $75,000 bail.
She will appear in court on Sept. 9, the same day she is scheduled to appear on the original charges that she committed more than 90 counts of election fraud, including unlawfully possessing another person’s absentee ballot.
The seven-page arrest warrant detailing the latest charge against Geter-Pataky alleges that she and a man identified as Alfredo Castillo visited a woman listed as a potential witness, and brought absentee ballot applications — along with some grapes.
The potential witness told investigators that Castillo came to her door with the grapes and that Geter-Pataky was in a pick-up truck and waved to her.
The potential witness said she filled out her own application and signed it but she said she did not sign the application for her daughter, who has Down Syndrome, is nonverbal and is unable to write. She told inspectors “I don’t know why they have her vote,” according to the arrest warrant.
Castillo has not been charged in the case.
The second potential witness told investigators that Geter-Pataky stopped by her apartment in May to tell her she was running for City Council and to get her to sign an absentee ballot application, which she did.
When Geter-Pataky was arraigned in February, a judge specifically warned her that she wasn’t to contact witnesses and could face further charges if she did.
Geter-Pataky has been arrested twice since June 2024 on election fraud charges in the last two mayoral elections.
The bulk of the recent charges against her stemmed from videos that appear to show her putting multiple ballots into a drop box in front of the City Hall annex.
The charges paint a picture of competing political camps that aggressively and illegally pursued absentee votes for Mayor Joe Ganim and Democratic primary challenger John Gomes — by forging signatures, registering non-citizens to vote, telling people how to vote, changing votes after they were cast and harvesting dozens of absentee ballots so they could be delivered to drop boxes in the city.
A total of 11 people have been arrested on election fraud charges over the past two years. All but one have all their cases still pending.
Only Josephine Edmonds, 63, has pleaded guilty accepting a three-year suspended sentence with three years probation.
Edmonds was facing four felony charges, including witness tampering and illegal possession of absentee ballots stemming from the 2019 election.
This article first appeared on CT Mirror and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
It would seem, logically, that it’s only a matter of time until Bridgeport’s political food chain enters the realm of the cannibalistic…
If that was the case, then why did Alfredo Castillo deliver 🍇 instead of human meat?
Imagine having almost 100 felony charges pending already for election fraud,then going out again and committing more election fraud??…Seriously,what is her incentive to continually do this for the DTC??.. Is she getting paid some way to do this??.. The same with Castillo & I’m sure others are still doing the same despite pending charges. What is Mario offering them to continually try to manipulate elections?
Comment from yesterday OIB, presented to the Charter Commission session this morning, available to the City Council to prepare and present an ordinance to be followed:
What would happen if an online class for circulators of petitions for primaries or for absentee ballots were required to attend and to learn “the do’s and don’ts” as current, courtesy of City governance that must have had enough “bad press” for continuing to show election weakness and reasons for distrust through the years? Whether a circulator is a “paid professional”, hired to circulate paper for signatures and to attest to such activity, or merely a volunteer offering door knocking and a form to registered City voters, their ‘conscious competence’ is a matter of concern to all taxpaying citizens of Bridgeport.
Why face the continuing oversight, which turns negative with personal results, as well as for the community at large, when failure to follow the rules is observed, or alleged, and which then will be investigated? Taking a class, perhaps with a quiz attached, in our two most frequently understood languages might be a start. If the Town Committees of the two “major” parties are not interested in this subject, perhaps the City Council will fund a line item for such education. If the Town Committees fail to have websites that allow info flow and two-way communication can they just step aside from the training responsibility? What do the State party Committees say? What do our local legislators opine? Time will tell.
John,are you saying they don’t know the rules of absentee protocol so maybe there should be a class going over the rules just so everyone knows?…IMO,they all know the rules properly better than any class or video can teach them.Obviously they could care less about the rules,the object is too get as many ballots each they could for the DTC..I’d imagine they all compare notes and advise each other ways around the rules every election period.
I am suggesting that many people do not know the regulations governing a given marketplace.
The folks who are in trouble are communicating with folks who likely would fail to exercise their registered civil right to vote were not someone at their door urging them to vote. They then would join the awesome number of their neighbors failing to become informed about governance process, and likely the system will become more corrupt.
Whether it is absentee protocol for handling those ballots, or securing signatures for petitions to primary or present a resolution, signing someone else’s name, or striking out another signature should be obvious. However, it is a busy world, high school civics is a long time past for so many, and social media does not perform a thorough job of keeping current and accurate info available, even to those with questions.
You specifically mention the DTC who makes no public statements of public service nature, fails to have a website where they could impart accurate info regularly, and seem to avoid any consequences from the State Committee. Why is that our current condition? And how much money do they attract and spend each year, locally and statewide? Why do financial fund raising/expense reports get so little attention from the media though there are rules of course? Who is genuinely concerned with knowing what their neighbor is concerned about, and who they see with the character and policy sense to request being a qualified representative? Time will tell.