From Mayor Finch:
Mayor Bill Finch today named three business community members to an informal, bipartisan panel which will assess election procedures and make recommendations to improve the process.
Mayor Finch has asked prominent local attorney Richard Bieder, partner in Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, PC; Robert Trefry, former CEO of Bridgeport Hospital, and former Republican Bridgeport Mayor Nicholas Panuzio to examine the Registrars of Voters election procedures and make recommendations to help the process run more smoothly and ensure that the difficulties encountered at polling places does not happen again.
During Tuesday’s election, many of the City’s polling places ran out of ballots. Emergency ballots were printed to the specification of the Secretary of the State’s office, and distributed to the polling places by police officers in batches. Hartford Superior Court Judge Marshall Berger later issued an order to extend the hours of voting at certain Bridgeport precincts in order to allow citizens to exercise their right to vote. The application to extend the hours was filed by the Connecticut Democratic Party and the Malloy for Governor Campaign Committee.
“We don’t want what happened Tuesday to ever happen again,” said Mayor Finch. “It’s imperative that we ensure that our voters are able to access polling places and ballots in a timely, orderly and efficient manner. I’ve asked these three reputable community members to take an impartial look at the management of our Registrars’ office and make recommendations for improvements.”
In 1971, Mr. Panuzio was the first Republican elected Mayor of Bridgeport in 44 years and served two terms. He was a candidate for Governor of Connecticut in 1974 and served in the Connecticut Legislature.
Mr. Bieder has been awarded a citation by the Connecticut State Legislature for his legal role in an election case of social significance. In addition to the state and federal courts of Connecticut, he is admitted to practice in the U.S Court of Appeals in the 1st and 2nd Circuits, U.S. Court of Military Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mr. Trefry retired from Bridgeport Hospital on Sept. 30, 2010, after serving the hospital for 19 years, first as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer 1991-94 and for the last 16 years as President and CEO.
I am glad they will be looking at the registrars’ office but the simple solution is print the same number of ballots for the number of registered people. While these 3 distinguished people are looking at the registrars’ office look at the positions that are needed at each polling place. Paying people $100 for 15 hours’ work is not in many cases attracting the right people to these jobs.
SuBy said it would have cost $35,000 to print 70,000 ballots. How much did it cost for the police overtime to escort and guard the ballots? How much will it cost in attorney fees to defend the lawsuits? What about the disenfranchised voters and the terrible press? Another short-sighted decision.
Any way they spin this, it’s over for this administration. Done. Over. Karma is a bitch.
Look, it’s embarrassing to the Registrars and problematic for the affected residents, but hands up if you thought turnout in Bridgeport this year was going to be higher than it was in 2006.
Find me a media report that assumed higher overall turnout than in the last midterm–especially any report that assumed increases in heavily Democratic urban areas–and we’ll have found someone who can righteously criticize.
In 2006, there were fewer than 21,000 votes cast in total in Bridgeport, and that’s including absentee ballots. Turnout was under 36%.
Now maybe they should have had a better process in place to monitor how quickly ballots were being used, so that photocopies (if necessary) would have been in place without any pause in voting for residents. That’s a reasonable criticism, and I wonder why it isn’t something they didn’t do.
But six days a week people on here are hollering that the city is wasting money on this and that, the taxes are too high, etc. etc. etc. Maybe that’s fine. But on day 7, I think you could pardon the Registrars for getting the idea that spending $15,000 on ballots that nobody ever thought would be used–and then feeding those ballots, after the election, into a shredder–would be unwise.
Marlys: It was generally accepted nationwide that turnout for this mid-term election would be far greater than usual due to highly engaged Tea Party voters and the push by the Democrats to GOTV to counteract Republican enthusiasm. Why do you think the President was here? It was called a rally and it didn’t occur to the Registrar that would motivate Democratic voters? Nowhere else in the country did you hear of polling places running out of ballots!
Marlys, this was an unusual year. This was the ONLY time a president visited the city 3 days before the election specifically to get out the vote. Santa was at the arena with her daughters. She saw, heard and felt the enthusiasm. Her office should have been prepared. You don’t have the entire DTC and the President of the U.S. work to gotv and then order the same ol’ number of ballots. Think about it.
Ballots start being delivered shortly after the candidate list is final -with ABs going out to voters this year starting on October 4th. We learned of Obama’s visit on October 20th. And the day before the election, Lennie wrote:
“There was a sense based on the city’s recent turnout in gubernatorial cycles that the Democratic political organization would be hard pressed to eclipse a 30 percent turnout, roughly half of what showed in 2008 to support Barack Obama when voters were inspired and party apparatus wasn’t imperative to juice performance. The malaise changed with Barack’s Bridgeport visit. Could his visit stimulate a city turnout by five to seven percent? Possibly. There’s no measuring stick for such an appearance just days before an election. This has never happened. So it comes down to this, Dem city operatives hope to help pull enough votes to reach at least 25,000 votes citywide Tuesday. They’d feel better about pushing the turnout a few thousand more and hitting 40 percent. Is that realistic? Probably not.”
His take was that the turnout was going to be stuck below thirty, with Obama’s visit pumping it up, basically, to 2006 levels of 35% or so–and that 40% turnout was a fantasy. That was the view from the ground from the day before the election, not from mid-September when the ballot orders went in.
Yes, if they planned for that low a number, they should have had a plan to monitor and resupply the polling places in case of an emergency. But I don’t think they were unreasonable to purchase ballots for a turnout equivalent to 2006 levels.
Read today’s Ct Post. SuBy said that more ballots could have been ordered on Monday. No excuse.
I totally disagree. Monday morning, two days after the huge Obama rally and the day before the election, the City’s print shop should have been given an emergency print order by the Registrars even if it was at a cost of thirty cents a ballot. 15,000 additional ballots would have been enough just to be prudent. This isn’t about a cost-saving matter. The President thought Bridgeport was important enough that he changed his schedule to help GOTV. The least we could do is have enough ballots on hand for those who got the message. This is all about Bridgeport’s image of conducting a clean and efficiently run election that is in question. We are the butt of jokes and cynicism nationwide and I bet soon to be the basis of GOP litigation. This situation is not defensible in any way. It was a huge mistake that disenfranchised several voters of their duty and right as citizens. A panel, no matter how prestigious, cannot make this mistake go away. Yes there are ways to improve the whole process but that does not deal with the root cause.
Unfortunately I am sad to state that after thinking about this all day and reading a lot of the reactions, the solution must be for the Registrars to resign so the rest of the stakeholders in this terrible situation can move on. Defending what happened is not possible. In fact defending it makes some believe there was something nefarious at play. I truly believe it was poor judgment not a conspiracy against the GOP. That poor judgment cannot be rewarded. The public was not well served. The candidates and their campaign staff were not well served. Bridgeport was not well served.
Marlys my friend I have to disagree with you totally!!! You are wrong wrong wrong. Obama just came to town and fired up thousands of Bpt voters!!! These voters spread the word and people in Bridgeport came out!!! How you could make 21,000 ballots is beyond me and she and that guy are getting no slack from me. The way poll workers at Black Rock handled this is a disgrace to our democracy. People could have seen other people’s ballots that’s how bad it was at Black Rock. Why is the guy who gives the sticker not at the door? Why is he on top of the machine and can see people’s votes, what happened to privacy? How can you have only one vote checkers for a line going out the door? Every town has more than 1 checker. Black Rock was a damn disgrace Tuesday night and I was highly disgusted at how they performed their jobs and disgusted with the city period. I felt like I was a second-class citizen or living in a third-world country. There should be no way in hell that the guy giving the I Voted sticker can just look at people’s ballots just like that. Malloy could have won with an even a greater margin if so many people did not leave and it could have well passed the 40% mark. All my candidates won but I’m still angry at how Bpt handled this and both registrars need to resign they are both lazy people who messed with people’s rights. I had a friend who when I asked him today did you vote and he said I went but no ballots to vote so he left. I doubt if he will ever go vote in any local or midterm again. Obama fired him up on Sat so he did what he had to do but guess what no ballots!!! Every Bridgeport official needs to resign. How do I know my vote counted because it was not scanned by the machine??? I think I’m going to sit out every election until 2012. Does not make sense my vote was most likely not counted yesterday.
Ayala said it would cost a lot of money??? Stop defending yourself you only sound like a clown you need to resign!!! You robbed people of their right to vote!!!
www .youtube.com/watch?v=f2TfNzqK1GE
countdown, I’m in agreement with your position but I take it a step further, people’s voting rights were taken from them and there needs to be a federal investigation into voting rights laws. Was the Registrars of Voters decision in ordering ballots based on cost saving and did that decision come from the mayor or did they do it on their own? A low voter turnout would help Republicans so I can understand their position in not having more ballots.
Ron,
All of the city employees are suffering with a budget that isn’t balanced so I do believe that cost was a factor but it doesn’t outweigh voting rights. I don’t want to see lawyers on top of lawyers investigating everything because that runs up the costs in the City Attorney’s office. The right thing to do is for the Registrars to fall on their swords. I read that Herbst and lawyers are pouring through the paperwork to make a GOP legal case for Foley. This is only the beginning of a very messy and protracted fiasco. AP is now saying that Foley is 8000 votes ahead of Malloy. I want to wake up tomorrow and find two resignations on the Mayor’s desk. It is the least they can do. This is no small matter of printing costs or trying to avoid excess boxes of ballots. This is a major screw-up.
*** It’s disappointing to wait in line to vote then have to leave because of lack of ballots, however things like this have happened before in other states. Whatever the reason for the blunder, it’s still not going to fix the problem that took place. Does the Mayor have the power to fire Ms. Ayala, a re-elected person? ***
The mayor cannot fire Ayala or Borges. Borges is leaving and will be replaced by Linda Grace. This is a case where if you follow the rules and print enough ballots for all the registered voters then there is no problem.
There will be a lawsuit and it would not surprise me if a new election in Bridgeport is called for. As Lennie pointed out in an earlier post the courts have ordered a new election before. I believe he stated that it involved an election Auden Grogins was involved in. The voting machine did not register votes for her and a running mate because it was broken.
donj I believe the poll workers or lack thereof at your school are Danny Roach’s responsibility.
Yikes! The mayor needs to seal up the ROV office. Get both registrars’ keys and do not allow them to enter without supervision. And doesn’t Hearst have any work to do in Trumbull? Is he conducting this investigation on the dime of the Trumbull residents? Mayor Finch, lock those doors–there appears to be a serious problem in that office and the ROV are leading it. Take away their access until this is resolved or they both resign.