According To AB Application Log, Former Chief Garcia, Supporting Gomes For Mayor, Flaunts Election Monitor Rules

Election monitors hired by the state to supervise the Democratic mayoral primary redo made clear on day one of their assignment that anyone requesting five or more absentee ballot applications must sign them out at the Town Clerk’s Office and are solely responsible for dissemination to electors. That means they cannot share them with other operatives for distribution.

Former top cop Rebeca Garcia either doesn’t know the rules or is flat out flaunting them in a photo posted on candidate John Gomes Facebook page, holding a stack of applications, at a senior citizen event. Who gave them to her? The absentee ballot application log shows that Gomes supporter Denise Solano signed out a hefty 500 absentee ballot applications. But as of Friday Garcia had signed out for none.

From Secretary of the State:

On day one of absentee ballot application release, our Election Monitor reports that there is already some confusion about what happens once someone signs out absentee ballot applications.  Please see the attached, and importantly, the clause below:

If the Circulator on file with the Town Clerk’s Office asks another individual to help with distributing applications, the name of the additional MUST be registered with the Town Clerk’s Office PRIOR to any applications being distributed to voters.

Garcia, scorned that Mayor Joe Ganim named Roderick Porter permanent chief over her, is staunchly in the camp of Gomes, even running on his slate in a failed City Council campaign.

Hmm, when a former chief flouts the rules? The very ex chief who meowed Porter’s selection was all about politics. She did not mind it when Ganim appointed her acting top cop, right? No politics then.

It has been past practice forever that multitudes of campaign insiders have shared absentee ballot applications with others, irrespective of the camps, something election monitors decided to tighten up to keep an eye on the absentee process that became the centerpiece of a state judge to order another Dem primary. The Gomes camp has sanctimoniously condemned the Ganim camp, in light of the judge’s ruling, despite glaring campaign cracks in its own backyard.

A key difference here is that the city’s once top law enforcement official, according to the application log, is playing by a set of rules unsanctioned by election monitors.

We are now just over a week to the Democratic primary renew. The advance forecast projects a balmy mid 40s weather day in Connecticut’s most populous city with a lot on the line and the potential for another general election.

In this historically peculiar extended election cycle, no matter how this shakes out, this type of conduct will certainly attract attention from election monitors trying to enforce the rules.