State Rep. Chris Caruso says Mayor Bill Finch should order his City Attorney’s Office to back off and recount every ballot in the 12 city precincts granted a two-hour voting overtime by a state judge following the Election Day ballot shortage.
Connecticut’s Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz announced the other day that Bridgeport would recount ballots from the 12 city precincts as part of a transparent auditing of the voting process. When the city’s legal team heard about this they said been there, done that. SuBy, they say, doesn’t have legal authority to order this, although SuBy says city registrars had agreed to her request voluntarily.
Caruso says okay, the mayor should order it done. “If the mayor is so into transparency,” says Caruso, “recount the votes in the interest of full disclosure. What are they afraid of?” Caruso says city lawyers and the mayor are covering up the Election Day disaster.
What do city lawyers fear? The votes were counted, but what if another review, following a long night of counting by groggy elections officials, shows a questionable gulf? It undercuts Finch’s argument that all the votes were counted accurately and possibly places the city in legal peril. That would certainly add another strange episode in a goofy election season.
It’s so transparent you can see right through it.
Laske is an Art-Ful Dodger! Great litigator and must be a good gardener from his garden type violation claims from Caruso primary colors case.
Poor Public Relations for Bridgeport! Surprise!!!
Let the 2011 election season begin!
An audit would not touch the hand-counted ballots. Caruso knows this.
No!
www .realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/11/17/spoofing_obamas_negotiations_in_south_korea.html
*** Great political P/R time to play devil’s advocate over the past election results, no? And for what gain, also how much time & money to spend on basically the same possible results? What can it prove that’s not already known about the major screw-up? *** Water under the bridge. ***
Mojo // Nov 18, 2010 at 12:07 am
Responding to you Mojo
Well put … p/r is the name of the game.
However, you might like to know that the “water under the bridge” you mention is actually the “Bridge to Unity” that John M. Gomes is building for those of us who want Bridgeport City Government operations to work for every citizen …
Maybe some will call that p/r as well, but I don’t think so …
marlys // Nov 17, 2010 at 10:48 pm
responding to your posting
How is this true? Are absentee ballots in the same category?
Audits are not held to see that the election procedures were followed properly, just that the machines counted right.
For towns that count absentee ballots at some place other than the polls, absentees are never audited.
That said, if someone tampered with the machines, the audits will discover it.
This guy knows a lot about the issue and wants to see audits be more comprehensive:
www .ctvoterscount.org
*** Can’t blame Ayala for the city attorney’s decision, she agreed to SuBy’s request. However the results were “recounted” in front of all parties involved & legal reps. next morning, no? And if the ROVs are elected & do not come under the Mayor’s office per se (only budget), why can’t Ayala follow SuBy’s request regardless of the city attorney’s stand? How much will it cost taxpayers for basically the same results (minimal + or -) for this audit? This will definitely be a subject to ponder over & over come election time next year! *** FORGETABOUTIT ***
What were the total votes cast for each candidate on the first Tuesday in Bridgeport for US Senate and Representative posts, for instance? At the polls in person, absentee? I understand who was elected, but I am still not sure of the vote count because all the conversation has moved to the “fiasco.” Anybody? And if one were interested in looking at the results per polling place, where would these be posted, if available? Thank you.
The city should have participated in this audit. We already know there was a screw-up. The mayor put together a panel to take testimony and come up with some kind of answers.
It does not surprise me that the city does not want to look into this any further. What are they hiding? What do they know that we don’t know? What happened that they don’t want the public to know? How many votes were not counted? What were the real vote totals?
CAN THIS ADMINISTRATION DO ANYTHING RIGHT?
TC: I could not agree with you more.
What do you mean by “this audit?” The machine-cast ballots or the photocopies?
If the photocopies, I think people want a careful, detailed examination of the situation by someone other than the same people responsible for the fiasco, and are grasping at this idea of an “audit” to say that.
The only audit in the CT law is specifically designed for the machine-cast ballots, and no special audit team conducts it–the same ROVs who ran the election recounting the ballots come back and do the audit. Same level of competency (or not), same level of integrity (or not).
For those who say “audit” because they want “scrutiny” and “oversight,” here is an example of how different this machine ballot “audit” is from what I think people want.
On election night, the moderator’s return forms sent to SOTS may or may not include the machine result tapes. Why? There is no statute requiring these district results machine tapes be sent. When the post-election machine-counted ballot audit form is submitted to SOTS, there is no law saying that copies of the tapes be sent with the audit report form.
All SOTS by law has to receive is the pieces of paper, no backup documenting the machine-cast ballot totals on each machine.
So, while in a financial audit you can’t get away with simply claiming you took someone to dinner for $98.00 to discuss future widget-making orders–you have to produce a receipt, in a CT post election “audit,” you are not required to allow SOTS to drill down to your corroborating paperwork. If it sounds a little like “what happens in this town stays in this town,” talk to your state legislator about it.
There exists the possibility in such an audit that the only people who know whether the tapes match the paperwork and the audits match the elections are … the local people who fill out the paperwork … and as long as it matches, it would seem quite difficult for SOTS to corroborate that any of the numbers definitely relate to reality.
Seems to me that people want an investigation, a thorough review, but can’t figure out how to make that happen.
As to the Bridgeport district add-ons to the machine-counted ballot audits, I believe these are legal but am not clear why Bridgeport has any problem with paying for them–after all they saved a bunch not ordering ballots and that has some financial and public-relations consequences.
I think it would be helpful if people identified exactly the questions they want to see answered, in order to see whether the solution proposed will provide the answers they really want, or just some other “answers” to the wrong questions.
Now there’s someone who knows what they’re talking about.
Odd we are fighting two wars, people dying, millions spent just to give these people “Democracy” and the right to vote, yet we do not have it here in Bridgeport.
Thanks Finch, DiNardo, Testa, Timpanelli, Santa and all you swell folks in this administration.
Keep on Rockin’!!!
The calm before the storm ~~~ mayoral debates 2011, awesome, can’t wait.
Did Bridgeport say no to the state audit of what actually happened?
What I really can’t get right now is that Obama comes to town and tells people to vote and they do, but no one knows if their vote was counted.
Obama is at the same time been sending more of our kids to the Middle East to show the world how democracy and elections are done. And these young American soldiers, most around 20 years old are willing to die for this cause. How committed are we? If you don’t know and won’t review or audit, can you actually call them elections at all?
BEACON2 results.
Himes 17,644 84%
Debicella 3,477 16%
Blummy 17,116 81%
McMahon 4,030 19%
That makes no sense. Bridgeport ordered 23,000 ballots. They ran out and made thousands of photo copies. Then the polls were kept open two additional hours at most sites. Plus the absentees. That should total way over 21,000. What gives?
Bridgeport Girl
There’s something you’re not taking into account. Remember that the 23,000 ballots were not all the same. Some polling places did not run out of ballots, so it’s safe to assume some polling places had unused ballots at the end of the night, which could not be used elsewhere.
The only way you’re going to get the count you’re looking for is by polling place, how many were pre-printed for that polling place, how many were used, how many were photocopied.
Good point, Booty. For a look at the different types of ballots used in the election in Bport, see this linked PDF:
www .sots.ct.gov/sots/lib/sots/electionservices/town_ballots/2010/bridgeport.pdf
If you look in upper right corner and flip through ballots, you will see that the identifying bars or “registration marks” vary as you flip/scroll. That is what tells the machine which ballot type is being voted.
It appears that voting district #1 had numerous different ballot types. (See the voting district numbers listed on the ballots in upper right).
ctwatcher, Bridgeport uses the State Rep district as the district number, with the precincts listed after. “130 District 2” had Santiago and Musto, while “130 District 1” (as well as Districts 3, 4, and 5) had Santiago and Gomes.
So it isn’t that there’s a District 1 with many ballot styles, so much as that every State Rep district *has* a District 1.
Missing from that set of ballots is the one for 127-3: the portion of the Blackham School district where 630 or so voters are represented by both Ed Gomes and Jack Hennessy.
The above numbers do not reflect the top-of-the-ticket numbers. Numbers are higher at the top and progressively decline to the end of the ballot.
I still wanna know precinct-by-precinct numbers!!!
Hmmm … donj, would you consider doing a “People’s Review”–making a written request to the clerk or ROV (not sure who keeps ’em but I think the clerk) for the district by district moderator’s returns plus the head moderator’s? That’ll have ALL the numbers you want and you can be the first to release them!
This is public information so you can use the Freedom of Information Act to get copies (they can charge for the copies but the price is supposed to be kept moderate).
They also should show hand-cast ballot totals under the moderators’ tally sheets for “auxiliary bin ballots,” if that tally sheet is filed with the returns.
While making sure every vote is counted is important, it is equally as important to be sure there are not more ballots cast than the number of people who were checked as having voted.
Due to the questions in this election the moderator sheets should be reviewed to see how many people were checked in to vote. Then count the number of ballots (machine read and hand counted) to assure that no one “stuffed the ballot box.”
It works the other way, too, Bill. There were reports that in at least one district, there were a number of voters who were NOT checked in. The numbers in that district (voters checked in compared to ballots cast) should NOT come back with a perfect match. If they do, it would support at least the possibility that the records were fudged. So you don’t want to find that–because it makes one wonder where else the record was not accurately kept.
Wow, ctwatcher! That’s another big slap at the people.
If people were not checked off 1) how do we know some people didn’t vote more than once? 2) how do we know these people were registered to vote? 3) how do we know how many people voted?
People who vote more than once or who are not registered to vote diminish the significance of every legal vote.
The reconciliation of ballots with the number of voters checked in is supposed to build confidence in the system. If there is a difference (say more than “a few”), it would show that those administering the election failed in their job. It could be human error or it could be intentional–but it is failure to adhere to voting laws.
You may want the number of ballots and the number of names reconciled, and it may be a good idea to do that. But an audit will not accomplish it.
You can go and examine the lists to find these numbers. Getting to handle the ballots themselves, though, is not possible.
Bill-CT’s (rhetorical) question:
If people were not checked off 1) how do we know some people didn’t vote more than once? 2) how do we know these people were registered to vote? 3) how do we know how many people voted?
Answer: As you know, we don’t. It appears the people who were doing the voter check-ins at that one particular district didn’t understand how important their job was as a check and balance in an election.
All the people who came in could be legitimate and the problem with voter check-in could be one of a one-time volunteer poll worker who is overwhelmed can snowball into a situation where the voters lose confidence in the system or the ROVs.