With copies to state and federal law enforcement officials, Bob “Troll” Walsh, a backer of Democratic mayoral candidate Mary-Jane Foster, has filed a complaint with the Connecticut State Elections Enforcement Commission claiming “once again we are seeing the telltale signs of an organized absentee ballot operation aimed at soliciting applications and ballots that do not meet the requirements of law.”
Walsh’s complaint follows with subject line “Absentee Ballot Complaint – potential Mail Fraud”
Please accept the following as a complaint concerning widespread absentee ballot abuse in the city of Bridgeport involving the Democratic Primary to be conducted on September 16th, 2015.
As a long time party activist and former Bridgeport City Council member involved in political campaigns over the past few decades, once again we are seeing the telltale signs of an organized absentee ballot operation aimed at soliciting applications and ballots that do not meet the requirements of law.
Among the signs of such an operation are:
1) An inordinate number of applications being submitted in the city of Bridgeport as compared to other cities and town in the state. The pure
number makes it impossible to adequately monitor compliance with state law.
2) A concentration of applications in certain parts of the city that cannot be statistically justified versus lack of activity in other sections of the city.
3) A concentration of applications being filed on behalf of seniors especially those living in complexes with limited access to non-residents or campaign workers.
4) A number of applications requested by campaign workers who have previously been cited by your office for absentee ballot abuses or have been involved in campaigns with alleged improprieties.
5) Certain housing complexes are only filing for 19 absentee applications; if 20 were submitted then supervised balloting would be enacted.
i. Supervised balloting in the 2015 Special Election for the 23rd State Senate District proved to limit the abuses in absentee ballot applications.
6) More than 400 ballots have been sent out and no list was provided by the Town Clerk.
7) The Town Clerk is responsible for overseeing absentee ballots and is running on Joe Ganim’s slate.
8) Furthermore, our Registrar of Voters’ daughter has been arrested on 19 counts of voting fraud charges.In a city such as Bridgeport where your own investigations in the past have lead to obscene levels of corrupt practices (22 individuals fined in one election cycle in 2002), record dollar fines levied against other individuals for their involvement in elections since 2002 and the preponderance of this illegal activity occurring in Democratic Party primary elections should be enough to spur your office into action now prior to election day rather than in a reactive mode after the polls have closed.
I am urging your office to vigorously enforce state election laws in regards to absentee ballots to safeguard the sanctity of the election process and to pursue individuals involved in corrupting the process to the fullest extent of the law available to you.
As a campaign volunteer for Mary-Jane Foster, we have undertaken an aggressive campaign effort to identify supporters through both door-to-door canvassing and phone banking. As part of this operation our workers will routinely inquire about the voters need for an absentee ballot. We have not encountered requests anywhere near the levels that other campaigns seem to identify and collect.
Please accept this as an official complaint and a request to initiate a formal investigation into the absentee ballot solicitation practices involving the Democratic primary scheduled for September 16th, 2015. Should you have any questions or seek further information, please contact me at (203) 623-6215 or
Get ready Bob, the first one investigated in these matters is usually the person/s making the complaints.
Hector,
If that’s the case, I am not concerned. I do not stoop to the level others do. Cheat to win. Never have, never will.
And since I have not even touched an absentee ballot application this election cycle, if I am investigated then the process is more corrupt than I had imagined.
Great job, Bob! You are a True Detective!
It is time to do away with absentee ballots. The idea was for the sick, lame and lazy to have a way to vote. That has been abused to the point it needs to be stopped. More people are affected by absentee ballots than actually vote absentee. We elect people who really did not win an election. Really, how many are too sick to go vote, very few based on what I have seen at Fireside and Augustana senior complexes.
It’s plague season, silly Andy. It comes around every election cycle. Amazing coincidence, and Only In Bridgeport.
Wow Bob, finally!
Bob and MJF are trying to disenfranchise the voters. Read this article. Just replace the word Republican with the name Bob Walsh:
www .politico.com/story/2015/06/hillary-clinton-early-voting-rights-gop-118636
“What part of Democracy are they afraid of?”
“What is happening is a sweeping effort to dis-empower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people and young people from one end of our country(city) to another,”
Chris Christie (Bob Walsh) that was the apex of her (my) speech. About two-thirds of the way into her (my) remarks, she blasted the group (Bob Walsh) for “fear-mongering” on a “phantom epidemic of election fraud.”