One week from Tuesday city voters will fill four Board of Education seats in a special election ordered by the Connecticut Supreme Court after it invalidated state control of city schools. This event is an intriguing appetizer–albeit important to the makeup of the school board–to the general election in November when city voters will decide if they want to continue with an elected school board or support Mayor Bill Finch’s proposal to appoint members via a charter revision question.
The Democratic candidates for school board are Ken Moales, Hernan Illingworth and Jacqueline Kelleher, all three members of the state-appointed Board of Education. The Dems are being challenged by three Republican candidates, former GOP Registrar Joe Borges and husband and wife Wayne and Evelyn Hayes as well as Working Families Party candidates local basketball legend John Bagley and Barbara Pouchet, active in city education issues. Karen Jackson is running as a petitioning candidate. City electors can fill in the ovals of up to three of the nine candidates. The top four voter producers win. One of the seats is reserved for minority party representation. The elected board will be seated upon certification of the results by elections officials.
Campaign operatives say the special election turnout, the day after Labor Day, will be challenged to hit 10 percent. If Bagley and Pouchet win, the Working Families Party will be in position to control the school board, something campaign operatives for Mayor Bill Finch want to avoid. The Working Families Party has two of its members on the elected school board, Maria Pereira and Sauda Baraka.
Absentee ballots could decide this special election. Democratic Town Chair Mario Testa is leading an absentee ballot operation on behalf of his candidates. Roughly 300 absentee ballot applications are circulating, according to Town Clerk Alma Maya whose staff will be in overdrive working Saturday and Labor Day to administer the AB process.
On September 4, the night of the special election, an informational forum organized largely by opponents of a mayoral-appointed school board will take place from 6 to 7:30 at the North End Branch library 3455 Madison Avenue.
So the top four vote producers win but we only can vote for three, am I correct? This whole thing is confusing to me and I know a lot of voters will be filling in more than three next Tuesday. As far as I’m concerned, I know two of the three who I will be voting for and those are the two Working Families candidates. Still debating if I should vote for Jacqueline Kelleher or not. The other two Dems I will not be voting for.
I’m voting Bags & Babs.
Only!
*** To throw a wrench in the whole BOE Finch picks, voters should definitely vote for the two WFP candidates and one of the petition or GOP candidates, no? ***
*** donj, is it possible for you “not” to vote for any of the Dem. Finch loyalist in this election? ***
For everyone who blogged this weekend they would not vote for Maria and Sauda, here is the good news, they are not running!!!
Bullet vote John Bagley and Barbara Pouchet only!
Forgot there were petition candidates.
I believe we can vote for four candidates as there are four seats open–can someone confirm? There will be nine choices and I can vote for four.
Common Good, this is only the case in towns that allow parties to nominate the full number of candidates to be elected. Bridgeport is not one of these. See Foster v Ayala and CT statutes sec. 9-204a.
The basic guideline is there should never be a blank column on a ballot, and voters can’t vote for more options than there are columns. If parties can nominate four, there will be four columns and each voter can choose four. If parties can nominate three, there will be 3 columns and each voter can choose three.
You are correct and I just confirmed same with Registrar’s office–machines will catch overvotes at the pols and voters will get a do-over–but not ABs-entire vote is invalid if they vote for four people.
Hopefully the ballots will say “vote for any three” and leave off the confusing “four to be elected” language some towns use.
Lydia and Mario will be the ones actually filling out the ballot so no need to worry about over votes.
Just got two mail pieces from the Democratic school board and one from the Working Families.