Connecticut Denies Elections Are ‘Full-Rigged’

Connecticut elections officials this week took steps to confront “voter intimidation” and downplayed the chances of fraud.

The Hartford Courant quoted Michael Brandi, executive director of the State Elections Enforcement Commission, as saying that voters have nothing to worry about in terms of the integrity of the system.

“The problem with these pronouncements in Connecticut is we’ve had cases of voter fraud as recently as two years ago.”

“I’ve said this repeatedly, there is no possibility in the state of Connecticut of a full-rigged election,” he said. “It just can’t occur.’

It’s unclear if Brandi thinks a half-rigged or a quarter-rigged election is possible. But state Republican Party Chairman J.R. Romano pointed to a successful prosecution of a Democratic state representative in 2015 as proof that there are problems that need to be addressed.

“The problem with these pronouncements in Connecticut is we’ve had cases of voter fraud as recently as two years ago,” he said.

A judge last year sentenced Christina Ayala to a suspended prison term after she pleaded guilty to two counts of providing a false statement. Authorities arrested her in 2014 after finding that she had voted in various Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee elections from 2009 to 2012 even though she was not living in the district, according to the Connecticut Post. She also voted in the wrong district in 2012.

Romano said Ayala’s mother remains a Democratic registrar.

Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill said Wednesday that volunteer poll watchers will not be permitted at voting locations and that the state would move aggressively if “someone is bothering voters on their way into the polls.”

Patrick Gallahue, a spokeswoman for the department, clarified in an interview with LifeZette on Thursday that the state’s longstanding system of poll watchers — in which volunteers designated by the parties can register to observe poll workers check in voters on Election Day — will not change. He said the state would not allow self-appointed watchers to question voters.

Those poll watchers perform an important function, said Ed Munster, who very well might have been cost a seat in Congress because of voting irregularities. He said he may not even have known about those discrepancies if not for poll watchers.

Munster said Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is right to withhold judgment about the fairness of next week’s election until he reviews the results.

“Hooray for him,” he said. “Because I can tell you there are lots of things that go on in an election … People need to know that there are problems in the voting system we need to be aware of.”

Munster lost one of the closest congressional elections in U.S. history. On election night 1994, the Republican nominee stood just two votes behind incumbent Democrat Samuel Gejdenson, triggering an automatic recount. After a second tally, the margin was four votes.

Then Munster discovered questionable votes. At one polling place, some 300 people who were not on the rolls showed up to vote. The proper procedure was for those voters to cast “challenged ballots” to be placed in sealed envelopes and added later if officials confirmed they were eligible voters.

“That didn’t happen. All these voters were allowed to vote,” he said. “It wasn’t a town that supported me. They were heavily in the other direction.”

Munster said he cannot say for sure that the votes were fraudulent. But whether intentional or the product of error, he said, they likely should not have counted. He appealed to the state Supreme Court,which agreed but had no way of separating the questionable votes from the total and no way of determining for whom they voted.

The court ordered another recount and — improperly, in Munster’s view — allowed absentee ballots that had been returned after the deadline. After that tally, Munster lost by 21 votes. Munster said at the time that he had uncovered the names of 1,200 people who had voted improperly.

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Munster said he is not bitter about the loss, now more than 20 years old. But he said reports of ineligible voters on rolls throughout the country should cause concern.

“We keep making it easier for fraud to happen,” he said.

Romano, the GOP chairman, said he agrees intimidation should not be tolerated at the polls and added that the party has no plans to send people to polling locations to question voters or otherwise disrupt the process. But he said elections officials should be equally concerned about voting irregularities.

“Discussing cracks in the system — why is that a problem?” he said.