Bridgeport vote count in – one more time – UPDATE: video added
OK, let’s try this again, for the folks around the country that currently think Connecticut can’t get it right. Bridgeport announced its final tallies and, to no one’s surprise, it puts Malloy in the Governor’s big boy chair. Unofficially, of course.
The vote tally announced at 6:30 this morning, perhaps to keep the whole mess under the radar. A couple of interesting elements here. After all the screaming and gnashing of teeth over disenfranchised voters, the vote count does not include the ballots cast after 8PM. Marginal is how they described it. But it does include Xeroxed ballots. Disgrace. From WTIC.
The mayor of Bridgeport says Democrat Dan Malloy won the election in Connecticut’s largest city by more than 13,000 votes, apparently giving him the edge in the disputed governor’s race.
Mayor Bill Finch says Malloy had 17,800 votes, compared with 4,075 for Republican Tom Foley.
Both candidates had claimed victory in Tuesday’s election.
If the numbers hold, Malloy will become the first Democratic governor since 1991.
My guess is if the totals were closer the “after 8PM” votes would be counted. But not all the questions have been answered. What about the reverse 9-11 calls that were made by the city to residents. The system is set up to warn people of major emergencies, not a get out the vote campaign. Yes, the Mayor is a Democrat. State Senator Kevin Witkos told Ray Dunaway this morning he wants an investigation into who ordered this.
The other issue is the decision to count the xeroxed ballots but not the ballots cast after 8PM? Was it because the Democrat Mayor and the Democrat Secretary of State decided that since one was needed but the other not, this would be a great way of sweeping the “after 8PM” decision under the rug.
From the WWE T-shirt fiasco, to the declaration that Malloy had won before the results were counted. From WTNH.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eHkio_8hpU
This has been a disgrace and helped turn Connecticut into a national laughing stock. Democrats controlled the whole process, made partisan decisions, and did substantial damage to the integrity of the system in Connecticut.
And while we are on the subject, one of the favorite rants of Democrats is voter intimidation and disenfranchisement. What does a process like this do to disenfranchisement and intimidation of voters who don’t vote Democrat. Why vote, you may ask, if your vote doesn’t make a difference because it appears the deck is stacked against you? Why indeed?
UPDATE: You can listen to the entire press conference by the Mayor here at WTNH.
Key points here come at the beginning where he announces the totals, at the 4 minute mark when the Mayor explains why he does not count the ballots after 8PM. Then again at the 10:00 mark where he talks about the blame game.
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Really, so I am to beleive now that all the votes in CT that were counted are TRUE…
I voted by the rules of the state of CT.
I had to vote between 6am and 8pm
I got one ballot (official)
yet others were allowed to vote after 8pm, reverse 911 was used?
Where is the logic, wheres the justice in all of this…
WHAT was the point of the polls staying open 2 extra hours? WHAT????
Votes after 8 p.m. were of little "consequence"….niiiiiice. What an idiot.
I worked the polls Tues. for the first time and was a ballot clerk. We were a small district, just over a 1,000 registered voters, but had ballots on hand for up to an 80% turnout. We were told from the week before, they anticipated a large voter turnout. During the day, a voter registrar transferred a package of a hundred of our ballots to a neighboring district because she worried they could run out. We had a 60% turnout, a neighboring district had 50%. That Bridgeport had so few ballots on hand to begin with looks very hinky, like a set up for convenient confusion. Foley was the only Republican who won in our district, BTW.
During the day, a fellow kept popping in asking for vote counts. When I finally asked, he said some called him "a Democratic Operative". There was another fellow also asking for counts who I supposed was Republican. But the DO kept asking our moderator to have the machine spit out an interim vote report. Seemed to know the machine could do that, though I believe she ignored him.
You are supposed to have 2 ballot clerks, one Democrat and one Republican, (they same for every station) both checking that the ballots are clean before they are given out. I would be curious what kind of ballot security they practiced when xeroxing ballots in Bridgeport. They should be able to document that everything was carefully supervised by representatives from both parties.
But even then, I learned that some of our ladies had been working the polls for many years, yet admitted (and you could tell) they weren't that politically savvy, but did it "for the money". I don't mean to impugn anyone's reputation, but I'm just saying, it does look hinky…
The videos hadn't come up before on my browser; just listened to them. Susan says there were 500 ballots cast after 8pm, the mayor says there were "less than 100". Are we talking ballots of people still in line after 8pm weren't counted? Or ballots of people who came after 8pm? And what were they doing with the xeroxed ballots that they knew this distinction? Malloy got 17,800 votes? What are the odds it would be a nice round number like that? Questions…
The first time Susan B. opened her mouth and spoke about the WWE clothing, I thought "She is an embarrassment to All women in politics". The more she spoke during the election process, it became downgraded (or upgraded:) to"She is an embarrassment to ALL women". Now I think she is just simply and plainly an embarrassment to ALL HUMANS…
Bysiewicz is a hack, pure and simple. Unfortunately, her employment is probably secure in CT.
With all the money spent on voting wouldn't having a video camera like they have at an ATM machine keep the shananigans to a minimum. You could have representatives from each party watching a big screen that could be wall mounted for all voters to see. If you had 2 independent video cameras on each machine you would have back up if one crapped out or had to change the tape to secure it for fraud. For crying out loud we got airplanes that fly at 80,000 feet with cameras that can perform a colonoscopy on you. Enough is enough.
Fortunately, although I know it's embarrassing, we are getting national attention. Today's Wall Street Journal editorial entitled "Yankee Pankey," (love the title!). And where, pray tell, is our ethics-conscious Governor? Is she calling for an independent evaluation to protect her citizen's rights? And our magnanimous Attorney General-soon-to-be-U.S. Senator? Oh, I forgot, he only protects us from business and jobs.