YANKEE PANKEY: THAT CONNECTICUT GOVERNOR’S ELECTION….
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704353504575596723558667984.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley tells us he isn’t planning to concede Tuesday’s Connecticut election until he’s “certain that the will of the voters was honored.” Good for him. Mr. Foley and the rest of the state’s voters have plenty of reasons to question a reported tally that now shows Democrat Dannel Malloy ahead by fewer than 6,000 votes out of more than 1.1 million cast.
Specifically, Connecticut voters deserve a more thorough accounting of the votes in Bridgeport, and of the bizarre behavior of Susan Bysiewicz, the secretary of state. In Bridgeport, where the Hartford Courant has noted a disturbing recent history of voting irregularities, the registrar’s office had not printed enough ballots before voting began, so workers were dispatched to city offices on Election Day to photocopy blank ballots, raising questions about the custody of ballots created on the fly.
On Wednesday, Bridgeport missed its statutory deadline to report results, and then on Thursday officials there produced a bag containing hundreds of ballots that had not previously been counted. Over Republican objections, the new ballots were added to the tally. The current count in that city shows Mr. Foley receiving fewer than half as many votes as the GOP candidate received in 2006, while Democratic votes increased by almost 60%. Mr. Foley was leading by 8,409 votes before the Bridgeport votes were counted.
Jason McCoy, the Republican mayor of Vernon, Connecticut, told WFSB-TV in Hartford that he served as a poll-watcher in Bridgeport on Election Day and observed people voting without identification, voters receiving more than one ballot, and ballots left unsecured at the polling place.
Adding to the spectacle was Ms. Bysiewicz, whose job is to certify an official election result on November 25. Yet on Wednesday she offered the prediction that fellow Democrat Mr. Malloy would be declared the winner, even as towns across the state were still checking their vote totals. Something looks rotten in Connecticut, and the state’s voters should demand an independent review before a victor is declared.
Copyright 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Comments are closed.
