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West Haven News: City Hall scene of election day dispute <read>

By Abbe Smith , Special to the News

WEST HAVEN – A heated dispute erupted at City Hall early Tuesday when Democratic Registrar of Voters candidate Michelle Hufcut – running unopposed – showed up at the designated polling station in apparent disregard of a state law that prohibits candidates from being near polls.
Police were eventually called to the scene to separate Hufcut and current Democratic Registrar Charles Marino in an effort to keep the confrontation between the two from escalating.
Hufcut defeated Marino in an August primary, but doesn’t take control of the office until January. She said she came to City Hall Tuesday with the intention of shadowing Republican Registrar of Voters JoAnn Callegari during the busy presidential election.
Although she ran unopposed in Tuesday’s municipal election, Hufcut’s name was on the ballot, making her a candidate.
“The law stipulates that 75 feet from any polling station, candidates must stay away,” Marino argued.
When Marino found Hufcut in the registrar’s office early Tuesday, he asked her to leave, citing the state law. When she refused, he called police, demanding that she be arrested or removed from the building.
Hufcut defended her presence at City Hall, arguing she was merely trying to get some training from Callegari in handling a large election. She noted that she was not campaigning at City Hall, as she is running unopposed for the office.
“I was simply there to observe and help,” she said, also noting that she was in a back office and not near the actual polls, which were in the basement of City Hall. Hufcut said she spoke to Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz about her plan to shadow a registrar and that Bysiewicz approved the plan.
Adam Joseph, spokesman for the secretary of the state, said he could not confirm whether Bysiewicz approved the plan. He said Marino and Callegari contacted Deputy Secretary of the State Lesley Mara about the situation and were told that it is “inappropriate” for Hufcut to be at the polling station on Election Day.

“We felt that because today is a presidential election, it would be best if she were not in the office,” he said. Mara also informed Marino that Hufcut was not in his office at the directive of Bysiewicz.

Marino said he called police and then he and his staff walked off the job for about two hours and refused to go back to work until Hufcut left the building. He said the absence did not affect voting or vote-counting in West Haven.

Police Officer Angelo Moscato confirmed that police responded to a call at City Hall Tuesday morning. Upon arrival, officers separated Marino and Hufcut and diffused the conflict. Hufcut eventually left the building, ending the dispute.

I inquired of Lesley Mara and she kindly pointed me to the law <9-326>

It seems to be true that in the law candidates are not allowed near the polling place except to vote, election officials (that includes registrars) being an exception. Perhaps a case could be made about where Ms. Hugcut was located, not being one of those excluded places, maybe not. Presumably, Mr. Marino and his staff saw no actual danger to voting with Ms. Hugcut in the building, out of their sight, since they left.

One of those cases where “the law is an ass”, likely an understandable obscure unanticipated consequence. Ironically Mr. Moreno was able to oversee his own primary with Ms. Hugcut, have unsupervised access to the ballots before and after the election, and lead the post-election audit of that election as well, all fully legal under the law – a substantial danger to election integrity and confidence, one that we would like to see changed.

Hartford Courant: Working Families Party Candidate Makes History in Hartford <read>

Add Urania Petit’s name to the list of people who made election history Tuesday.

Petit, a social worker and Working Families Party candidate for registrar of voters in Hartford, outpolled her Republican counterpart by more than 200 votes.

With that, city voters made Petit the first third-party candidate ever elected to a registrar’s office in Connecticut, according to the secretary of the state. Hartford will soon have three registrars — a Democrat, a Republican and a Working Families.

“My goal is not to register 20,000 for the Working Families,” she said. “When I get into city hall, it’s not even about Working Families. It’s about registering people, educating people and trying to increase voter participation.”

State law says the state’s two majority parties are guaranteed a registrar in each town. It also says that the candidates for registrar with the highest and second highest number of votes win the posts.

In Hartford, traditionally an extreme one party town, this is a good result. Voters register Democratic to vote in primaries, which for all intents and purposes determine the eventual winners in city elections. Of late, The Working Families Party has fielded candidates and received minority representation status on the Council. Without questioning anyone’s honesty, it adds credibility to have a representative of the second highest vote getting party at the table, participating in, and monitoring the process.

One of the unintended consequences of Petit’s election is fiscal. Bramante said registrars now are paid $80,000 a year, their deputies get roughly $60,000 and assistants are paid about $40,000. Those salaries and benefits are all paid by the city. The adopted budget for the registrars’ office this year — which didn’t anticipate Vazquez’s victory — is about $650,000. Last year, the office began with a spending plan of roughly $760,000 and, with cost overruns, wound up spending over $1 million.

This is not Petit’s fault. This is consistent with Hartford’s reputation for bureaucratic over staffing and over paying. Another Registrar is a reason to require less staff, not more. Perhaps there should be a third deputy, but then how about two less assistants. The pay scale also seems way above the area average, as we understand it, and with three registrars perhaps they should each work 2/3 time.

“In order for people to become engaged in the process, we need to educate them about voting, and that’s why I want to be registrar,” she said…

On the registration side, though, their numbers are small. According to Bramante, the city has 36,140 registered Democrats, 2,138 Republicans, 11,398 unaffiliated voters and 78 voters that are classified as “other” — which includes Working Families voters.

More voters in Hartford would be great for Democracy. It seems obvious from the numbers that with one dominant party the voters may see little reason to vote.

Previously we disagreed with a Courant Editorial which recommended against a third party Registrar, in favor of having only one: Downsizing Newspaper Recommends Downsizing Registrars <read>

I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand. – Confucius

One of my goals this year was to obtain more hands-on experience in the election process by serving as an election official. In August I attended moderator training. I became a certified moderator which, in no way qualified me to actually be a moderator (I would describe a moderator as the czar of a polling place). Reading the manual and taking the training would never be enough for me to grasp such a job, without perhaps several years experience as a poll worker. Thanks to Judi Beaudreau, Moderator Trainer, and Registrar of Voters, Vernon, CT, I worked one of the polls in Vernon this year. I spent about half my time as a ballot clerk and about half as machine tender.
Continue reading “CT: A Long Valuable Day As An Election Official”

Update: Roundup

P.M Carpenter: The American Gauntlet of Election Day <read>.
Video example of hurdles in Philadelphia: <view>

************Original Story**************
Stamford Advocate story <read>

Karen Lyons has not been the biggest booster of Connecticut’s new centralized voter system, a database accessible to registrars statewide to help them prevent voter fraud.

Lyons, Norwalk’s Republican registrar of voters, and her Democratic counterpart defied a requirement a few years ago to participate in the system, saying it was unreliable.

But the kinks have been worked out, Lyons said.

“They’re smokin’ now,” she said.

It’s the kind of response Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, a Democrat, wants to hear.

Bysiewicz’s office and the state Information Technology Department have been working for the past few months to upgrade the system.

“We installed new routers in every town hall in the state so we would make communication faster,” Bysiewicz said. “And we expanded the capacity of the system to handle many registrars and their assistants using the system at the same time.”

Participation was mandated by the federal Help America Vote Act in response to irregularities in the 2000 presidential election.