From the Stamford Advocate: Former Stamford Dem Party boss charged with falsifying absentee ballots <read>
STAMFORD — John Mallozzi, the city’s former Democratic Party chief, was arrested Wednesday on charges of absentee ballot fraud in the 2015 municipal election. He allegedly forged ballots for relatives, Spanish-speaking residents and Albanian-Americans new to the election system, according to the State’s Attorney’s Office.
Mallozzi was charged with 14 counts each of filing false statements and second-degree forgery. He turned himself in to Stamford police on the charges, both Class D felonies punishable by up to five years in prison and/or a fine of up to $5,000 per count…
Hoti told investigators that on Election Day 2015 he was rejected at his District 8 polling place in the Cove by a monitor who told him the record showed he’d already voted by absentee ballot. Hoti said he had not. The monitor allowed Hoti to vote after Hoti filled out a form attesting that he did not vote by absentee…
On Jan. 10 a state forensic science analyst determined that signatures on 14 absentee ballots “share common authorship” with the handwriting samples provided by Mallozzi, according to the affidavit. None of the 14 voters whose names were on the ballots had requested them, the affidavit states.
Allegations, convictions, and enforcement penalties for AB fraud are regular occurrences in Connecticut. There are likely many more that are not discovered. Just lucky that one of these voters attempted to vote legally and through diligence of the election officials the fraud was discovered. If that one voter had not attempted to vote, if may never have been discovered and continued in subsequent elections.
Editorial
This is why we oppose expanded mail-in voting, such as no-excuse absentee voting. If might be safe in other states, yet Connecticut has an ongoing record of absentee votING fraud (as opposed to votER fraud) by insiders or candidate and party officials. This year and last we have cases in Hartford and Bridgeport as well.
When Connecticut passed public financing of elections a major part of the justification was a history of campaign finance scandals. Avoiding expanded mail-in voting can be justified by the similar pattern of AB abuse. We do favor a form of early voting for Connecticut we call in-person absentee voting – in-person at the municipal clerk’s office, where officials can be expected to easily detect a single person attempting to vote 14 times under different names! See our testimony last year <read>
