Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Bartolomeo Plays Dirty, Suzio Asks for Recount

In a letter addressed to the Secretary of State Senator Suzio requests a recount of votes from the last election because he alleges that several errors and improper procedures occurred including his opponent Dante Bartolomeo's campaign Treasurer being a poll worker. The initial count showed that Bartolomeo won by 238 votes.

Suzio's letter:

Page 1 of 2
State Senator Len Suzio
35 Lydale Place
Meriden, CT 06450
Denise Merrill, Secretary of State 30 Trinity Street Hartford, CT 06106
Re: Recanvass of State Senate District 13 election November 12, 2012
Dear Madam Secretary,
As time is of the essence I write to you as the custodian of vote integrity and election accuracy in our State of Connecticut and ask that you act on the following request immediately. The election for State Senate District 13 was an historically close election with an apparent difference of only 238 votes out of nearly 40,000 ballots separating my opponent and I. I am aware that the current count difference exceeds the threshold for an automatic recount of 198 by a mere 40 votes. However, I respectfully ask that you order a recount for the following reasons:
  • The potential for human error with respect to vote-counting in this contest is far greater than normal because although there were only 2 candidates, those candidates ran on 5 different Party lines. This compounds and complicates the vote compilation process and appears to have contributed to some significant errors.
  • One of the complications in the District 13 race was the fact that a significant number of “unknown” votes were cast (reflecting the fact that the 2 candidates ran on 5 different Party lines) and your office had devised a new system for assigning those votes to each Party. I have heard both Democratic and Republican Registrars comment about the confusion and complications created by the introduction of this new system, the novelty of which contributed to real and potential errors.
  • An example of the foregoing potential problem was identified in Precinct 6 in Cheshire which double counted candidate Bartolomeo’s Working Families and unknown votes when it reported on election night. It appears as though the Moderator discovered the difference but “corrected” the error by adding (rather than deducting) more votes to Ms. Bartolomeo’s totals that night thereby doubling the error and making it overstated by 58 votes. In effect an error was compounded in the confusion.
  • Significant vote counting errors already have been detected following the election. For example, in Cheshire an undercount of 196 votes with respect to Republican votes was identified in the 4th Precinct (and corrected). At the same time, it was discovered that 29 votes were double
Page 2 of 2 counted for my Democratic opponent in the 6th Precinct. At the last minute, only hours before the reporting deadline a large error was discovered in Meriden. That error was not discovered by the people charged with counting votes. It was discovered by some of my campaign staff who were quickly examining the vote documents and reported the error to the moderators.
  • At least one vote machine was disabled during election day in Meriden. That vote machine has been implicated in a significant error detected in Meriden results.
  • The Head Moderator in Meriden was the treasurer of the Democratic contestant. I do not allege any improprieties on his account. But I do point out the Head Moderator’s obvious conflict of interest which undermines the need to give the public assurance that the vote count was administered in an impartial manner. The Head Moderator in Meriden refused to grant the Republican Registrar of Voters request for a recount of Meriden results on November 9, prior to sending in the final vote tallies to your office. The Republican Registrar made the request once the aforesaid error identified by my campaign staff was reported. She was concerned that other undiscovered errors may exist.
  • We have examined the Middletown vote totals reported on your site and the totals in the documents provided to us by Middletown officials and late on Friday we identified a discrepancy of dozens of votes in the final tally provided to your office
Again Madam Secretary, you are the public official charged to maintain the integrity of the voting process. It is your sacred responsibility to maintain public confidence in the integrity of the process as well. Given the facts as stated above including the complications of a 5-Party vote, numerous errors already discovered, the Middletown errors not yet officially recognized and the conflict of interest of a Head Moderator who denied the Republican Registrar’s request for a recount in Meriden I strongly urge you to order a recanvass of the vote in Senate District 13 so that there can be no reasonable doubt about the final outcome. I am prepared to support any effort to assure the accuracy and integrity of the final election results including providing witnesses to attest to the foregoing facts.
Respectfully,
Len Suzio State Senator District 13

2 comments:

  1. Why would any campaign Treasurer work as Head Moderator during an election. Why would that be legal to do. Just makes no sense to anyone who has worked on campaigns or from those on the outside looking in. While it may be legal, should it be done. That is the question I would ask Mrs. Bartolomeo and her treasurer.

    ReplyDelete

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