Voters Charge Absentee Fraud, Intimidation

When college sophomore Shavalsia Sabb cast her first-ever ballot, she had no idea she would land in the middle of New Haven’s latest voting controversy.

Sabb, a Southern Connecticut State University student from Norwalk, said she voted for Audrey Tyson and Tom Ficklin in a Democratic ward co-chair election two weeks ago. She had never heard of them before. She voted by absentee ballot, even though she had no plans to be out of town and no reason to believe she couldn’t make it to the polls on election day.

Then she un-did her ballot. And decided this voting business wasn’t worth all the trouble.

“I didn’t really feel comfortable voting anymore the way it happened,” Sabb said in a conversation this week. The 20-year-old first-time voter said she felt misled and pressured by both sides in the election.

Sabb is among at least 10 Ward 29 voters — students and seniors — who either un-did votes or have filed affidavits with the State Election Enforcement Commission complaining of hanky-panky in the way that the Tyson campaign collected absentee ballots for the March 6 primary for two Democratic Town Committee ward co-chair seats.

Absentee ballots made the difference in that race. Tyson and Ficklin lost to their opponents when polling place votes were tallied on the voting machines. When absentee ballots were counted, they became the winners — Ficklin by one vote. A full 116 out of Tyson’s 256 votes came by absentee.

And at least some of the voters claim that her campaign tricked them into filling out absentees they either weren’t supposed to use, or else pressured them into voting for her against their intentions or wishes. State law requires that someone file absentee ballots only if planning to be out of town or otherwise physically unable to come to the polls; or because of military of poll-working duty or religious prohibition. The official absentee ballot form voters must sign (see it here) lists those reasons.

Aggressive collection of absentee ballots is an art form among New Haven Democrats. Charges of fraud and mishandling of ballots have sprung up regularly over the years. One City Hall supporter, Angelo Reyes, was found guilty of stealing absentee ballots in a 2002 town committee race, for instance. But usually evidence or accusations of fraud — including former Newhallville Alderman Charlie Blango’s admission last fall that his staff improperly collected them in a hotly contested aldermanic race — are met with shrugs and no follow-up, although officials did disqualify 15 ballots in that race. (Click here to read about that.) The concern is that with absentees, unlike at a polling station, campaigns can pressure people into voting for their candidate whether or not they want it.

That’s what numerous voters said happened in the Ward 29 primary in Beaver Hills. Tyson’s and Ficklin’s opponents — and the labor union organizers backing their campaigns — have decided to fight back. They collected affidavits from 10 voters to submit to the SEEC last week. SEEC attorney Josh Foley said any complaints filed last week would have arrived too late to appear on this week’s monthly SEEC commissioners’ agenda. The first meeting such complaints could appear for a vote on a ​“necessary to investigate determination” would be April 25. (The commission can’t under law discuss any filings before such a meeting.)

The two losing candidates in the Ward 29 primary, Major Ruth and Betty Alford, said they’re now considering whether to file their own complaints and whether to challenge the election results in court.

The controversy has emerged at a time when state lawmakers in Hartford are considering changes to the state’s absentee voting process.

Alford and Ruth (pictured) said they started investigating the absentees toward the end of the campaign, when they started noticing the high number of filings, especially from SCSU and senior citizen housing.

“These kids, the way they were preyed on, I think it’s appalling,” Ruth said. ​“These are going to be our possible future leaders. [This leaves] a bad taste of politics in their mouths. It’s bad enough trying to get grown folks to come out” to vote.

“You’ve heard of predatory lending. This is predatory politics,” said Ruth. A finance manager at UI, he and Alford, a cook at Truman School, were making their first run for office. They had helped Brian Wingate upset incumbent Carl Goldfield in Ward 29’s Democratic aldermanic primary last fall.

Tyson, an incumbent ward co-chair, denied any wrongdoing in the March 8 primary.

“I don’t know what [they’re] talking about,” she said of the voters who complained. ​“I really don’t want to comment. I just don’t want to get into a lot of mess with the union.”

She said she knew nothing about what Doris Perry was talking about, for instance.

Perry, who’s 87, lives at the Park Ridge elderly complex on Hard Street. She said she tends to vote absentee because she’s disabled. ​“I [had] just got it in the mail” for last month’s primary, she said, when two women called her up to ask it had arrived. ​“They said, ​‘We’ll be right over,’” Perry said.

And they were. ​“They asked me to sign it. I didn’t vote for nobody. I didn’t write nothing inside. They just told me to sign the envelope. All I did was put my name on the envelope,” Perry said. She said the women confused her; she thought they had some official role in collecting ballots. ​“I thought I was doing the right thing.”

After the election, a woman called her, Perry said. ​“She said, ​‘Thank you for voting for me. I won.”

Audrey Tyson also said she has no idea what Shavalsia Sabb is talking about.

Sabb, the SCSU student, was among dozens of undergraduates approached by Tyson campaigners about voting absentee. The campaign also held a pizza party on campus. A woman ​“came to get us. She offered to bring us downtown to vote for her, and we went,” Sabb said. She said she had never heard of the candidates. She said she felt pressured to vote for Tyson and Ficklin.

No one mentioned to her that she was supposed to vote at the polls since she planned to be on campus, she said. SCSU (unlike Yale) was not on spring break during primary week.

After Sabb submitted her ballot, she got a different call. This one was from campaigners for Tyson’s and Ficklin’s opponents, Ruth and Alford. (It’s a matter of public record when people file absentee ballots.) Hugh Baran (at right in top photo), a UNITE HERE Local 34 and 35 organizer working on the pair’s campaign, scared her, Sabb said.

“He was telling us what we did was illegal,” she said. ​“I felt that was just as unprofessional as the way [Tyson] did it. He was pressuring us. He made it seem if we didn’t go back downtown, we would all be in trouble.”

Baran brought Sabb and another student to the City Clerk’s office on Monday, March 5, the day before the primary. He accompanied them inside as they asked to annul their votes. They filled out a form to have their absentee votes canceled. They were offered a letter to bring to the polls the next day that would enable them to vote in person. They declined.

“I didn’t really feel comfortable voting anymore, the way it happened,” she recalled.

Baran responded that he merely ​“told people what their rights are and what the law is. It’s pretty clear in that respect.” He blamed Tyson’s campaign for the woman’s accusation: ​“I think it’s really unfortunate that people feel frustration and upset about voting. When Audrey’s campaign set out to take advantage of folks, it created that kind of climate.”

Two other SCSU students went to the clerk’s office earlier that Monday to have their votes canceled. They were asked to return later in the day, but didn’t.

In a sworn affidavit submitted to the SEEC, one of the students, Aidan Scanlon, described Tyson coming to his dorm room. ​“She had me fill out papers” to vote absentee, then ​“drove a group of about seven us” to the clerk’s office to fill out absentee ballots. He said no one told him why he should vote absentee. ​“As I was completing the ballot, Audrey asked us if we knew who we were voting for, then whispered her name in my ear, so I felt obligated to check her name.” Scanlon could not be reached for comment for this story.

“I was told I had to vote for Audrey,” another student, Dean Thomas, wrote in an affidavit. ​“Everyone confused me and intimidated me.”

How To Fix It?

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill (pictured) said she has a couple of ideas of how to tackle absentee ballot fraud and get more people voting in the process. One step is to eliminate absentees altogether and let everyone cast votes by mail in advance of an election, no questions asked. There would still be polling places, but fewer people would use them.

“The next generation doesn’t always do things in person,” Merrill said in an interview at Bru Cafe on Orange Street. ​“They want to do it on their cell phones. We have a 19th century voting system in the 21st century.”

Merrill supports a bill currently before the legislature to amend the state constitution to allow no-fault absentee, or mail-in, voting. Other states, like Oregon, allow people weeks to bring in ballots in person or mail them in; 80 percent of voters do so, she said.

She cited the controversy over SCSU absentee ballots in new Haven’s Ward 29 as a reason to make the change.

“This is what we’ve got to stop. We’re making liars out of people. A lot of people are thinking: ​‘I may be out of town. …’ We have no way of knowing” if people filled out ballots truthfully, Merrill said.

State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney said he’s ​“not convinced” about the no-fault mail-in ballot.

“You have a danger of losing the integrity of the ballot boxes,” he said. The process opens the door even wider to the possibility of employers or campaigns pressuring people to vote for candidates. ​“We fought 100 years ago for the secret ballot,” said Looney, who represents New Haven in the legislature.

“I would dispute that,” Merrill responded. ​“The fraud we’ve seen in elections is all absentee ballot fraud, people ​‘helping’ [seniors and the disabled] fill out their ballots. That pool of people is already at risk.” She is supporting a separate measure to increase penalties for bribery, intimidation and other ​“real election fraud” to match the penalties for impersonating people at the polls.

Merrill has advanced a package of broader electoral reforms in the legislature, such as the increased penalties for intimidation. (Click here and here here to read about some of her initiatives aimed at boosting voting and ​“civic engagement.”) Looney has joined her in championing a proposal to allow for same-day voting registration at the polls.

A second aspect of New Haven’s disputed Ward 29 primary points to the need for a second statewide change, in Merrill’s view. When officials held a recount in the Ward 29 race, the tally changed. That’s probably because the scanner counting the votes doesn’t always recognize poorly filled-out ballots, she said. For instance, a ballot may have a smudge on it, or too many candidates’ names selected. UConn has developed a machine with software that detect such ballots better and ​“spit out the bad ballots,” she said. The machine can also process ballots more quickly, at the rate of 10,000 every 15 minutes. By spitting out the bad ballots, it would enable officials conducting recounts or audits to focus just on those problematic ballots. Merrill would like to see the machine increasingly used for local audits and recounts, she said.