Election worker Patricia Howard posts the “final” numbers.
(Updated) An all-night recount gave Democrat Dan Malloy a 13.000-vote lead in Bridgeport in the election for governor and 5,000 statewide — enough to give him the job. Yet even after an “official” announcement Friday morning, voting registrars were still making adjustments to the tally.
Mayor Bill Finch announced results of his holdout city’s recount at a 6 a.m. press conference at the City Hall Annex on Broad Street. He said Malloy had beaten Republican Tom Foley 17,800 to 4,075 in Bridgeport. That’s enough to put him over the top of the otherwise official statewide vote count, the result of a process disputed over three days. Click here and here to read reports from overnight, including a dispute over a previously undisclosed sealed bag of uncounted 335 ballots.
Finch’s numbers did differ from the final tally prepared by his two city registrars after one final marathon vote-counting session. It lasted from 4:30 p.m. Thursday until 7:30 a.m. Friday. Their numbers, announced at 7:30 a.m: 17,042 to 4,099. Registrars posted those numbers on the wall at 7:30 a.m.
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch announces the tally.
But then there was another mess-up: The numbers came off the wall. Registrars said in their haste to put numbers up, they forgot to put some in.
At 8:47 a.m. registrars then called out the super-final, ultra-official numbers they will fax in to the state: 17,923 for Malloy (on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines) and 4,092 for Foley. Those vote totals did not to include ballots cast after 8 p.m. on Tuesday, of which there were 50 for Malloy an seven for Foley.
Citing those discrepancies, Foley later Friday morning called for more recounting and for the secretary of the state to wait a few days before announcing an “official” result. (Read about that here.)
One reason for one of the discrepancies: Finch made his announcement at 6 a.m. The final vote count wasn’t ready yet. Finch acknowledged that. He said all that was left to be counted at 6 a.m. were ballots that had been cast after 8 p.m. Tuesday — when a judge allowed some precincts to stay open an extra two hours to accommodate people who hadn’t been able to vote when the city ran out of ballots earlier in the day.
Foley had been up by 8,409 votes without Bridgeport. Bridgeport’s final tally (whichever is used) puts Malloy comfortably ahead, by around 5,000 votes, more than double the 2,000-vote margin that would have triggered an automatic recount.
Workers in the registrars’ office tally up the votes.
The registrar’s office concluded on Friday morning that 23,158 people cast ballots in Bridgeport. If the city ordered 21,000 ballots be printed, as has been reported, that could mean there were an extra 2,158 photocopied ballots to count by hand. A count of 335 of them late Thursday night took more than three hours.
Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz is expected later today to make an official announcement about the winner of the governor’s race.
Tom Foley has scheduled a press conference for 10:30 in the lobby of the Hartford office building that houses the law firm of Bracewell and Giuliani. Former U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Connor, who represented Foley in court on election night (over the issue of keeping the Bridgeport polls open late), works for that firm.
Meanwhile, conservative commentator Tom Scott declared, “Call in the feds.”
“Connecticut’s democracy has been mugged by the officials at every level who are responsible for administering an honest election in Bridgeport,” he wrote in a blog post.
Meanwhile, at 6 a.m. at the City Hall annex in Bridgeport — before, it turned out, the tally had been 100 percent completed — the mayor walked down a flight of stairs to face a line of TV cameras at the pre-dawn press conference.
“My role was not to supervise an election,” Finch said. “But when we found out there were problems, we reacted very swiftly … to see that every vote was counted.”
“The sacred right to vote was protected. There were no hanging chads here.”
Finch also promised to look into the “inexcusable” mishaps that kept the city’s vote-count drag on more than a day past the legal Wednesday 6 p.m. deadline. He appointed a three-member panel to investigate the mistakes; a Nov. 16 public hearing at City Hall is scheduled at 7 p.m.
“This is not exactly the way we would like to see things done in Bridgeport,” he said.
Finch acknowledged that Bridgeport “let people down. It will never happen again.”
“I’m sure we’ll get sued,” he noted. “Cities get sued all the time.”
He chalked up the mishegas to “ineptitude in the process,” namely the decision to order too few ballots in a city with more than 60,000 registered voters.
It was still unclear Friday morning how many people ended up using the photocopied ballots that were rushed to polling places Tuesday and than had to be hand-counted — and recounted. (Not every voter necessarily marks a choice for governor; many other races were on the ballot.)
The Foley and Malloy camps sent representatives to the mayor’s press conference.
Chris Covucci (pictured), field director for the Foley campaign, took the mayor’s podium after he spoke. Covucci noted that discrepancies still exist between the final numbers and Wednesday night tallies that Bridgeport registrars originally planned to submit to the state.
However, those numbers would have increased Malloy’s victory margin even more than the new final numbers.
Covucci stopped short of promising a legal challenge. “I’m not sure,” he said when asked if Foley plans legal action.
“We just want to point out the discrepancies,” he said. “The tallying processes were flawed.”
State Democratic Party Chairman Nancy DiNardo said she’s happy that Dan Malloy has enough votes to claim victory officially and “happy that the whole thing is over.”
Democratic Registrar of Voters Santa Ayala (pictured) — one of two officials responsible for ordering the ballots — noted that other communities, too, ran out of ballots. She disputed the figure of widely quoted figure of 21,000 ordered ballots, though she didn’t provide an alternative number.
“We base the number of ballots we order on prior elections,” Ayala said. “The Republican and Democratic registrars agreed on that number.”
Republican Registrar Joe Borges said earlier in the evening that Ayala alone made the call.
“Who knew that President Obama was coming to Bridgeport [right before the election to whip up turnout]?” Ayala said.
One irony in the overtime vote-counting: Not only was the official tally deciding who will serve as Connecticut’s governor. It was also deciding that Ayala — who oversee this whole voting process — will serve another term as Bridgeport’s Democratic registrar of voters.
“Oh yeah,” a tired Ayala remarked when this fact was pointed out to her around 5:10 a.m. Friday. Running unopposed, she picked up 16,479 votes.
Are you looking forward to your next term? she was asked.
“Yes. Absolutely,” she responded.
Even after all this?
“Even after all this.”