Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas at WNHH FM.
Stephanie Thomas said she was “as shocked as everybody else” when she saw a video of a Bridgeport campaign worker allegedly hauling stacks of harvested absentee ballots into a drop box.
Unlike most everybody else, Thomas had a role in responding to that shock. And making sure it doesn’t happen again.
The alleged ballot-harvesting took place in the 2023 Bridgeport mayoral election. It was a rerun of the same alleged activity, by the same people, four years earlier.
It occurred during Thomas’s first year in a four-year term as secretary of the state, Connecticut’s top elections official.
She wasn’t responsible for investigating the allegedly widespread absentee ballot fraud. A different agency did that. She wasn’t responsible for ordering a new election. A judge did that. The new do-over Democratic mayoral primary election takes place Jan. 23 with a possible do-over general election after that.
Thomas is responsible for overseeing that election and the monitoring of absentee ballot collection.
As the controversy erupted, she asked herself, “What more can we do?” to address the fraud moving forward and safeguard public trust in elections, Thomas said during an interview Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
“During a special session in September of last year, the legislature granted her office the legal authority to send a monitor to the city clerk’s office to observe how absentee ballots are handled. Historically the office has sent one monitor in such situations. She decided to send two so that at least one would always be on duty during business hours. In the past the office has sent lawyers as monitors. Thomas decided to send monitors who have experience in election administration — a former city clerk and a secretary of the state election official — so they could provide real-time training and adjustments.
She also produced a video aimed at informing people about the legal handling of absentee ballots. She produced English and Spanish-language versions. She sent it to nonprofits and businesses to share in addition to using social media.
While aiming to show she takes election fraud seriously, she also reminds people that more than 99.9 percent of elections run smoothly without fraud, she said. An important message in an area of distrust in the electoral system.
“The math won’t lie,” she said.
Thomas’s office is also overseeing the roll-out this year of early voting, beginning with the April 2 presidential primaries.
Click on the above video to watch Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas discuss that early-voting roll-out, the Bridgeport election mess, and no-excuses absentee ballots on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of Dateline New Haven.