Smart At Center Of Absentee Ballot Scandal

New Haven’s fifth absentee-ballot fraud scandal in four years landed on the state elections-enforcement desk Friday — this time centering on a candidate seeking to become the top city official in charge of … handling absentee ballots.

A formal complaint was filed at the office of the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC). It charges that at least eight voters in a Wooster Square elderly complex handed over their absentee ballots to a woman in the building who illegally picked up and transported them — and in some cases may have filled out the ballots for them.

The applications for all of the ballots in question — and many of the 188 absentee ballots issued so far in Wooster Square’s Ward 8, a huge number by New Haven standards — were originally signed out from the city clerk’s office and distributed by Michael Smart.

Michael Smart (pictured) happens to be running for the office of city/town clerk — the very position ultimately responsible for handling absentee ballots in New Haven elections. (Smart also currently serves as alderman in Ward 8.)

The SEEC complaint includes affidavits with signatures from eight residents of the Wooster Square elderly complex, Winslow-Celentano on Warren Street, stating that the woman in question had taken their ballots. (The woman could not be reached for comment Friday. She did not answer a knock at her door.) An Independent cross-check of city clerk office records reveals that Michael Smart originally took out the absentee ballot application forms for those voters.

The complaint was filed by current City/Town Clerk Ron Smith, who is facing Democrat Smart in this coming Tuesday’s election.

“In some cases, the voter just signed the ​‘B’ envelope and gave the ballot set to [the woman in question] to complete,” Smith wrote in the complaint. ​“All of this is in violation of section 9 – 140 of the [Connecticut General Statutes]. As of today the City Clerk’s Office has issued an unprecedented 188 absentee ballots into Ward 8, mostly centered at 60 Warren St. and in the housing development on Franklin Street.”

The latter reference was to the Farnam Courts public-housing complex, another site where absentee ballots have poured in for both this general election and the Sept. 10 Democratic primary election.

“I am also asking that an investigation be done on the ballots issued and returned from Franklin St. and Hamilton St. (housing development located on Grand Ave). These ballots were also returned on the same day with no return address,” Smith wrote.

Records on file at the city clerk’s office show in some cases as many as five members of a family voting absentee from the same address in Ward 8.

Under state law, people may help a voter apply for an absentee ballot. But they may not be present when the voter fills out the ballot. They may not ​“take possession of” or deliver the ballot unless they fall under the following categories: ​“a person caring for the applicant due to applicant’s illness or disability; or applicant’s family member, designated by the applicant, and who agrees to act as designee; or if no such person consents or is available, a police officer, registrar of voters, or assistant or deputy registrar of voters in applicant’s town/city of residence.”

The complaint won’t interrupt the election. The SEEC next meets on Nov. 20, the earliest date at which it will consider requests to launch investigations, commission spokesman Joshua Foley said Friday.

Smart At The Center

Andy Ross (pictured), an independent candidate for alderman in Ward 8, transported Smith’s complaint to the SEEC in Hartford Friday. Ross originally discovered the alleged vote-collection problems while campaigning at Winslow-Celentano. WTNH first reported on Ross’s discoveries earlier this week.

“My chances of winning are diminished because of these fraudulent absentee ballots,” Ross said after dropping off the complaint Friday.

“Michael Smart is at the center of this thing,” Ross said. ​“Electing Michael Smart as city clerk will be like putting a fox in the hen house. His hands are not clean here.”

Smart (pictured at an evening get-out-the-vote rally) categorically denied Friday afternoon that he ever filled out anyone else’s absentee ballot or delivered it.

“Absolutely not,” he told the Independent.

That includes denying an allegation by a Ward 8 voter, quoted in this story in the New Haven Register, that Smart picked up her ballot. (That would be illegal.)

Smart sent out two press releases on the subject. One quotes the voter quoted in the Register claiming she’d been misquoted.

“What I did say was ​“Michael has always dropped off absentee ballot applications and has come back to pick them up and drop the applications off to the City/Town Clerks Office. But again, he had nothing to do with the actual ballot themselves,” the voter, Cynthia Britt, is quoted as saying.

In a separate release, Smart vowed to ​“cooperate fully” with any investigation into the absentee ballots. He stated that he has always ​“followed the letter of the law.” And he took a shot at Ron Smith for allegedly doing ​“nothing” in office for 10 years before suddenly raising an absentee ballot fraud complaint against his opponent in the upcoming election.

Click here to read the full statement.

Meanwhile, Deputy City/Town Clerk Sally Brown (pictured) said Friday that voters throughout the city have begun calling her office with concerns about absentee ballots they’ve filled out.

She said that under state law anyone can come to her office at 200 Orange St. (2nd floor) up until 10 a.m. Tuesday to request that an absentee vote be cancelled, then show up at the polls on Tuesday and vote for real in person.

Smart’s running mate in Tuesday’s election, mayoral candidate Toni Harp, was asked about the alleged fraud Thursday.

“Our people are professionals,” Harp said. ​“I would be very surprised if they are involved in anything that is illegal.”

Click on the play arrow to watch her response.

She said her campaign staffers are trained to submit absentee ballot applications, but not to touch the absentee ballots.

“Our campaign is not involved in the ballot itself,” Harp said. ​“They know better” than to pick up absentee ballots and transport them.

“We have said that if they need a stamp, we’ll get them a stamp, but frankly, no one’s called for a stamp yet.”

Harp’s mayoral opponent, petitioning candidate Justin Elicker, called ​“concerning” the discrepancy between the percentage of primary votes Harp got at the machines in Ward 8 (49 percent) and the percentage of absentee votes cast for her in the ward (87 percent).

“More concerning this is just another indication of the type of people that Toni surrounds herself with — [former city development chief] Sal Brancati, [zoning lawyer and former state Sen.] Tony Avallone, now this. We need clean government. Clean government starts with clean people,” Elicker said.

At a candidate debate last week, Harp defended taking advice from Brancati and Avallone and said she intends to continue to if elected. Click here for that story.

Elicker discussed the issue at a campaign event Friday afternoon at Farnam Courts alongside his Smith, running mate. Elicker said his campaign had already scheduled the event before the scandal broke, but the allegations gave the event new meaning.

“She’s surrounding herself with people that aren’t as clean as they should be,” he said of Harp.

Inside Farnam Courts, one voter named Rosemary Dejesus said she filled out an absentee ballot and gave it to her tenant council president to mail.

“I filled it out and gave it to her,” Dejesus said.

Reached a few minutes later, the tenant council leader said she has been working on Harp absentee votes. But she denied collecting the ballots on behalf of Dejesus or any other residents.

5th Time In 4 Years

Allegations of ballot fraud — some of which were proven and ended up disqualifying people’s votes — have arisen at least four other times in the past four years.

• 15 elderly voters at the Casa Otoñal complex in the Hill had their votes disqualified in 2012 after a campaign worker for U.S. Senate candidate Chris Murphy improperly collected and delivered them to the city clerk’s office. Click here to read about that episode and their stories.

• Earlier that year candidates in a Beaver Hills Democratic Town Committee race obtained affidavits from college students who reported that another campaign had misled them into filing fraudulent ballots. A full 116 of the winning candidate’s 256 votes were filed absentee in that race. Click here and here to read about that.

• The clerk’s office disqualified 15 ballots in a 2011 Democratic aldermanic primary in Newhallville because one of the candidates’ campaign had collected them.

• Two candidates in a 2009 Dixwell aldermanic race collected evidence of alleged absentee fraud in each other’s camps. Find details here and here.

Campaigns regularly factor absentee ballots into their projections for turnout and expected results in New Haven elections. Even by those standards, the numbers coming out of Ward 8 in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary far outpaced numbers in any other ward. In the mayoral primary, 107 absentees were cast, 91 of them for Harp, who ran on a ticket with Michael Smart. The clerk campaign drew 109 absentee votes in that ward — 98 of them marked to vote for Michael Smart.

The absentee total have soared even higher already for the Nov. 5 general election, with 188 absentee ballots already issued as of Thursday. Five members of a single address on Mill River Street, for instance, submitted absentee votes.

Contacted by a reporter Friday, a family member said they mailed in their ballots. They ​“always” vote absentee, she said — then added that the family will not talk to reporters. The house had a Mike Smart for city/town clerk sign outside of it.

One of the Winslow-Celentano absentee voters, Thurman Hines (pictured), told the Independent Friday that he gave his ballot to the woman named in the complaint. (She couldn’t be reached for comment.) ​“Mike Smart didn’t do nothing,” Hines said. Hines said he votes absentee because he has a disability and can’t make it to the polls.

Another voter named in the affidavit confirmed that he handed over his ballot to ​“a lady in the building.”

Michael Smart himself has signed out 327 absentee ballot applications to date, according to logs in the city clerk’s office.

It’s not against the law to do that. The law is concerned with what happens after voters get those ballots.

That’s the question the SEEC will be investigating — perhaps with Michael Smart in line to become New Haven’s point person for making sure the whole process operates legally.