Uncertainty still rules in Connecticut's gubernatorial race.
November 5, 2010
Three days after the election, neither candidate has conceded and it's less clear then ever who will prevail.
By Eileen McGuire-Mahony
Bridgeport, CONNECTICUT:Heading into Tuesday's midterms, the conventional wisdom was that Connecticut, where Jodi Rell, a Republican, had declined to run for another term as governor, would be a Democratic pick-up. Despite some tightening in polls, Democrat Dan Malloy had the edge over Republican Tom Foley. The early aftermath of Election Day bore this out.
Just after polls closed, Malloy was ahead and some national news outlets called the race for him. As the night wore on and precincts continued to report, Foley took a small lead, and then lost it. On the strength of the government's numbers, Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz declared Malloy to be the "unofficial" winner late in the morning on November 3rd.
As we previously wrote, Tom Foley contested that ruling and stated he would not concede until all votes were counted. When Foley was haead, Dan Malloy likewise declined to concede.
Now, what initially seemed to be a slight mistake in Bridgeport, involving a polling station being provided with an inadequate supply of ballots, is poised to play a much bigger role in the eventual outcome of the election. When the polling place ran out of ballots, a judge made an emergency ruling allowing the location to stay open until 10 pm, two hours after polls close in Connecticut. Ultimately, many voters made their choices using photocopied ballots. The city of Bridgeport has 69,000 registered voters. That only 21,000 ballots were printed is the reason for the extended polling hours and photocopied ballots.
It took an all-night effort from Bridgeport election officials to turn in a final vote count for their city. On Thursday, Foley was ahead of Malloy by 8,409 votes. With the results, turned over to the Secretary of State's office on Friday morning, Malloy is again in the lead. With Bridgeport reporting that he won 17,973 to Foley's 4,099, the Democrat holds a 5,465 vote edge.[1]
However, the photocopied ballots from that Bridgeport polling place are an issue all on their own at this point. At some point during Thursday's recount, a gym bag with approximately 300 ballots turned up.[2] Foley's campaign has raised questions about where the bag came from and the accuracy of the vote count "[w]hen it's reported that a bag of ballots showed up mysteriously."
Foley has also put himself at odds with Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch, a Democrat. In a 6:20 am EST press conference, Mayor Finch announced vote totals that were lower for both Malloy and Foley than the numbers that Bridgeport reported to the Secretary of State. The difference seems to be made up of votes cast in the two hours between 8 and 10 pm on election night when the polling location in question was allowed to remain open. Finch repsonded by saying he felt those votes, "are not going to be of consequence. We didn't see any purpose in trying to include those votes."
Given that Tom Foley would now need to gain close to 6,000 votes to win, the 100 votes cast after 8 pm, or indeed all 300 ballots in the gym bag, won't be enough to turn the election in his favor. That, however, is hardly the reason that Foley is making a point of the suddenly appearing gym bag of ballots.
The city's registrar has stated that the chain of custody on the bag of ballots was never broken. Sandi Ayala announced that the bag was properly sealed from election night until it was delivered for the Thursday night ballot count. Ayala says the election official in charge of the bag felt ill and left the polling place early, but that she never opened the bag or left it anywhere. Foley has called for a police investigation to verify chain of custody and explain why an election worker who went home sick took ballots with her.
Statewide totals are currently at 566,511 votes for Malloy, 560,867 for Foley. At the time that Sec. Bysiewicz declared the race to have gone to Malloy, he led by 0.31%. The new totals put him ahead by 0.5% Foley has admitted he is less sanguine about his chances but has also reiterated that he will not concede without absentee ballots being counted. He has also said he is open to filing a lawsuit aimed at ordering a recount.
Malloy's campaign has pointed out that their candidate's current lead is not small enough to require an automatic recount, meaning that a court order would perhaps be Foley's only way to get a recount if he wishes to pursue it.
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