Ariana Hernandez, who is a permanent resident but not a citizen, said in a sworn affidavit to the state Elections Enforcement Commissionthat Bridgeport city council member Alfredo Castillo came to her house in 2023 and said that he could help her with voting.
“He told me to sign the voter’s registration application,” Hernandez said in the affidavit that is dated October 4, 2024. “I did not fill out the form. I do not know when it was filled. I did not indicate on the form that I was a citizen. He told me that I would not have a problem if I voted as a permanent resident.”
The two-paragraph complaint was hand-written in Spanish and then translated by a Connecticut state trooper.
“I never filled out the absentee ballot, but I signed it because Alfredo told me he would fill it out,” Hernandez said in the affidavit. “After I signed the absentee ballot application, Mr. Alfredo Castillo gave me the absentee ballot to sign. After I signed it, Alfredo took all of the forms in an envelope. I never went to the post office to mail any documents. He told me that I would not have any problems being a permanent resident and convinced me to sign everything.”
Hernandez said she did not know Wanda Geter-Pataky, the vice chairwoman of the city’s Democratic town committee, who “signed the form stating that she helped me fill the form.”
In a separate case, Castillo and Geter-Pataky have been arrested and charged along with two other campaign workers in a Bridgeport Democratic mayoral primary election controversy. They were among those charged in a high-profile case brought by the chief state’s attorney’s office regarding the misuse of absentee ballots.
The case was related to the 2019 Democratic mayor’s primary, which came four years before a Superior Court judge ordered a new election in the 2023 primary after videos showed absentee ballot stuffing in a drop box outside city hall. Bridgeport residents eventually voted four separate times before Mayor Joseph Ganim was reelected over challenger John Gomes in a heavily publicized election.
Beyond Bridgeport
For years, Democrats have said that the voting irregularities have been isolated to Bridgeport and there was no evidence of widespread problems across the state. But Republicans have cited the case of former Stamford Democratic town chairman John Mallozzi, who was arrested and found guilty after a trial for absentee ballot fraud. He was convicted in 2022 for 14 counts of second-degree forgery and 14 counts of false statements for signing ballot applications for various town offices when serving as town chairman in 2015.
The applications were made under the names of various voters who had no idea that their names were being used. Mallozzi was sentenced to two years’ probation and ordered to pay fines of $35,000.
Sen. Rob Sampson, one of the most outspoken Republicans on the issue, says the matter is not isolated to one city.
“And by the way: it’s not just a ‘Bridgeport Problem,’ ” Sampson said in a statement. “You can bet it’s been happening in other municipalities. We need reform in Connecticut’s absentee voting process. Republicans and I have been shouting from the rooftops about this for a long time prior to the viral Bridgeport ballot stuffing videos which made Connecticut a national embarrassment. Now, we have this news. Are you sick of seeing it?”
But more than 300 elections officials across the state recently released a joint letter to voters, saying that town clerks and registrars of voters are working hard to ensure election integrity across the state.
“I want voters to know that political affiliation has no significance when executing our election responsibilities,” said Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas, the state’s chief elections official. “Our motivation is solely to protect Connecticut voters and their voting rights.”
Chris Prue, president of the registrar of voters association, said, “Election security and unimpeded ballot access are always top of mind for registrars. The preparation for early voting for this year’s elections has helped to build a camaraderie between registrars on both sides of the aisle and with their town clerk colleagues as well.”
Patty Spruance, president of the town clerks’ association, said, “It takes a village to ensure our elections are safe and secure. There is no space for political partisanship when it comes to standing up the very cornerstone of our representative democracy.”
In response, Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff called on Sampson to retract his statements.
“Republican Senator Rob Sampson’s Trump-playbook, dishonest claim that voter fraud is occurring in various Connecticut cities and towns is a direct threat to our democracy,’ the two Democratic leaders said in a statement. “Falsely asserting there is widespread voter fraud in our state is nothing but a desperate attempt to sow doubt regarding the integrity of our elections. This Trumpian falsehood serves as a local version of national rumors and baseless accusations from the Republican party. It’s the same rhetoric that led to the events of January 6, 2021, and it’s the same rhetoric that’s been circulating nationally for months, well before any voter even cast a ballot, to lay seeds for another attempted overthrow of the American government.
“As the leaders of Connecticut’s State Senate, we have a duty to the General Assembly to defend our democratic representative government. We call on Senator Sampson to retract his statement and admit what every election official in the state knows as true: Connecticut’s 2024 election is free, fair, and secure.”
©2024 Hartford Courant. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
