{news} New Haven Advocate: How Green Was My Ballot?

[David Bedell]

http://www.newhavenadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=10559

How Green Was My Ballot?
New Haven almost elects a third-party registrar and Mickey Mouse joins the
rat race.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008
By Advocate Staff

New Haven almost elects third-party registrar.

Amazingly, third-party lightning nearly struck twice on Election Day in
Connecticut. While state laws assure that the two major parties need never
worry about losing a registrar of voters gig, if a third party polls higher
than either of them, they can get a registrar too. That's what Working
Families Party candidate Urania Pettit managed in Hartford. Green Party
candidate Charlie Pillsbury nearly turned the same trick in New Haven, where
he was less than 500 votes shy of overtaking the Republican registrar, Rae
Tramontano.

Pillsbury might well have nabbed those votes if he'd campaigned aggressively
but the longtime local Green Party standard-bearer was ambivalent about
actually winning. The original Green put up for the position was Marianne
Davis. She withdrew last month when it was discovered that federal funding
regarding her job as an air quality control monitor would complicate her
candidacy.

With no time to find a replacement and no desire to lose a line on the
ballot, Pillsbury substituted himself. The switch flummoxed the New Haven
Register, which still had Davis' name on the sample pre-election ballot they
ran prior to Election Day. The change-up also required the city of New Haven
to reprint 40,000 ballots.

"We didn't work very hard for this," Pillsbury admits. "We were just saving
the slot." Nevertheless, the 2,907 votes he got - 8 percent of the total -
were not much less than the 9.5 percent Tramontano got, more than the number
it took Urbania Petit to gain the same post in Hartford and 400 votes more
than New Haven's first Green candidate for registrar, the more driven-to-win
Calvin Nicholson, received in 2004.

A victory "would have been very challenging," Pillsbury says, since he would
have tried to work it around his duties as director of Community Mediation
Services on Elm Street. Still, he insists "I would have done the job. It's a
wonderful position from which you can build a Green Party, since you can't
be accused of being a spoiler. In a year when the city is laying off people,
it would have been awkward, though. Perhaps I would have bargained a later
start date," he graciously speculates, so as not to affect the budget as
drastically. "Now we don't have to worry about that."

Having come so close, unlike, for instance, Green congressional candidate
Ralph Ferrucci's anemic challenge to Rosa DeLauro, count on the Greens to
have another go at becoming Registrar #3 in 2012.

-Christopher Arnott

Rodent Race

Connecticut voters overwhelmingly filled the bubble for President-elect
Barack Obama on Nov. 4, but there were also votes cast for other,
lesser-known candidates (and non-candidates) for President of the United
States. Some voters, writing in ballots for Mickey Mouse, seemingly wanted
to make history by electing the first rodent to high office. The towns of
West Hartford, Waterbury and New Haven have confirmed write-in votes for the
cartoon character.

In Waterbury, the registrar's office confirmed that Minnie Mouse was on the
vice presidential ticket on at least one ballot. Votes were also cast for
Donald Duck, George Costanza and Jesus Christ in West Hartford and some guy
named "Chris" in New Haven.

There isn't a paper trail, though, because the votes weren't officially
counted.

In Connecticut, "For candidates to be officially recorded they must be
registered as write-in candidates," says the Town Clerk's office of
Hartford. That also goes for real, serious candidates, such as Hillary
Clinton, Ron Paul and Bob Barr, who got write-in votes in New Haven but were
not allowed to be officially counted.

Beside the major party candidates - Sen. John McCain, Obama and independent
Ralph Nader - only four other candidates had the special write-in status
privilege. Conservative Chuck Baldwin, Green Party's Cynthia McKinney and
socialists Roger Calero and Brian Moore received a combined 390 votes.
One write-in ballot seemed to straddle both the real and fictitious. A
Naugatuck resident voted for someone called "Darth Nader."

-Justin Kloczko