{news} Re: complaint to SOTS on McKinney write-in votes

[David Bedell]

The SOTS has an updated election report at
http://www.ct.gov/sots/cwp/view.asp?a=3179&q=392194
There is some improvement, but it is still inaccurate:

Bridgeport: 0 (vs. 1 we have documented)
Cornwall: 1 (vs. 3 documented)
Killingly: 0 (vs. 1 documented)
Manchester: 3
New Haven:12
New London:1 (vs. 7 documented)
Norwich: 0 (where officials said there were no write-in candidates)
Stamford: 2
Wethersfield: 0 (vs. 2? documented)
Windham: 5 (where officials said there were no write-in candidates)

In the case of Cornwall and New London, it seems that they counted the
single absentee ballot that we know of in each town, but not the votes cast
at the polls.  This suggests that if you want your write-in vote to count,
you're better off voting absentee.  Hartford reports only 2 votes, which I
suspect are likewise the absentee ballots only. Do we know of more than 2
McKinney votes in Hartford?

(Disclaimer: In Stamford, I confess to having voted for Nader. After some
deliberation, I decided I wanted to make sure the Independent Party got 1%
and kept ballot access for 2012, just so we have an alternative on the
ballot.)

David Bedell

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Bedell" <dbedellgreen at hotmail.com>
To: <ctgp-news at ml.greens.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2008 6:20 PM
Subject: complaint to SOTS on McKinney write-in votes


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Steve Fournier
To: 'David Bedell'
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 12:22 PM
Subject: complaint


Here's the complaint I mailed today to Bysiewicz.  For practical reasons, I
decided to confine this complaint to the presidential election.  We can make
further complaints about other contests after we see what sort of response
we get to this one.

Stephen Fournier
Attorney at Law
74 Tremont Street
Hartford, Connecticut 06105
Tel: 860 794 6718    Fax: 860 233 3044
stepfour at stepfour.com

December 4, 2008

Secretary of the State of Connecticut
ATTN: Administrative Offices
PO Box 150470
Hartford, CT 06115-0470

Dear Secretary Bysiewicz:

Please take notice of this complaint on behalf of the Green Party of
Connecticut.  The final tally of votes for President recorded in your office
indicates that the Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, a write-in,
received no votes in 140 towns, including Bridgeport, Killingly, Manchester,
New Haven, New London, Stamford and Wethersfield.

We have collected statements from voters in these towns who wrote in Cynthia
McKinney's name and from voters in Windham and Norwich (which also recorded
no write-in votes) who were told by election officials that there were no
write-in candidates for President.  We understand that the Green Party
ticket did not receive enough votes to win the election, but the law
requires that write-in votes be counted even when the write-in candidate has
no chance of winning.  Like-minded voters, even if they vote on the losing
side, are entitled to know their numbers and their distribution.

Contrary to conventional political wisdom, elections involve more than just
selecting winners.  They mark regular debates on issues of public
importance, and the results of an election are a gauge of public opinion and
give insight into the future of public policy.   Abolitionist candidates
never won an election, and neither did women's suffrage candidates, but
their candidacies over generations of struggle were a key element in the
success of these movements for human rights.

We have no way of knowing how many write-in votes went uncounted, but we are
satisfied that the selections of voters in at least seven towns were never
recorded and that officials were misinformed about write-ins in at least two
polling places.  We ask that you initiate an inspection of the "paper-trail"
in the towns that recorded no write-in votes for Cynthia McKinney to
determine whether her vote was excluded from the tally for each such town.
We ask that you investigate discrepancies between the number of write-in
ballots cast and the number of write-in votes recorded.  We ask that you
remind registrars of voters that they have a legal obligation to count and
record write-in votes.  Finally, we ask that you instruct registrars to
recount the number of write-in ballots cast for Cynthia McKinney and that
you publish the corrected totals.

Yours truly,

Stephen Fournier
Green Party of Connecticut Co-Chair