This week, four Connecticut Democrats were hit with election fraud charges, after allegedly abusing the absentee ballot system to affect the democratic primary, one of whom had previously been involved in a scandal which triggered a rematch of a mayoral election.
Bridgeport City Councilmember Alfredo Castillo, Democratic Town Committee Vice Chair Wanda Geter-Pataky, and two other campaign workers, Nilsa Heredia and Josephine Edmunds, were charged with unlawful possession of absentee ballots and other violations of elections law, per the Associated Press.
They are each accused of manipulating the absentee ballot system during the city’s 2019 Democratic primary, in which Joe Ganim, the incumbent mayor, defeated state Sen. Marilyn Moore by only 270 votes.
Additionally, Geter-Pataky, Heredia, and Edmonds were charged with tampering with a witness during the investigation. Geter-Pataky was also accused of failing to sign as an “assister” on an absentee ballot application that she had filled out on behalf of a voter, and Castillo was accused of misrepresenting eligibility requirements for voting by absentee ballots, failing to sign as an assister, and other accusations, per Fox News.
Geter-Pataky, Castillo, and Heredia were supporters of Ganim, while Edmonds is believed to have supported Moore, as she was on Moore’s staff.
Geter-Pataky had previously been involved in a scandal involving absentee ballots that led to a redo of the 2023 mayoral race.
In that year’s mayoral contest, between Ganim and John Gomes, surveillance videos showed people stuffing absentee ballots into outdoor collection boxes during the Democratic primary. Gomes alleged that one of the people stuffing the boxes was Geter-Pataky. When she was questioned, Geter-Pataky exercised her Fifth Amendment right and declined to answer questions, per the Associated Press.
“Whether it’s people accused from the Moore campaign or my campaign — any irregularity is unacceptable,” Ganim said in a statement after the arrests were announced. “We all agree that the integrity of the voting process is vital to our democracy.”
Moore confirmed that Edmonds had been on her campaign payroll in 2019, saying that while she remembers the name, she is unsure who she is. She added that she is disappointed that someone on her campaign payroll has been accused of mishandling ballots.
“I ran on integrity and I also ran on integrity for my Senate campaign. That’s what I tried to foster, integrity in all campaigns,” she said in an interview. “That I had a person doing the opposite bothers me, especially knowing who I am and knowing that I don’t cut corners on anything.”
The arrests took years to come to fruition, with the secretary of state’s office sending a formal letter of referral regarding possible wrongdoing to the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) shortly after the conclusion of the September 2019 primary, the AP reported.
However, SEEC did not refer that evidence to state prosecutors until June 7, 2023, nearly 4 years later.
Also in 2019, voters had filed a lawsuit seeking a new primary election over problems relating to absentee ballots in the race between Ganim and Moore. Even though nearly a dozen voters testified that they had cast absentee ballots but were not qualified to do so, a judge ultimately denied the request for a new primary.
“Five years is much too long to prosecute a case. Look at the things that have happened since that case in Bridgeport with absentee ballots,” Moore said. “They’re all impacted by this because those people continued to do something underhanded in all of those elections.”
The AP reported that Edmonds turned herself into authorities Monday, and the other three defendants turned themselves in the next day. All four were released on promises to appear in Bridgeport Superior Court on June 24.
