Both the Courant and the Advocate have good stories on the timeline of ballot counting in Bridgeport that are worth reading. But no one seems to have addressed the most perplexing of issues. The shortage of ballots was widely spread as news on election night in a kind of holy abacus batman style, the Bridgeport registrars were being pummeled for only ordering 21,000 ballots for a city of a little over 68,000 registered voters.
from a press release:
Thank you for your vote on November 2. Your overwhelming display of confidence has touched me deeply. I never forget that holding public office is a rare privilege afforded to very few. It is not about the person holding that office, but about serving those who place their trust in us. I will continue to make sure your voice is faithfully represented in Hartford and will work vigorously on behalf of each of the seven towns in the 26th district.
Foley is not conceding the Governor’s race, even though Bridgeport’s Mayor Bill Finch announced the Bridgeport results this morning at 6 am. The Secretary of State has not certified the vote yet but the Courant is reporting that Malloy won by over 5000 votes.
Tom Foley says that there were paper ballots, provisional ballots that were counted. He says he’s not confident with the results, and claims that the Bridgeport registrar will be reporting different numbers to the Secretary of State than what Bill Finch announced.
Foley says his team was excluded from the final tallies. He doesn’t know how many absentee, provisional and paper ballots are included in those votes.
My guess is that the straight up votes are enough to to keep Malloy ahead if every provisional and paper ballot was thrown out. The Bridgeport and New Haven votes were enough.
UPDATE: For more on the ballot bungling… The New Haven Idependent Reports:
Mayor Bill Finch announced results of his holdout city’s recount at a 6 a.m. press conference at the City Hall Annex on Broad Street. He said Malloy had beaten Republican Tom Foley 17,800 to 4,075 in Bridgeport. That’s enough to put him over the top of the otherwise official statewide vote count, the result of a process disputed over three days. Click here and here to read reports from overnight, including a dispute over a previously undisclosed sealed bag of uncounted 335 ballots.
In the olden days, they had to count balltos by hand, so it was sort of expected that days would pass before elections could be sorted out. And coutning by hand is exactly what is causing the confusion over in Bridgeport. Thus, without BRidgeport certifying its results, the race for Governor is still up in the air.
Here’s the breakdown to the AP confusion. NEw Haven and Windham apparently didn’t submit their vote totals officially until Wednesday. Thus, the AP totals had Foley still ahead. According to the Courant:
But Thursday morning, vote totals posted online by the AP mirrored the numbers reported by the New Haven Registrar of Voters.
The AP’s online totals now show Malloy winning the race by 6,240 votes, with all but 10 precincts in Bridgeport reporting.
So it looks like, Malloy will win by enough votes to avoid an automatic recount. The totals should be enough for the Foley campaign to realize that a legal challenge to the Bridgeport ballots won’t get them anywhere.
Here’s the rundown on the Bridgeport Ballot issue. First, Susan Bysiewicz said that the ballots cast between 8 pm and 10 pm numbered around 500. The official trigger for a statewide recount would be for the Malloy/Foley race to be within 2000 votes. The official tally now has Malloy with plus 3000 votes, so no official recount.
Foley’s campaign is evaluating options, and has not conceded yet.
The story of the Bridgeport ballots in context. In Bridgeport there are around 60k registered voters. In a presidential year, the turnout of voters is around 40k. The most recent Mayoral election has a 13k turnout, so the 21k in ballots ordered was based on some calculation between the two.
The results are in, sort of, and Connecticut voters have said that they like (mostly) their Democratic representation. For the Connecticut GOP, which must look at what the rest of the country managed, this should be considered as a total failure. Sure, some state legislative seats switched over. But the entire constitutional officer ticket, all congressional seats and the open senate seat? The only race where Connecticut seems receptive to the local GOP is the governor’s race, which as of this morning (7:47 am) is still too close to call.
Consider this an open thread, but early observations indicate a high voter turn out in South Norwalk.
9:23 pm Duff 14,211 Kassimis 8,451 according to the Hour
Cafero defeats Duleep
Lavielle defeats Reeves
Blumenthal defeats McMahon
Perone defeats Romano
Boucher defeats Hartwell
11:09 UPDATE
Debicella concedes
Foley and Malloy still too close to call with Bridgeport and Danbury not reporting in yet.
Murphy holds on in the CT- 5th … Waterbury is still out
Now here’s an interesting political ad. Forget the candidates, blame the party:
We’re in the eleventh month and the eleventh hour of campaign 2010, emphasis on pain. All through the land every pundit has been breathlessly reporting the polls as if they matter. Call my cynical, but a poll, even as frivolous as the American Idol one, can’t change history. And history has said that whatever party controls Congress, nothing much will change till businesses start spending money in ways that make it into the workforce’s pockets.
Let’s take a trip in the wayback machine and visit with Henry Ford via the Ford Motor Company web site:
The $5-a-day Workday
After the success of the moving assembly line, Henry Ford had another transformative idea: in January 1914, he startled the world by announcing that Ford Motor Company would pay $5 a day to its workers. The pay increase would also be accompanied by a shorter workday (from nine to eight hours). While this rate didn’t automatically apply to every worker, it more than doubled the average autoworker’s wage.
The economy has certainly drove home the idea of job creation as a campaign theme. Candidates are falling over themselves with campaign promises that they will “create jobs.” Naturally the tea party is out front and center with the idea that government can’t create jobs, with people like Linda McMahon sayign that government doesn’t create jobs, entrepreneurs do.
Maybe the third time’s a charm for Connecticut Democratic senatorial nominee Richard Blumenthal who has had a hard time offering a clear answer about government’s role creating jobs
When his opponent Linda McMahon asked him in a debate Monday night “how do you create a job,” he offered a meandering reply explaining jobs can be created “in a variety of ways by a variety of people.” He went on assert government can help preserve jobs by providing more capital to small businesses, tax policies that promote job creation and intervention by government to help promote American-made products.
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