(The Epoch Times)—It took conscience, courage, cameras, and a court to overturn the results of the corrupted Sept. 12 Bridgeport, Connecticut Democrat mayoral primary election.
The conscience and courage came from the as-yet-unidentified whistleblower who provided the incriminating footage to the public.
The video is public property. Nonetheless, the Bridgeport Police Dept. is conducting an investigation to find out who leaked it and to determine if the action constituted any criminal wrongdoing.
The cameras surveilling the drop boxes belong to the city of Bridgeport and are monitored by the city police.
The Superior Court judge that invalidated the election wrote that his decision came down to “the practical and common-sense application of the law to the facts of the case.”
“The volume of evidence in this case, including the many hundreds of hours of video surveillance disclosed and accepted, is, perhaps, unprecedented in the State of Connecticut in an election case,” wrote Judge William Clark in his Nov. 1, 2023 decision to nullify the election’s outcome and order a redo.
“The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all parties,” he said.
The defendant in the case is Town Clerk Charles Clemons.
Judge Clark noted that all parties in the case agreed that the many hours of video were authentic.
He wrote that the issue of fact that the court had to decide was whether, based on the record as presented, enough ballots were mishandled to conclude that the reliability of the results of the election was seriously in doubt.
The court concluded that based on the video footage, documents, and testimony in the case, there were enough absentee votes mishandled by unauthorized people to make it impossible to determine the legitimate winner, and therefore, the judge declared the Democrat primary election for mayor of Bridgeport invalid.
Judge Clark gave the parties ten days to agree on a date for the new primary.
Criminality Tolerated for Years
Overt cheating by illegally harvesting absentee ballots and stuffing stacks of them into drop boxes has been going on in Connecticut since the remote ballot receptacles first came into use during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is not known why previous video recordings of obvious violations did not draw the attention of authorities.
Except for very narrow, statutorily specified, practical, circumstances, it is illegal in Connecticut for anyone other than the voter to touch an absentee ballot.
The relevant statute reads in part, “No person shall have in his possession any official absentee ballot or ballot envelope for use at any primary, election, or referendum, except the applicant to whom it was issued,” or the other specified individuals such as postal workers, election clerks, or designated immediate family members.
The Connecticut Supreme Court (CSC) opined that the governing statute, “reflects a clear legislative intent to maintain distance between partisan individuals and the casting and submission of absentee ballots, undoubtedly in recognition of the potential undue influence, intimidation, or fraud in the use of those ballots.”
The CSC has also held that, “The return of ballots in a manner not substantially in compliance with (the statute) will result in their invalidation, regardless if there is any proof of fraud.
“The validity of the ballot, therefore, depends not on whether there has been fraud, but on whether there has been substantial compliance with the mandatory requirements.”
That means that, in Connecticut, a substantive violation of an election law is sufficient to render the ballots that are affected by it null and void. That, in turn, may result in the election being invalidated if the violations are deemed extensive.
Addressing the argument that, when a court sets aside election results due to the illegal handling of some absentee ballots, the other voters would be thereby disenfranchised, the CSC stated, “If there is to be disenfranchisement, it should be because the legislature has seen fit to require it in the interest of an honest suffrage (election) and has expressed that requirement in unmistakable language.”
The high court held that the legislature had enacted laws that clearly express the requirements and that the regulations are intended to “prevent fraud as far as practicable by mandating the way in which absentee ballots are to be handled.”
Brazen Lawbreaking Recorded
The flagrant disregard of those regulations captured by municipal surveillance cameras at the four Bridgeport drop box locations and broadcast nationwide has added credence to the claims of election investigators across the country that such fraud is widespread.
Filmmaker and election integrity investigator Dinesh D’Souza told The Epoch Times, “It seems like Democrats perfected these election fraud techniques a while ago. They have been using them even in Democratic primaries.
“In 2020, they simply ramped up the scale of the fraud exploiting the new opportunities created by Covid,” D’Souza said. “The video in this Connecticut case bears an eerie similarity to what we showed in ‘2000 Mules.’ Many people who were skeptical of ‘2000 Mules’—never having seen the movie, but only having read the bogus fact checks—are now taking a second look.”
The film ‘2000 Mules’ documented by video and cell phone tracking technology numerous cases of ballot box stuffing in multiple swing states during the 2020 election.
With the repeated emergence of new evidence such as that which recently surfaced in Connecticut, the persistent refrain of election corruption deniers has gone from “2020 was the most secure election in history” to acknowledgment that there was “very little fraud” to there were “numerous instances of fraud but they were nothing serious.”
To illustrate, the Associated Press recently conducted a review of 475 voter fraud cases in six battleground states and concluded it was a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 election.
In past rulings, the Connecticut Supreme Court acknowledged that “there is considerable room for fraud in absentee ballot voting and that a failure to comply with regulatory provisions governing absentee voting increases the opportunity for fraud.”
The Connecticut case even caught the attention of Elon Musk who posted on X, “That this happened here is beyond reasonable doubt. The only question is how common it is.”
Guidelines for Judicial Decisions
Under Connecticut law, before a court can overturn the results of an election and order a new election, a judge must be persuaded that there were substantial violations of the state statute, and as a result of those violations, the results of the election are seriously in doubt.
In addition, the court must find that the result of the election might have been different but for the violations, and that the court is unable to determine the result.
According to the Connecticut Supreme Court, if the number of judicially invalidated absentee ballots exceeds the margin of victory of a candidate, it is correct for a trial court to determine that the results of the election are in serious doubt and that a new election should be ordered.
However, the high court said that election results may be overturned without the plaintiff having to provide “evidence directly or explicitly showing a specific number of invalid ballots because the law is well established that a plaintiff may meet his burden of proof (a preponderance of the evidence) by direct or circumstantial evidence.”
This standard enables a judge to make “reasonable and logical inferences justified by the evidence.”
It means that without proving a specific number of invalid ballots, a plaintiff may prevail under the statute “by proving that the totality of the evidence, both direct and circumstantial, establishes mistakes in the count of the votes so extensive or severe that a finding may be made that, but for the mistakes, the result of the primary might have been different,” according to case law cited by the Connecticut Supreme Court and relied on by Judge Clark.
Substantial Evidence of Extensive Wrongdoing
Referring to the huge amount of evidence presented in the Gomes case, Judge Clark wrote, “The parties have not cited, and the court has not located, any case involving the number of election law violations and the volume of supporting evidence that has been presented here.”
In making his decision to order a redo of the primary, Judge Clark noted that a trial court has no authority to postpone a general election, so the Nov. 7, 2023 general election was conducted despite the controversy.
He also noted from case law the principle that an invalid primary yields an invalid general election. His solution was to schedule a new primary for the Democrat candidates for mayor.
The purported winner of the Sept. 12 Democrat primary was incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim, who was the party-endorsed candidate. His top primary opponent was John Gomes.
Mr. Gomes won the in-person machine vote 3,100 to 2,648 for Mr. Ganim. Mr. Ganim won the absentee ballot vote 1,564 to 861 for Mr. Gomes.
It is unclear why Mr. Ganim outperformed Mr. Gomes by almost 2 to 1 among absentee voters instead of the tally bearing somewhat of a proportional resemblance to the tally of the machine voters.
As a testimony of the effectiveness of two known ballot harvesters who said they supported Mr. Ganim, the percentage of voters casting absentee ballots in the two voting districts under their charge was exponentially higher than in each of the other eight districts.
One of the workers is on record as having signed the envelopes of 369 absentee voters whom she personally assisted in some way. A helper’s signature is required by state law.
When called to testify at the hearing, both workers pleaded the constitutional protection against self-incrimination provided by the Fifth Amendment.
The margin of victory for Mr. Ganim in the primary was 251 votes.
Surveillance Cameras Tell the Story
The four drop box locations were monitored by video around the clock for 21 days leading up to the Sept. 12 primary. The thousands of hours of date and time-stamped footage were painstakingly reviewed by the Gomes campaign and presented to the court.
The video showed that over the 21 days, 420 deliberate approaches to the drop boxes were made by individuals.
According to data presented to the court by Gomes campaign manager Christine Bartlett-Josie, and incorporated in Judge Clark’s decision, there were a “minimum of 1,253 ballots and likely close to 1,609 (that) were cast in drop boxes.”
That means that the number of absentee ballots picked up from the boxes by election workers was three to four times greater than the number of people who were filmed using the boxes.
A log was included with the videotape that showed one individual visiting the boxes ten times and inserting bundles of envelopes believed to be ballots. A second individual was caught on tape five times doing the same thing.
According to the numerical analysis provided by plaintiff Gomes, and included in Judge Clark’s decision, the Bridgeport Town Clerk received 5,000 applications for absentee ballots for the primary.
The clerk’s office sent out 4,380 absentee ballots, of which 2,630 came back voted. Absentee ballot envelopes turned in at drop boxes do not require postage or a postmark. Clerks stamp each ballot envelope upon receipt.
Evidence presented by the plaintiff shows the city received 885 absentee ballot envelopes with a stamp and postmark indicating they had been mailed.
There were 1,355 absent ballot envelopes received by the clerk which had no stamp or postmark. These would either have come from drop boxes or were hand-delivered to the office.
Of the 1,355, 61 were known to have been delivered in person, while 6 came in via a third party, and 35 voted their ballots under supervision.
Records indicate that an additional 356 absentee envelopes were received with a stamp, but no postmark indicating they either came from a drop box or were hand-delivered. Both candidates appeared on the general election ballot.
Mr. Ganim ran as the designated Democrat nominee, narrowly defeating Mr. Gomes, who ran as an independent, and the Republican candidate David Herz.
Just as in the primary, Mr. Gomes won the in-person vote, but Mr. Ganim trounced Mr. Gomes by winning the absentee vote 1,166 to 429, thereby pulling off a victory by an unofficial 175 votes.
If Mr. Ganim wins the do-over primary, he will be recognized as the officially elected mayor.
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