Before Mayor Segarra and Councilperson Wooden’s vow to investigate Tuesday’s missing voter lists, there were other complaints filed with the SEEC against the Democratic Registrar of Voters.
In 2013 a complaint was filed against the Office of the Registrars of Voters for failing to record and report votes for registered write-in candidates. These write-in votes were cast at District 5 and 11 polling places. A recount showed that the complete tally of write-in votes was not originally reported.
The Hartford Registrars of Voters were told by the SEEC then to take extra care when recording and transmitting the write-in votes during future elections. That order was issued in February 2014.
A complaint in 2012 against the Democratic Registrar of Voters was dismissed. In that matter, “the Complainant alleges that Marc DiBella submitted five petition pages to the Respondent [HROV] on January 23, 2012, but that the Respondent did not validate and return those pages to the Hartford town clerk until March 6, 2012, the date of the town committee primary.”
The records show that at the time the Registrar of Voters or Town Clerk’s office was not time-stamping documents; the SEEC said that the Town Clerk’s office should begin to better track records of documents, but with insufficient evidence, could not determine if the Democratic Registrar of Voters had actually delayed returning those documents. This matter was dismissed in April 2013.
Also in 2012, Minnie Gonzalez and Ramon Arroyo filed a complaint against the Democratic Registrar of Voters for allegedly not having an even distribution of workers at all polling locations during the Democratic primary. It was found that “the evidence supports, and the Respondent does not deny, that the notices and forms sent to each candidate provide space for each candidate to submit names of designees for only certain offices.” Additionally, the “Commission concludes that the Respondent here violated General Statutes § 9-436 by failing to inform the candidates of their right to submit designees for all polling place officials and for failing to allow for space for the Complainants to submit such designees.” But, there appeared to be no evidence that the result was an uneven distribution. In March 2013, Vasquez was order to comply with the General Statutes.
A 2011 complaint filed by a visually-impaired voter alleged that the alternative voting system was not properly set up when polls opened for the Democratic primary. It took nearly an hour to fix the machine before the individual was able to vote. Though evidence suggests that the Democratic Registrar of Voters did test the machine in advance, there was also evidence that when the resident attempted to use the machine, it was not working properly.
In that case, the “Commission concludes that Respondent Olga Iris Vasquez violated General Statutes § 9-247 by failing to have an operable AVS voting system in place at the District 5 polling place.” The order requiring Vasquez to comply with the General Statutes was issued May 2012.
In 2010 a complaint was filed with the SEEC about Olga Iris Vazquez, Salvatore A. Bramante, and Urania Petit who all served as Registrars of Voters. Here, the allegation was that “write-in votes for a registered write-in candidate for United States Senator in the November 2, 2010 election […] were not counted or recorded.” The Registrars of Voters acknowledged that “in several 0f Hartford’s voting districts, the polling place moderators as well as the City’s head moderator did not properly count or record the write-in votes cast for registered write in candidates on Election Day.”
In March 2011, it was decided that bad forms, not fraud, were at work in that case.
Another case from 2010 was dismissed. In that, the Democratic Registrar of Voters was accused of having impermissibly removed a voter from the rolls.
And yet one more from 2010: the Democratic Registrar of Voters was accused of having improperly certified ballot petition pages that were incomplete when submitted to the registrar’s office; Olga Vasquez happened to be a candidate during that town committee primary. The State Elections Enforcement Committee noted: “In a separate legal action, a Connecticut Superior Court determined that 19 petition pages had been improperly certified by Vasquez’s office and ruled that the 5th District Town Committee slate of candidates, in support of which the petition signatures had been gathered, was not qualified for the ballot. See Kirkley-Bey et al. v. Vasquez et al., Superior Court, judicial district of Hartford at Hartford, Docket No. CV 10-6007952-S (March 1, 2010). The court concluded by a preponderance of the evidence that 19 pages of the ballot petition had been improperly certified by the registrar’s office and ordered that the slate be removed from the ballot.”
The outcome of this was that Vasquez agreed to pay the $3000 civil penalty. This order was issued at the end of October 2013.
