Reply #13: CT: Vote Shortage Is Suspicious [View All]

EDITORIALS

Vote Shortage Is Suspicious

December 5, 2005

MIDDLETOWN -- Middletown officials will need strong arguments to overcome the case made by Republican council candidate David Bauer for a re-vote in the city's 11th District, where a voting machine appears to have malfunctioned. Mr. Bauer lost a seat on the council to fellow Republican V. James Russo by 102 votes.

Council candidates run at-large in Middletown. After his relatively narrow loss, Mr. Bauer noticed a discrepancy in the votes cast in the 11th District. On three of the district's four machines, Mr. Bauer received 188, 179 and 169 votes. On the fourth machine, he got only 12 votes. He maintains that voters were likely to be dispersed evenly to all machines and that his vote total on the fourth machine should have been similar to the count on the three other machines.

On Thursday, city officials and voting machine mechanics, with Mr. Bauer observing, conducted a test on the fourth machine. In more than 50 tests, they pulled lever 4A, which was Mr. Bauer's line, and the machine failed to record a single vote for him. Despite this seemingly conclusive evidence that the machine is broken, the council - after meeting behind closed doors - voted unanimously to continue defending the election results in court.

Mr. Bauer submitted evidence to the judge that the same machine has a history of producing low vote totals for the candidate on line 4A. In three previous elections, candidates on that line have received 0, 0 and 12 votes.

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http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-midvote1dec05,0,4592543.story?coll=hc-headlines-editorials