Legislature To Look Into Administrative Errors In Primary Elections

HARTFORD, CT — Democratic leaders in the state House and Senate have announced plans for a public hearing to be held prior to the November election to examine administrative errors that affected two Democratic candidates running in their local legislative primary elections.

“It’s always important to understand what went wrong in our elections and how we can improve the process moving forward,” said Democratic senators Martin Looney of New Haven and Bob Duff of Norwalk in a joint statement with representatives Matt Rittner of Hartford, the house speaker, and Majority Leader Jason Rojas of East Hartford.

This announcement came in response to Senate and House Republicans issuing a formal request for a public hearing to investigate the “administrative errors and inaccurate instructions provided by the Secretary of the State’s Office,” which sparked litigation over the candidacies of Enfield’s Tom Tyler and Hartford’s Venice Sotomayor.

Tyler and Sotomayor reportedly both received petitions from the Secretary of the State’s office that included instruction language calling for the number of required signatures to be documented, rather than the number of signatures acquired. In addition to this, Tyler was mistakenly given the petition forms four days early.

Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas reportedly told the Hartford Courant that errors in the petitions’ language and distribution were both the result of “human error.”

Both candidates faced legal challenges from their incumbent primary opponents yet the Connecticut Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of proceeding with their candidacies, arguing that they could not be held accountable for administrative mistakes. While the District 4 primary in Hartford continues as planned, the justices ordered the District 58 primary in Enfield to be pushed back September 1 because of the complications.

The Government Oversight and Government Administration and Elections committees will conduct the hearing.

In their call for transparency, the Republicans requested testimony from Thomas, the two candidates who filed the lawsuits, and representatives from voter registrars’ offices in the affected towns.

“Ballot access in the State of Connecticut is difficult enough,” said the Republicans. “It is this type of behavior from the government that erodes the trust of the public and causes speculation about voter integrity in Connecticut.”

The Republicans said their main goal is to collect information on how the defective petition forms were distributed and how to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Thomas’ office issued a statement following the Democrats’ announcement that they would schedule the public hearing.

“We respect the General Assembly’s oversight role and welcome the opportunity to set the record straight in a public forum while helping to educate the legislature about what is involved in administering elections,” the statement said.