Connecticut prosecutors have charged five Democratic officials in the city of Bridgeport with some of the most far-reaching allegations of election fraud in the state’s history. That includes “forging signatures, registering non-citizens to vote… changing votes after they were cast and harvesting dozens of absentee ballots.”
The Connecticut Mirror reports:
State prosecutors took a big step Friday when they charged five Bridgeport Democrats with more than 150 election-related crimes, but arrest warrants suggest the sprawling investigation into voter fraud and ballot harvesting might not end there.
The charges, which were leveled against campaign staffer Margaret Joyce, Bridgeport’s Democratic vice chair Wanda Geter-Pataky and city council members Alfredo Castillo, Jazmarie Melendez and Maria Pereira, are some of the most far-reaching allegations of election crimes in the state’s history.
The arrest warrants paint a picture of competing political camps that aggressively and illegally pursued absentee votes for Mayor Joe Ganim and Democratic primary challenger John Gomes — by forging signatures, registering non-citizens to vote, telling people how to vote, changing votes after they were cast and harvesting dozens of absentee ballots so they could be delivered to drop boxes in the city.
Officials with the Chief State’s Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the criminal cases, declined to comment about whether anyone else could be charged as part of the criminal probe.
Even so, the arrest warrants that were unveiled this week suggest that additional charges might be possible, given the nature of some of the 92 charges filed against Geter-Pataky.
The complaint against Geter-Pataky includes allegations that she participated in several conspiracies to take possession of voters’ absentee ballots ahead of that election.
Progressive groups have long falsely claimed that voter fraud essentially never happens, and based on that false claim, they have fought against even the most modest safeguards against vote fraud. The Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive policy organization that liberal media misleadingly refer to as “nonpartisan,” has a web page titled, “The Myth of Voter Fraud.” The New Yorker has repeatedly run articles claiming voter fraud doesn’t happen, such as articles titled “The Voter-Fraud Myth” and “How Trump Hopes to Exploit the Myth of Voter Fraud.”
It is worth noting, though, that voter fraud has a much greater impact on local elections than federal elections. A few fraudulent votes can affect a close city council election in a small city, but will not affect a national election. Fraudulent votes account for well under 1% of all votes cast nationally.
