Connecticut Absentee Voters Get Blank Ballots

[cal04]

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/09/absentee-voters-connecticut-blank-ballots

If you're overseas and voting by mail in Connecticut this November, grab an aspirin and a pen with lots of ink. The state's Supreme Court hadn't resolved a partisan scuffle over who gets to be listed first on the ballot this year before overseas absentee ballots were dropped in the mail, so those voters will have to write in all the candidates' names themselves, according to Deputy Secretary of State James Spallone.

The Connecticut Republican Party challenged (PDF) Secretary of State Denise Merrill's decision to list Democratic candidates first on the ballot this year, arguing that it violated a statute mandating that the party whose candidate for governor got the most votes in the last election gets to be listed first in all ballots. (The esoteric law dates back more a century, Spallone says—before suffrage was extended to women and most African-Americans in the state.)

Since Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy won in 2010, it would seem like his party should get prime billing, according to the provison. But Republican legislators like State Sen. Len Fasano argued that the law refers not to the total number of individual votes a candidate received, but to the number of party votes. Since Malloy wouldn't have won without support from voters in the Working Families party, the state GOP said, Malloy's Republican challenger got the most party votes, and GOP candidates should get to be listed first this year. Me first, mom!

When Merrill refused to reverse the Dem-friendly ballot order, state Republicans filed an appeal with the high court. But the court waited til today to issue a ruling in favor of the GOP (based on the precedent of a more than 70-year old case). But the deadline to send out ballots to overseas and military voters came and went last Friday. So those voters get empty ballots and a list of candidates that they'll have to write in on their own.



http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/sep/18/supreme-court-hears-ballot-dispute/

[elleng]

1. WE HAVE LOST OUR MINDS,

and our ability to govern ourselves!

[hrmjustin]

5. 100% agreed n/t

[Scootaloo]

2. I expect other arcane measures will be used to disqualify these votes

"Oops, this I isn't dotted, that's invalid!"

[frylock]

10. in the san diego mayoral race several years ago..

people wrote-in Donna Frye (a democrat), but those votes weren't counted because folks failed to check the box next to where they had just wrote-in her name.

[KamaAina]

3. I certainly hope the troops know how to write "Chris Murphy"

Figures something like this would happen in one of the few states with big-ticket races that hasn't gone for full-scale voter suppression.

[regnaD kciN]

8. If they do...

...watch them get disqualified, because they were supposed to write "Christopher Murphy."

Same with VP "Joseph Biden."

[KamaAina]

9. But all the people in Alaska who wrote in "Lisa Mercowskree"

had their votes counted.

[spanone]

4. voter suppression should be the highest of crimes in a democracy.

[elleng]

6. It IS; we just have to have it CODIFIED!

[regnaD kciN]

7. And the voter-suppression season begins...now!