Primary Day Arrives in Connecticut Along With Some Minor Election Problems

Voters headed to the polls for municipal primaries on Wednesday in 23 cities and towns in Connecticut. Some cities experienced problems with absentee balloting and minor issues with voting machines.In Bridgeport and Hartford, there were complaints filed with state officials involving absentee balloting and the designation of supervised absentee voting sites.

Bridgeport's primary had two-term incumbent Mayor Bill Finch facing former Mayor Joe Ganim. Ganim is staging a comeback bid after serving seven years in prison for corruption while in office. The third candidate in the race was businesswoman Mary-Jane Foster.

In Hartford, incumbent Pedro Segarra faced challenger Luke Bronin. Turnout was high enough, WNPR's Jeff Cohen reported, that the city began to run low on official ballots.

The two candidates were getting out the vote during the afternoon.

Some problems appeared to crop up early with voting machines.

Twitter accounts for the vying Hartford mayoral campaigns tracked some of the voting issues.

New London, like Hartford, saw a contest on Wednesday where the incumbent was not the endorsed candidate of his party.

Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio was elected four years ago -- the first strong mayor to be elected in the city for almost 100 years, after voters chose to get rid of a town manager system. But he's had to raise taxes to balance the city's budget, and some of his appointments have proved controversial.

Democrats endorsed city councilor Michael Passero to run against Finizio this time around.

After voting at the Nathan Hale Arts Magnet School Wednesday morning, city resident Jonathan Cook had this advice for the winner: "Grow the tax base of the city; bring in more companies, better employment opportunities for the citizens of New London. And hopefully growing the tax base will lower the tax burden on everybody."

Jesse Cassimono echoed that sentiment. "They've gone up tremendously," he said. "I own a home. I have three trucks, and two years in a row now, we've gone up. So I was voting for someone who I thought would hold the taxes down a little bit."

In New Britain, a door to a polling place was mistakenly locked early in the day, but it was quickly resolved, said Secretary of the State Denise Merrill on WNPR's Where We Live.

Merrill said the state’s role is to advise local elections officials on what the law is. She said there’s been misunderstanding in Bridgeport about when absentee ballots should be sent out.

Credit Chion Wolf / WNPR

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WNPR

"We got concerned because we understood that hundreds of ballots had not gone out," Merrill told WNPR. "Basically, they were being held at the clerk’s office, and the law is that the absentee ballots must be sent out within 24 hours after they’re received."

Jean Rabinow of the League of Women Voters in Bridgeport said her chapter is extremely concerned about the situation. She said that in general elections, where turnout is reasonably high, absentee balloting make have less of an impact.

"In primary balloting, turnout is – I’ll be blunt – abysmally low, even in the larger cities, which means that a swing of one or two percent might be enough to change who the nominee is," Rabinow said. "And in Bridgeport, it’s a close race."

Speaking on Where We Live, reporter Brian Lockhart of The Connecticut Post said that all three candidates have a plan B if they lose on Wednesday:

Polls across the state are open until 8:00 pm on Wednesday.

Tucker Ives and Harriet Jones contributed to this report.