When Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim arrived at his Election Night party in early September, he was told that he was trailing his Democratic primary challenger, John Gomes.
"But we are confident at this point, because of the hard work, because of the commitment, because of the support we received throughout the city of Bridgeport." There was reason for that confidence: Several of the people who surrounded Ganim on that stage had spent months laying the groundwork for many of the absentee votes cast in the city.
Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim speaks to the press while celebrating his general election victory on November 7, 2023.
Email address... Sign me up! Documents reviewed by The Connecticut Mirror show that just one of Ganim's supporters, Wanda Geter-Pataky, spent four months traversing parts of Bridgeport, helping voters fill out at least 537 absentee ballot applications ahead of the election, which was decided by 251 votes.
Flourish logoA Flourish bar chart race Geter-Pataky, who is the vice chairwoman of Bridgeport's Democratic party, has since found herself at the center of an ongoing election scandal that has led to allegations of widespread ballot fraud and a new court-ordered primary between Ganim and Gomes.
A months-long investigation by the CT Mirror shows, for the first time, just how involved Geter-Pataky and many other Bridgeport political operatives were in driving absentee votes ahead of the primary - and the lengths to which they went to influence that election.
To understand how the absentee process works in Bridgeport, the CT Mirror analyzed more than 4,300 absentee ballot applications that were filed ahead of the primary and submitted as evidence in court.
Anyone who wants to receive an absentee ballot has to fill out an application.
https://ctmirror.org/2023/12/17/bridgeport-mayoral-primary-election-2023/
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