A story changed in Dixwell’s absentee-ballot brouhaha. Watch Katie Williams’ new version.
Williams is a 79-year-old retired nurse’s assistant living in the Monterey Homes senior complex on Webster Street.
She is also at the center of an absentee ballot controversy that has drawn the attention of the State Elections Enforcement Commission.
That displeases her.
By Williams’ own account, she has trouble remembering details — especially when it comes to voting and ballots. As the SEEC begins investigating what happened in the Nov. 3 election for alderman in Ward 22, it may find that asking Williams to recall those details proves a confusing quest.
It sure proved confusing on Tuesday.
That’s when the Independent visited Williams at Monterey Homes to ask her about an affidavit she signed on behalf of Alderman Greg Morehead. The affidavit alleges that Morehead’s opponent in the election broke the law and took a signed, unsealed absentee ballot from Williams.
Williams tried to recall the events described in that affidavit, which she didn’t write herself. (Click on the play arrow at the top of the story to watch her tell her story.) She contradicted some of the facts claimed in the affidavit. Other key facts she confirmed, then contradicted, then pleaded hopeless confusion about.
Like, for instance, the role of Lisa Hopkins, the aldermanic challenger against whom Greg Morehead filed the SEEC complaint.
In the affidavit Katie Williams signed, she states that Lisa Hopkins came to her apartment and personally took her unsealed absentee ballot.
On Tuesday, Hopkins — who claimed she had never met Williams before — agreed to accompany the Independent to visit Williams. Williams didn’t recognize Hopkins when Hopkins entered the room. After Williams told her story, she was introduced to Hopkins.
“Oh!” she said. “You’re Lisa Hopkins!”
Allegation 1: Hopkins’ Role
Greg Morehead and Lisa Hopkins run against each other for alderman in Dixwell as often as Yale and Harvard go head-to-head in football — four times in the last four years, including twice this fall. Morehead defeated Hopkins in a September Democratic primary. Then Hopkins ran a write-in campaign as an independent in the Nov. 3 general election. Morehead beat her decisively at the polls, 215 – 87. But Hopkins collected a lot of absentee ballots. By the time those were counted, Morehead still won, but the tally had narrowed to 237 – 194. Morehead subsequently filed the complaint with the state, alleging that Hopkins had engaged in absentee ballot fraud. (Read about that here.)
Morehead gave one specific alleged example in his complaint: a handwritten affidavit that Katie Williams signed.
Click here to view the affidavit.
In the affidavit, Williams stated that two people from the Lisa Hopkins campaign, a man and a woman, came to her apartment to ask if she had received her absentee ballot for the general election. She said no. Then the ballot arrived. “Those same people” returned to her door and told her to “sign the ballot” and leave it unsealed, the affidavit alleged. She complied and gave them the ballot, the affidavit alleged.
“I later found out,” the statement reads, that one of the two “was indeed Lisa Hopkins.”
Williams was shown a copy of the statement during the visit Tuesday. She looked it over, for quite a while. A perplexed look descended on her face.
“I question this,” she said. She said it several times.
She said she did sign the statement. She said someone else wrote it.
She said Alderman Morehead brought it to her, read it, and asked her to sign it.
“I told him, I don’t remember things too well. I really don’t. He read it to me. He told me what he had written.”
One fact she repeatedly insisted is true: that she had never met Lisa Hopkins before Tuesday, that Lisa Hopkins had not been at her door that day to collect her ballot. She said Morehead asked her if Hopkins had been present, and she said perhaps.
Allegation 2: The Unsealed Ballot
The other main allegation in Morehead’s complaint proved murkier to confirm or deny: whether someone from the Hopkins campaign had broken the law by having her sign but not fill out the ballot and taking it from her unsealed.
Williams (pictured) said her next-door neighbor was the man who originally visited her and took the ballot. That neighbor, Edward Quick, is a volunteer for Hopkins. He, too, came to the interview Tuesday, and she recognized him.
At one point in the interview, Williams told the story the way the affidavit told it. At another point, she said he had indeed filled out the ballot, for “I guess, Lisa whatever she is.” Finally, she said, she just doesn’t remember.
Lisa Hopkins, who calls Morehead’s elections complaint a “witch hunt” based on false stories, said she has no knowledge of what transpired in Katie Williams’ apartment. She said she doesn’t know who the woman was who accompanied volunteer Edward Quick to visit Williams and discuss the ballot. Both Williams and Quick described the woman as being in her mid-20s.
Absentee ballots are prizes in Ward 22. Voting turnout is low. And the ward has two large senior housing developments, the one at Monterey Homes and the Edith B. Johnson complex. Hopkins said she has avoided the senior complex at Monterey in past elections because she couldn’t gain access, but that this time she had identified some sympathetic seniors to help her, including Quick.
Quick, for his part, claimed that he has no idea, either, who the affidavit’s unnamed woman was. He also said that he wasn’t the one who returned to Williams’ apartment and picked up the ballot. He said the woman — whoever she is — must have done that.
An In-Person Vote
Katie Williams does remember two subsequent visits from Greg Morehead and a campaign aide.
The first came on an evening right before the Nov. 3 election. She remembered telling Morehead she had already voted absentee, but that she was confused. She was worried that she might “get in trouble” for voting for “two aldermen” — Morehead, in the September primary, then Hopkins, by absentee for the general. She was confused about whether there were two separate elections or one, she said.
At that point, she asked Morehead for advice, she said. Morehead told her to go to the polls the morning of Nov. 3, explain her confusion, and ask to vote there and have her absentee ballot nullified.
Williams said she did that. She said went to the polls and pulled the lever — for Morehead.
Records on file at the City Clerk’s Office confirm that Williams voted by absentee, then showed up at the polls on Nov. 3. Her vote at the polls counted. Her absentee ballot did not. The public is not allowed to examine absentee ballots to see whose name is marked off.
Morehead’s Side
Beyond the question of Lisa Hopkins’ identity, Morehead tells a similar version of events to Williams’ — with an important difference.
He agreed that he had visited Williams. He agreed that she was confused about whether her vote will count. He agreed that he advised her to go to the polls to straighten out; he said his campaign offered her a ride.
But, Morehead said, Williams positively identified Lisa Hopkins as the woman who took her absentee ballot. Morehead said he had shown Williams campaign literature photos of Hopkins and another candidate, Cordelia Thorpe. He said Williams positively identified Hopkins.
He also said he went over her story in detail before drawing up the affidavit. He said he had conducted a similar interview with another elderly woman who voted absentee. He chose not to draw up an affidavit for the other woman.
“I know it wouldn’t stand up when it was investigated,” Morehead said. “But [Katie] Williams was more credible. That’s why I went ahead with her to submit her affidavit. She told me, like I said, that Lisa came over and she met her through her neighbor. And she [Lisa] came back on another day and said she was here to get her absentee ballot.
“I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t sure of everything. She was like, ‘I signed it, but I didn’t fill in any bubbles.’”
Morehead said he showed her a sample absentee ballot and walked her through the steps of filling it out, and she told him, “I left it blank. They told me to leave it blank.”
As it seeks to get to the bottom of the Ward 22 election controversy, the state has some memory-revival challenges before it.
Meanwhile, Katie Williams has made a decision. In the future, she will not vote in aldermanic elections. She plans to vote for president and vice-president. That’s it.
Her reason: “I don’t like junk. I don’t go for junk. Never did. Wasn’t raised up with junk.”
Professor:
What do you have to say now? As I stated earlier, Morehead is abusing this lady by putting her in the middle of this. Even more, he has permanently turned her off to voting. What a disgrace. ...
I repeat what I said in an earlier post.
Alderman Morehead,
What is the difference between your opponent's "alleged" abuse of this lady, or yours. She is probably so confused by all this I would be surprised if her testimony was even considered by the state investigators. I'm tired of all you "well meaning" people taking advantage of these older people.