Absentee Ballot Fraud Allegations Mount

When state investigators look into the latest charges of absentee ballot abuse in New Haven, they might want to knock on Idella Streater’s door — and then visit her next-door neighbor, ​“Miss Brenda.”

Streater lives in the Farnam Courts public-housing project, which has become the second spot in Ward 8 to generate accusations of illegal gathering of absentee ballots in the Nov. 5 general election.

The State Elections and Enforcement Commission (SEEC) voted Wednesday to look into allegations of fraud in Ward 8, which in addition to Farnam Courts includes Wooster Square. The commission acted on a complaint filed by outgoing City/ Town Clerk Ron Smith. The probe now presents a potential embarrassment for Smith’s successor as clerk, Michael Smart. Smart takes over the office Jan. 1. The office is responsible for handling absentee ballots. Smart took out more absentee ballot applications on behalf of voters than anyone else this campaign season; and he ended up receiving an overwhelming share of the absentee votes cast in the ward (98 out of 109 in the Democratic primary, 103 out of 117 in the general election). He is at the center of this new absentee ballot case because he personally signed out the applications for the ballots that are under investigation; and because at least one of the people now accused of illegally picking up ballots supported his candidacy.

The complaint originally focused on allegations, first reported by WTNH, that a vote-puller in the Winslow-Celentano elderly complex was improperly collecting people’s absentee ballots.

Now new, similar allegations have surfaced in Farnam Courts. Smith this week appended sworn statements from four Farnam Courts tenants attesting that they gave their ballots to Brenda Harris, a tenant leader and worker. By law, they’re supposed to mail in their own ballots or hand them to a relative, caregiver or cop.

And several tenants told the Independent they, too, either gave their ballots to Harris, or voted absentee when they could have made it to the polls to vote in person. By law people are supposed to vote by absentee if they’re disabled, out of town on election day, or otherwise have a good reason not to show up in person.

Streater lives next door to Harris at Farnam Courts. She said she voted absentee in this election because ​“it was more convenient.” She said ​“Miss Brenda suggested” the idea.

“She let me know we can do it through the mail,” Streater said. ​“She mailed it out for me.”

No one answered the door at Harris’s apartment when a reporter knocked. Nor did she return requests for comment for this article. In a previous interview at Farnam Courts, she told the Independent she had been working for Toni Harp-Michael Smart ticket in the campaign, but she denied collecting the ballots on behalf of any other voters.

Another absentee voter, Cherie Watkins, said she stopped walking to the polls to vote after she got in a fight there a few years ago and ​“they said I was intoxicated.” She said Harris and another supporter of Michael Smart — the ward’s alderman, and now the city’s city clerk-elect — convinced her to fill out absentees instead. She claimed she turned her ballot over to ​“the short chick with Michael; she’s Hispanic.” Watkins said she is not disabled. (Watkins was also quoted in this earlier New Haven Register story.)

Streater and Watkins were not among the Farnam Courts voters who signed the forms added to the SEEC complaint this week. Andy Ross, an independent who ran for alderman in Ward 8 this year, collected those forms.

Ross did get a signature from Farnam Courts tenant Juanita Sanders attesting that she had handed her ballot to Harris. Sanders told the same story to the Independent Wednesday. Sanders, who is elderly, said she can’t physically make it to the polls. She said her daughter and Harris were present when she filled out her ballot. She said Harris instructed her whom to vote for, saying, ​“He’s the one. He’s nice.” After Sanders filled out the ballot, she said, ​“I gave it to Brenda. She took it and went outside.”

Another Farnam Courts voter who signed Ross’s forms, Rosemary DeJesus, told a different story to the Independent. She said she votes absentee because ​“I got problems with my leg.” She mailed in her ballot, she said. ​“It says in the letter to mail it, so I did it.”

The variation in accounts reflects the challenge investigators face when trying to ascertain the facts in cases of absentee ballot accusations. It’s hard to get a straight, consistent story from people already confused about the (understandably confusing) absentee voting process.

Malcolm Wilson (pictured), for instance, repeatedly appeared confused when asked to reconstruct how he voted.

He voted once in person this year, at Conte/West Hills Magnet School, he said. He voted once by absentee. He wasn’t sure which election was which.

He said he knows he sent in an absentee ballot for Michael Smart. He always votes absentee for Michael Smart, he said. ​“That’s my buddy. We grew up together.” Smart’s supporters have him on a list to arrange for him to sign up to vote absentee, he said.

He said he also knows he walked to Conte to vote for ​“the white guy” who was running this year. Further conversation revealed that person to be independent mayoral candidate Justin Elicker. Wilson said he usually votes strictly Democratic, but this candidate appealed to him as a fresh face in politics.

Registrar of Voters records show that Wilson voted in person at Conte in the Sept. 10 primary then by absentee ballot in the Nov. 5 general election.

Stories told about absentee voting also have a tendency to … evolve. When this latest case broke right before the election, Michael Smart’s campaign got one of the voters quoted in this Register story to produce a written public statement offering a different version of what happened when she voted, this time to make it seem as though no laws had been broken. Smart at the time called the accusations against his supporters politically motivated, since they were filed by his opponent in the city clerk’s race. (Read about all that here.) He denied any wrongdoing and promised to cooperate fully with any investigation.

He will now get that chance.

This SEEC investigation is one of three state or federal investigations now centering on New Haven politics and government. Two state agencies are looking into a supposedly alcohol-fueled Election Day limo ride to the polls for women at the state-funded Crossroads Inc. facility for substance abusers in trouble with the law; read about that here. And the FBI subpoenaed records from city government’s neighborhoods anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), related to the placing of liens on properties; read about that here.

Meanwhile, allegations of ballot fraud — some of which were proven and ended up disqualifying people’s votes — have arisen in New Haven at least four other times in the past four years.

• 15 elderly voters at the Casa Otoñal complex in the Hill had their votes disqualified in 2012 after a campaign worker for U.S. Senate candidate Chris Murphy improperly collected and delivered them to the city clerk’s office. Click here to read about that episode and their stories.

• Earlier that year candidates in a Beaver Hills Democratic Town Committee race obtained affidavits from college students who reported that another campaign had misled them into filing fraudulent ballots. A full 116 of the winning candidate’s 256 votes were filed absentee in that race. Click here and here to read about that.

• The clerk’s office disqualified 15 ballots in a 2011 Democratic aldermanic primary in Newhallville because one of the candidates’ campaign had collected them.

• Two candidates in a 2009 Dixwell aldermanic race collected evidence of alleged absentee fraud in each other’s camps. Find details here and here.

In another incident, the SEEC investigated a separate 2010 complaint about suspect signatures gathered on petitions in a Ward 8 Democratic ward chair race. (Read the original story here.) On Wednesday the SEEC fined Democratic Ward 8 co-chair Chris Randall $200 in connection with that incident.