The committee that investigated problems at Hartford polling places on Election Day in November has found "multiple, serious errors," as well as a dysfunctional working relationship among election officials, according to a report released on Friday.
The committee – the Hartford City Council Committee of Inquiry – was created to investigate the delayed opening of Hartford polls on Nov. 4, which led to voters being sent home, as well as other problems.
"The poor personal relationships between and among the three Hartford Registrars contributed to their failure to carry out their official election duties before and after the November 4 General Election," the report found.
For instance, one registrar never read e-mails from another, the report found. Tensions, at one point after the election, got so high that police had to be called to the Registrar's Office because of an outburst about the voting issues, the report also found.
“This investigation shows that the Registrar of Voters were completely unprepared for Election Day, that no effort was made to correct issues they were aware of ahead of time, and that their lack of ability to communicate resulted in failure to perform their primary responsibilities and duties,” Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra said in a statement. “It is ridiculous and inexcusable. ... I will continue to work with City Council, our Hartford Delegation and the Secretary of the State to ensure that we do not go through another election cycle with a Registrars’ office that cannot perform its basic function. The voters of Hartford deserve better. ”
The report lays out problems with the time line in voting records, including that the registrars failed to file the final registry books with the Town Clerk by October 29 because they misread the Secretary of the State's 2014 Election calendar.
Local
The report cites an e-mail the Democratic Registrar sent to a city employee responsible for printing city publications that said the registrars met to discuss printing the final registry books and concluded that they were “mandated to run this report on the night of Wednesday, October 29.”
The other registrars said they attended the meeting, and the Republican Registrar, said they "originally wanted to do the book before the 29th ... but discovered they wouldn't be feasible, because we had to wait until the 29th."
However, Oct. 29 actually was the last day for the registrars to file the list with the town clerks, the report finds, but the list was not printed to hard copy until Oct. 31 and was never filed to the town clerk.
The delays, in turn, held up the cross-off process before election day, so moderators did not have election materials before 8 p.m on Nov. 3, which law requires, and moderators who showed up at City Hall to pick up election materials were sent home and told the materials would be available before the polls opened.
However, delivery of the polling books did not start until around 5:30 a.m. on Election Day and at least six polling places did not get the material until after 6 a.m.
Problems at one polling location further delayed delivery of the voting materials and they did not arrive at the Hartford Seminary until around 7 a.m.
Investigators also said election officials have also not been able to explain what happened to around 70 absentee ballots.
Additional findings were that the registrars failed to attend a mandatory meeting to correct errors in the Head Moderator’s Return and they did not correct discrepancies in the vote tallies reported by the Head Moderator, which resulted in the final vote tally remaining unclear.
"This report outlines a series of failures that confirms what my office has unfortunately known since November: Hartford’s Registrars of Voters were simply unprepared for Election Day in 2014," Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said in a statement."Not only were they unprepared, they never communicated to my office nor to the city clerk’s office – to which they could have turned to both for help and additional resources – that there was any trouble brewing. This is simply unacceptable and defies all understanding.."
She said people responsible for negligence will be held accountable and officials are examing the elections system statewide to prevent these issues in the future.
