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Counting has resumed at the City Hall Annex Tuesday morning. We have a fewer volunteers than we did on day 1. As a result, we are only able to have 2 groups of counters. As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, we have results from 4 of the precincts completed, which leaves 21 precincts plus the absentee ballots still remaining.
The Bridgeport recount is now one hour underway, but we’re still waiting on the first results.
First up: the City Hall voting district, 130-4.
According to the moderator’s report, there were 278 votes cast at City Hall out of 892 eligible voters.
The portion of that report that we’ve been able to see so far does not indicate how many votes each candidate received. What it DOES show, however, is that the machine-scanner read 174 ballots, meaning that the moderator at City Hall hand-counted 104 ballots.
City Hall started the day with 200 printed ballots, and received 150 photocopied ballots later in the day. It used all but 47 of the photocopied ballots. The district also went through 25 “spoiled,” or incorrectly filled out, ballots, which were never cast.
What that means is this: There were 350 total ballots at City Hall on Election Day that need to be accounted for. Because 47 of them were never touched and 25 of them were “spoiled,” we need to account for 278 ballots cast. (350 – 47 = 303….. 303 – 25 = 278.)
That adds up, so we’re off to a good start.
The process got underway in the early afternoon. That’s when city officials, flanked by recount volunteers and Hearst Connecticut representatives, shuttled about a dozen polling districts’ ballots to City Hall Annex.
More info to follow…
Do you follow U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd on Twitter? If so, you may have been surprised by a tweet sent from his account Thursday morning.
U love torturing me w this sh*t
Senator Chris Dodd
SenChrisDodd
As noted by NBC Connecticut, nearly 13,000 followers were treated to the account’s first tweet in two days: “U love torturing me with this sh*t,” followed within minutes by an apology. His office also issued a statement:
“Due to a technical mistake, a message was inadvertently sent from Senator Dodd’s twitter account. Senator Dodd did not send the message. We have corrected the situation and apologize to his followers for the mistake and inappropriate language used in the message.”
We’ve all accidentally sent emails to the wrong person, but Twitter leaves open the possibility of accidentally advertising your personal affairs to the entire Internet. This becomes even riskier for folks juggling work and personal accounts on the same device.
Look on the bright side: At least one of Dodd’s followers took the lesson to heart:
The errant tweet from @SenChrisDodd convinced me to remove my work Twitter account from my phone.
Nu Wexler
wexler
Check out Hearst Media Group investigative reporter Brian Lockhart’s preview to Malloy’s appearance on Face the State Sunday.
Lockhart was among three invitees asked to interview the governor-elect, and he includes a few nuggets on his blog, Political Capitol, in advance of the airing, including this proclamation on the size of state government:
“I think we’re going to put state government on a long-term diet,” Malloy told us. That means, he said, it has to become “much more efficient and be operated by fewer people.”
The vote totals keep changing as the smoke clears over town and city halls throughout the state. Governor-elect Dannel Malloy is now up to 567,678 and Republican Tom Foley has 560,873, according to new figures posted on the Secretary of the State’s website. That’s a 6,805 plurality. which is more than three times the 2,000-vote margin Foley needed to gain a mandatory recount. Foley, of course, gave up yesterday and conceded.
Linda McMahon emerged from her witness protection-like vanishing act Monday to give Hearst Connecticut Newspapers one of her first interviews since losing to Democrat Richard Blumenthal in Connecticut’s bitter Senate contest.
A one-woman stimulus package for political consulting, direct mail and television advertising industries, McMahon said she she no second thoughts about spending $50 million of her wrestling fortune on the race, a record for Connecticut.
“So I don’t regret any of that, at all,” McMahon said in a phone interview from her pad in Boca Raton, Fla. “I was making an investment to serve and I think that’s a really good thing. I think you have to go into any kind of endeavor knowing what your downside is when you get into it.”
While her $50 million did not translate to a victory, McMahon said it did buy her name recognition that she can parlay if she decides to run for office again.
“I do not think I would have to spend anywhere near that amount of money,” McMahon said. “No one knew who I was. I made an investment and I certainly would not have to do that again.”
McMahon made it no secret that she is eyeing public office, though she wouldn’t specifically say which direction she will go.
“Sure. I’ll be moving forward this next year,” McMahon said. ”I have a couple (of avenues) to pursue. You’ll have to stay tuned.”
McMahon confirmed that she has no plans to return to her post as chief executive of Stamford-based World Wrestling Entertainment, which took a beating from her political opponents in the primary and general election phases of the campaign.
“Look, WWE was attacked throughout my campaign, and I believe the company had certainly not only the right but the obligation to put forth information to correct mistakes and errors that were out there,” McMahon said. “I thought all that was beneficial, not harmful.”
Another juicy morsel from our conversation was when McMahon, discussing the ballot shortage in Bridgeport and ruling to keep the polls open an additional two hours there, said she has a hard time believing that there weren’t isolated instances of voter fraud throughout the state.
“I thought it was reprehensible what happened in Bridgeport, and I still think that we have voter fraud that happens throughout our state,” McMahon said.
McMahon emphasized that any isolated causes of voter fraud would not have altered the outcome of the Senate race, however.
Copyright © 2013 Hearst Communications Inc.
