An e-mail sent by Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz’s office to registrars across the state at 3:09 p.m. Wednesday, hours after her initial declaration that Democrat Dan Malloy had won the governor’s race, suggests her office was still scrambling to amass final, albeit unofficial, numbers.
The e-mail, obtained by reporter Neil Vigdor of Hearst Connecticut Newspapers, is from Lesley Mara, deputy secretary of state. It said: “As you know, there is much anticipation surrounding this election, in particular the close Governor’s race. In order to be able to publish final numbers, we urge you to get your returns in to our office today. You can fax them to … Ted Bromley … Thanks for all of your hard work and for your help.”
Sharon Vecchiolla, Democratic registrar of voters in Greenwich, said Thursday she received the e-mail. “Why would you do a press conference in the (early) afternoon to announce that a candidate has won if you don’t have all of your official results?” she asked. “I just think it was a little early. I probably would have waited. I just think it was a little bit premature. Why do you want to put the cart before the horse?”
Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, took shots at Bysiewicz for not being more aggressive and making sure cities and towns had enough voting ballots. Bridgeport was hampered by a serious shortage of ballots, and Bysiewicz had said that was the fault of local voting registrars.
UPDATE —The Foley campaign has issued the following statement:
Tom Foley contacted the Secretary of the State’s office this morning to request that any further announcements of election results for the governor’s race be postponed until the results are certain and discrepancies between The Secretary of the State’s office, the Tom Foley for Governor campaign, and the media, are reconciled. In the last twenty-four hours alone, Bridgeport has revised downward the number of votes cast for Dan Malloy by over 3,500. Other cities and towns are likely to revise their results in the days ahead. We understand that Susan Bysiewicz plans to announce this afternoon that their results of the Gubernatorial election are official. We have sent the Secretary of the State’s office a letter requesting that she not refer to her preliminary results of the election as “official” until the results are unlikely to be amended.
Justin Clark, campaign manager for Tom Foley for Governor