Kerri over at Real Hartford has written an excellent piece, When Every Vote Doesn’t Count in Hartford, on write in votes for 3rd party progressive candidates not being count in Hartford. Two members of our blog wrote in Stephen Durham, the Freedom Socialist Party Candidate for president and his running mate Christina Lopez a Chicana Feminist for Vice President. Our votes were not counted. Or votes were denied. Our votes were suppressed. Our votes were omitted.
The Green Party is leading an effort in Hartford to get not only our votes counted but the votes that were cast for Jill Stein candidate for president on the Green Party ticket.
In the 2010 election our votes for Socialist Party candidate for senate were not counted and we filed a complaint with the SEEC. The commission ruled in our favor and instructed the Hartford Registrars of Voters to file an amended count and were reprimanded. At that time the 3 of us who filed the complaint all agreed that the reprimand was little more than a tap on the fingers of the registers. This time we hope the SEEC will take stronger action.
UPDATE:
Hello update on the HROV and our votes not counted.
Yesterday David who is running the campaign to get the votes for 3rd party people who ran for president and vice president counted as should be sent this note along to me. The note was from Urania who is the Working Families Party HROV in Hartford. She also stated that they sent in an amended return. GOOD WORK Kerri with the piece on your blog!
“I spoke with Urania today. She said the office submitted an amended report. If true, this would up the count to 7 votes for Stein and 1 for Durham, but still ignores the votes we know about in Districts 5, 11, and 16. So we are going through with the complaint–I hope to put it in the mail tomorrow. It’s hard to believe that only 8 legitimate votes were cast out of 56 attempted write-ins for President”.
So the HROV is finding votes. They must have been looking in those deep dark holes, those crevices, those sinkholes in the HROV office and crannies where votes are hidden away until someone makes a squawk. The last line is enough to bring on a full investigation by SEEC. I would love to see my attempt at writing in a candidate. Will tell you all I have been writing in my choice of candidates for what, some 37 years now, never pleased by what the two party system had to offer and certainly not please by liberals of convince who run as progressive democrats and give us crumbs from the master’s tablecloth. Those birds are just tools of the ruling class and we all should know it and know it again.
What makes me so mad is that this is the second time that HROV has done this in only 3 years. I only hope that they do not get off so easy this time.
furbirdsqueerly 