It is not only loathsome demagogue Donald Trump who objects to every voter receiving an absentee ballot application during a global pandemic. He has an ally in Groton Town Clerk Betsy Moukawsher, who The Day newspaper of New London described as “irked” by the change in protocol wrought by the public health crisis.

“We’re quite behind because of this new development, we were fine prior to it,” Moukawsher told The Day. “I don’t think this is a good formula going forward for the general election. If people want to vote absentee, they have the ability to with the COVID-19 excuse, but we should not send out applications to every registered voter in the state. That should be the responsibility only of the voter.”

Moukawsher is married to the state trial court judge who upheld the new procedure. He is also the judge who ruled in 2016 that local school districts ought to be able to bar special needs students from public schools. The cruel ruling alarmed U.S. Department of Education officials and was unanimously rejected by the state’s highest court.

Cromwell is a town in central Connecticut. Cornwall is 40 miles away in Litchfield County. Cromwell is home to nearly ten times more residents than Cornwall. Both towns befuddle Secretary of the State Denise Merrill.

Twice this week, Merrill’s office has sent absentee ballot applications for the August 11th party primaries to the wrong town. On Wednesday, the town clerk in Cromwell received applications for Cornwall. The next day Cornwall’s clerk discovered 250 applications from Cromwell voters. The dutiful clerks met in Thomaston—halfway between their towns—each day to correct the mistake.

Merrill spokesman Gabe Rosenberg wrote this week, “It is so easy for voters’ faith to be eroded from the electoral process….” Rosenberg might want to remind the Hartford Democrat that this is not the moment to flex her power to blunder and erode.

The Journal Inquirer’s Alex Wood has more on Merrill’s errors.

One only turns 55 once, so a power outage disrupting the lives of thousands of constituents was not going to interrupt departing House Minority Leader Themis Klarides’s Wednesday birthday lunch.

The Derby Republican was joined at Stonington’s Stone Acres Farm by younger sister, state Representative Nicole Klarides-Ditria (R-Seymour): and state Representative Vincent Candelora (R-North Brandford). Candelora is expected to become leader of the House Republicans in January. Tropical storm Isaias damaged their districts too.

Joining the legislators were lobbyists Lawrence Cafero and Nicole Griffin at the farm-to-table restaurant. Cafero served as minority leader while working at the law and lobbying firm Brown Rudnick. Cafero suffered a stinging defeat in 2018 when he ran for probate judge in Norwalk. You can also hire probate attornys in Towson from here!

Also at the lunch was New Haven Democrat Vincent Mauro, the chief of staff to Senate Democratic leader Martin Looney, who will soon mark 40 years as a member of the legislature.

Missing from the celebration was Klarides’s fiancé Gregory Butler, an active Republican fundraiser and Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Eversource Energy, the monopoly that employs more lobbyists than any other company doing business in Connecticut. Those lobbyists will need all their old tricks in dealing with the storm after the storm as angry customers demand action from their representatives.

While the three legislators dined in Stonington, Governor Ned Lamont met with extravagantly compensated top Eversource executives Wednesday, though none joined Lamont as he met the press outside the company’s Berlin headquarters. The extended fiasco, expected to torment Connecticut residents into next week, has caused Klarides’ nascent campaign for governor to be holed below the waterline before it begins.

A 2017 storm that left towns in eastern Connecticut without electricity for days prompted utility monopoly Eversource to promise to improve its response to inevitable stormy weather. The Hartford Courant reported on November 15th of that year, “The utility is seeking state approval for a $336.8 million rate increase that would boost consumer electricity bills by an average of 6.79 percent. Eversource officials said the new funding would be used for infrastructure improvements to better protect the grid from storm damage and to restore outages more quickly.”

At the legislative hearing on Eversource’s inadequate response to the widespread outages, state Senator Cathy Osten (D-Sprague) told legislators, “I’m not interested … in a witch hunt.” Osten may also not have been interested in solutions. Hebron, one of the two towns in the district the five-term legislator represents, endured outages of 100% of Eversource customers from the storm. The number was at 97% Friday morning.

Read more about the 2017 legislative hearing here.

Eversource donated $105,000 to the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) in 2017 and $100,000 in 2018.

Campaign finance records show U.S. Representatives Joe Courtney and Jahana Hayes, as well as U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy, are favorite recipients of a campaign contributions from Eversource’s political action committee.

Freshman Hayes has received $3,500 in the last two campaign cycles, with the electricity monopoly increasing its 2018 contribution of $1,000 to $2,500 this round. The Eversource executives’ fund gave $4500 to Courtney two years ago and $2,000 so far in this round.

Murphy received $4,000 when seeking re-election in 2018. While a member of the House, Murphy cultivated a generous political relationship with Northeast Utilities, which merged with Eversource not long after hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents endured an extended power outage in 2011.

“…[Secretary of the State Denise] Merrill’s office contends some chaos was expected. The state, after all, has never done this before,” The Middletown Press reports on the conflict over absentee ballots between Merrill’s thinly-staffed office and the state’s 169 town clerks.

Let the town clerks worry about it. Shannon Wegele, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill’s chief of staff, according to her email auto reply is “away from the office and not checking emails” as a crisis of incompetence grips the state’s Chief selection official. Wegele “will return on Monday, August 11 [sic].” Pssst, primary day is Tuesday, August 11th.

While 20,000 voters have not received absentee ballots and envelopes sent to some who have may disintegrate, Wegele took time to post photos from her vacation—toasting a polo match. Wegele is a West Hartford Democrat.

As for those poloponies……

Town clerks across Connecticut Monday afternoon received an alarming message from their association leader, stalwart Anna Posniak, Windsor’s town clerk. Secretary of the State Denise Merrill has failed to mail absentee ballots to 20,000 voters who applied for them to participate in the August 11th statewide party primaries. Merrill has told they must find the voters and send them absentee ballots.

The fiasco is the latest in the mess Merrill has made in the expansion of voting by absentee ballots during the global health crisis. Merrill’s deputy is Scott Bates, who last year brought disrepute on the Connecticut Port Authority.

The crisis calls for the intervention of Governor Ned Lamont. He authorized through an executive order the new system that is becoming an exercise in voter suppression.

Here’s Posniak’s code red warning to town clerks:

Good afternoon,

Elections – Update 08/03/2020

I must alert all Town Clerks that immediate action is needed. 

It was brought to my attention this afternoon that Secretary of the State’s office did not send absentee ballot exports for last week to mail house. In my conversation with Ted at 2:45 p.m. today, he stated that it was clear that SOTS needed to end ties with the mail house as they were not able process the absentee ballots in timely manner. 

Late this afternoon, Ted provided us with an Excel spreadsheet that indicates the exact ballots that were not sent to mail house. The Excel spreadsheet contains over 20,000 ballots statewide that were not sent out by SOTS. You will need to isolate the voters from your town. You MUST resend each voter on the Excel spreadsheet an absentee ballot immediately. 

To process the applications for a second time, you will look up each voter in the “Absentee Ballot” screen. 

You will click on the select button to select the record that was not processed by mail house. You will change the following:

SERIAL NO. – update to the serial number with the serial from the ED-8 envelope
DATE ISSUED – enter reissuing date

Click “UPDATE” and then generate labels for the ED-8 envelope that you will use to mail the ballot to the voter.

ISSUE TYPE: can remain “MAIL” as SOTS is no longer using the services of the mail house to process the ballots.

The Secretary has created a major problem that Town Clerks are now left to fix with the primary only one week away. Additionally, I am extremely irate that Secretary Merrill, Deputy Secretary Bates and Elections Division Director, Ted Bromley, did not mention this during our 10 a.m. conference call today. In a phone call last Thursday, Ted had mentioned this was a possibility. However, Ted assured me that he would get back to me if they decided to send the data back to the Town Clerks for reprocessing. Had this information been given to us on Friday, I know that 169 Town Clerks would have worked over the weekend to get those ballots to their voters. I am extremely concerned for the voters in our large cities as this neglect by SOTS may disenfranchise their vote next Tuesday. If you unable to reprocess all of last week’s volume of applications in addition to this week’s requests, please reach out to me and we will try to get you some assistance from others towns with lowe r volumes to ensure that voters are not disenfranchised. 

Additionally, I have been informed that the sides of some inner envelopes have not been properly glued shut by the manufacturer; as a result, the voter’s ballot could slip out of the inner envelope while the town clerk is processing the returns into CVRS. This issue is not related to the voter accidentally slicing open the envelope. It is due to poor quality control at the mail house. Please be on the lookout for envelopes that are not sealed on the side. Please tape the defective inner envelopes shut.

Stay healthy. Stay CTCA strong.

Anna Posniak
CTCA President

A few days contemplating Oz Griebel’s life ought not to be marred by a deranged rant on social media by a tenured professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law. Ambition should be tempered by some sense of decency.

Oz Griebel, who died Wednesday after he was struck by a car while running last week, has been the subject of many warm tributes. A decade ago, the banking executive surprised Republicans when he announced he would seek the party’s 2010 nomination for governor.

The Simsbury Republican achieved what has defeated so many others. He won enough delegate support at the party’s nominating convention to qualify for that year’s August primary. Plenty of veteran politicians seeking higher office have been pipped at the post by fellow party loyalists gathered at a convention. Not Oz Griebel–in his first foray into politics.

Connecticut party primary voters rarely upend convention choices and 2010 was no different. Nevertheless, Oz was a natural on the campaign trail–gregarious and interested in what voters had to say. In the age of the self-funder, the middle-class newcomer will struggle. Oz’s energy could not overcome rival Tom Foley’s millions or the quirk of then-Lieutenant Governor Mike Fedele’s one-time public funding bonus.

Oz had made an impression in that 2010 campaign. Under more congenial circumstances during the past decade, he would have had a choice of meaningful ways to serve. Oz’s candor regarding the way forward on transportation, one his passions, was not seen as a virtue. It did not discourage him from continuing to find a role in the arena.