After some controversy, today, the Secretary of State office officially certified the results from the 2010 general election.
Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz today officially certified the results of the 2010 General Election on November 2nd for the offices of Governor/Lieutenant Governor, United States Senator, Representative in Congress, General Assembly, Judge of Probate, Registrar of Voters, and Connecticut's statewide Constitutional offices. The 2010 general election saw one of the closest votes for Governor/Lt. Governor in Connecticut history, with Democrats Dan Malloy and Nancy Wyman defeating Republicans Tom Foley and Mark Boughton 567,278 votes to 560,874 votes for a final margin of 6,404 votes. The only closer margin of victory in an election for Governor in Connecticut took place in 1954, when Democrat Abe Ribicoff defeated Republican John Lodge by 3,115 votes. According to Connecticut General Statute 9-315, the Secretary of the State, together with the State Treasurer and the State Comptroller, must "declare what persons are elected" on the last Wednesday of the month of election.
"Connecticut voters came to the polls with a strong turnout on Election Day," said Secretary Bysiewicz. "By certifying these election results, we are officially putting into the record books the final word on one of the closest elections in the history of our state. This only serves to underscore the point that every vote truly does count."
Overall, Democratic candidates were victorious in elections for the statewide Constitutional seats of Secretary of the State (Denise Merrill), Comptroller (Kevin Lembo), Attorney General (George Jepsen) and Treasurer (Denise Nappier. Democratic candidates John Larson(CT-1), Joe Courtney(CT-2), Rosa DeLauro(CT-3), Jim Himes(CT-4), and Christopher Murphy(CT-5) were also elected to the 112th Congress of the United States. In the Connecticut General Assembly, Democratic candidates were elected to 100 seats in the State House of Representatives and 23 seats in the State Senate. Republican candidates were elected to 51 seats in the House of Representatives and 13 seats in the State Senate. (A complete list of 2010 election winners is attached).
You can see the Secretary of State's statement of the winners below the fold.
U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-Independent, hinted at an Independent reelection bid during a visit to the House of Bread in Hartford Tuesday.
Lieberman, who is up for reelection in 2012, said he still hasn't decided whether he's going to run again. And, he said, if he does run how exactly he would go about doing it is still up in the air.
Mertens, who was surprised and dismayed by his poor showing on Nov. 2, said the fact that he got just six-tenths of 1 percent of the vote ought to tell you just how few fans Lieberman - who's listed by the Senate as an "independent Democrat" - has left in his home state.
"I knew I'd lose people who didn't like Joe Lieberman," he said. "But I also thought I'd get some ignorant people who liked Joe Lieberman voting for me. I really thought I would get at least 1 percent."
Bullshit John, complete bullshit. NO ONE was surprised that you didn't grab one percent of the vote because you didn't care one bit about the original intent of party. I only pray that someone grants my X-mas wish and place me in a position where I confront you face to face...
Suspended East Haven Police Chief Leonard Gallo bucked a subpoena Monday to give testimony to the Freedom of Information Commission in Hartford about the East Haven Police Department's failure to release documents to Yale students who made a request on March 11, 2010. State law allows public entities four days to comply with FOI requests unless there's a compelling reason to need more time.
The requested documents are relevant to an active Department of Justice investigation into alleged police department racial profiling of Latinos in the community, not having proper operating protocols in place and a host of other weaknesses.
This is gonna be a riot. Hey, you want to volunteer to count ballots? Maybe the city will bring along a couple of Thanksgiving turkey wishbones hoping nothing screwy happens that would necessitate a recount of the recount.
Mayor Bill Finch formed an informal committee that's looking into what went wrong on Election Day. The simple answer is the Registrar of Voters Office didn't print enough freaking ballots (and now it's all of this)! But if you're going to take the step to form a committee, why not throw open the process to count the ballots one more time, especially if the Connecticut Post is breathing down your neck with reelection on the horizon. Ya think the mayor would've have offered a recount without the paper's insistence?
As many of you are aware, I've been exteremly critical of the congressional polling conducted by Merriman River Group (MRG) for Tom Dudchik's CTCapitolReport.
While Dudchik still avoids offering an explaination for the widly inaccurate congressional polls, including the infamous four day tracking poll that had Sam Caliguiri leading Chris Murphy by nine points, several people (most notably New York Times FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver) have blasted the obvious bias in MRG's polling.
Yesterday, Steve Singier at Daily Kos rated MRG right leaning bias with other polls and the results didn't surprise me one bit.
As the avalanche of data pours in during the weeks preceding the election, every poll is dutifully parsed. In particular, campaign junkies of all stripes are fond of dismissing certain pollsters as "partisan" or "biased". This, of course, usually accompanies the release of a poll favoring the opposing party of the accuser.
With the election results (almost entirely) in the bank at this point, however, decent conclusions can be drawn about the partisan proclivities of the leading pollsters in the game.
[...]
Here were the parameters for this study:
Every poll conducted (by the pollsters in question) from October 1st until Election Day was included for review. This is a big deviation from what Nate did, and it is bound to have some critics. Using multiple polls of the same race is certainly a controversial provision: a pollsters gets dinged extra if they were consistently wrong on a race for which they were prolific. However, by using just the most recent poll in a race, some pollsters (Quinnipiac certainly comes to mind) would be rewarded because early aberrant results would be left uncounted, as long as they snapped back into line with their final polls. The window of time is a bit longer, as well.
Only pollsters who offered at least a dozen polls during that time period stretching from October 1st and Election Day were included in this analysis. This narrowed the participating group down to fifteen pollsters.
Because it was hard to gauge what party benefitted from errors in a few races with three legitimate leading candidates, those races were omitted from the study. As a result, polls of the gubernatorial races in Maine and Rhode Island, as well as the Senate races in Florida and Alaska, were not included. The Colorado gubernatorial race was left in, however. The justification? By October 1st, Tom Tancredo had already established himself as the de facto choice of GOP voters, despite technically being an Independent.
The pollsters' "bias ratings" were taken, quite simply, by looking at the difference between the percentages of polls favoring one party over another (regardless of party). So, if a pollster had 43% of their polls favoring Republicans, and 29% of their polls favoring Democrats, their "bias rating" would be a 14. Percentages were selected instead of raw numbers of polls, so the more prolific pollsters would not be unfairly impacted.
So, how did the pollsters of America do? The results might surprise you.
[...]
POLLSTER BIAS RATINGS: 2010 ELECTION CYCLE--10/1/10 to 11/1/10 (Number of polls conducted in parentheses)
1. Merriman River (18)--Bias rating of 83 (83% R 0% D) 2. Penn Schoen Berland (42)--Bias rating of 57 (67% D 10% R)
3. Ipsos/Reuters (12)--Bias rating of 50 (58% R 8% D)
4. Susquehanna Research* (15)--Bias rating of 46 (53% D 7% R)
5. Siena College (14)--Bias rating of 43 (50% D 7% R)
6. Rasmussen* (161)--Bias rating of 33 (49% R 16% D)
7. CNN/Op Research (28)--Bias rating of 32 (46% R 14% D)
8. Suffolk University (13)--Bias rating of 30 (38% D 8% R)
9. YouGov (33)--Bias rating of 24 (39% R 15% D)
10. SurveyUSA (69)--Bias rating of 24 (46% R 22% D)
11. Quinnipiac (26)--Bias rating of 20 (35% R 15% D)
12. PPP (59)--Bias rating of 19 (39% R 20% D)
13. Public Opinion Strategies (22)--Bias rating of 13 (36% D 23% R)
14. Mason Dixon (28)--Bias rating of 11 (43% D 32% R)
15. Monmouth University (14)--Bias rating of 8 (29% R 21% D)
Singier offers an explainaiton for MRG's most bias status.
Merriman River shouldn't necessarily be wholly acquitted for pacing the field, but there is a legitimate explanation for their gaudy numbers here. The pollster only did work in two states: Connecticut and Hawaii. Those happened to be two (of the only) states in the Union where the GOP badly underperformed. That doesn't totally excuse their numbers, however: they did have Republican Sam Caligiuri leading Democratic Congressman Chris Murphy by eight points on Election Eve. Murphy wound up winning re-election by over eight points.
This where I disagree with Singier. In my opinion, GOP underperformance had nothing to do with MRG's congressional polling (Tom Foley almost beat Dan Malloy). You can't say that GOP underperformance had anything to do with a bogus FOUR-DAY tracking poll that had Caliguiri expanding his lead over Chris Murphy a day before the election (Murphy won by 8), or a poll showing John Larson in "a horse race" against a Republcian candidate who ran a joke of a campaign (Larson won by 25 points).
I'll get to the point, MRG's congressional polls were crap plain and simple and Dudchik gleefully promoted this nonsense in order to drive up his already inflated web traffic.
I was called for your poll in the 3rd CD during CT Capitol Report's first round of polling. There were two questions: Who will you vote for for Congress, and what is your opinion of Barack Obama. There was absolutely no effort made to identify a likely voter. How can that be justified mere weeks before election day?
Also, can you explain why your poll, rather than having all the answers start with the same sequence of keys, moved all over the keypad? One set of answers was registered with 1, 2, 3, another with 4, 5, 6. One 2-choice answer (in the demographic questions at the end) had you pressing 4 and 6. It's human nature to anticipate. How many people anticipated wrong, and then didn't have any ability to correct their answer (like you can when a human calls you as opposed to your robo-poll)?
All this to say, with all due respect, I think your methodology stunk.
Although MRG's Executive Director Matt Finch attempted to explain why his polls were in essence worthless, the fact that Dudchik is unwilling to address his credibility problem I think speaks volumes. As long as Dudchik remains silent and continues a relationship with MRG, media outlets should be skeptical of any polling that comes from CTCapitolReport.
This morning, Governor-Elect Dan Malloy announced more members of his transition team.
STEERING COMMITTEE
Lieutenant Governor-Elect Nancy Wyman (co-chair): Prior to being elected Lieutenant Governor, Nancy Wyman was the first woman elected State Comptroller since the office was created in 1786. She was first elected statewide in 1994 and re-elected in 1998, 2002 and 2006, and is responsible for paying the state's bills, keeping its books and representing the taxpayers in state fiscal matters. Under Wyman's leadership, the Comptroller's office has significantly streamlined operations to enhance efficiency, accountability and public service.
Tim Bannon (co-chair): Tim Bannon co-chairs Governor-Elect Dan Malloy's transition alongside Lieutenant Governor-Elect Nancy Wyman. He will assume the Chief of Staff role for Governor Malloy on Inauguration Day, January 5, 2011. Bannon, a lawyer, has had an extensive private sector career in large firm law practice and the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. In the public sector, he is currently the President-Executive Director of the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA), the state's lead finance agency for affordable homes. He served in the Office of Governor William A. O'Neill; as Commissioner of the Department of Revenue Services, also for Governor O'Neill; and in the Office of Treasurer Denise Nappier.
Lorraine Aronson: Lorraine M. Aronson's 30 years of public service in Connecticut include working as Deputy Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, Commissioner of the Department of Income Maintenance and Deputy Commissioner of Education. She joined the University of Connecticut in 1995, and retired in 2008 after eight years as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. A lawyer admitted to the Connecticut Bar in 1977, Lorraine's public commitments also include service on the State Board of Trustees for the Hartford Public Schools, the Connecticut Developmental Disabilities Council, and the Blue Ribbon Commission on State Health Insurance.
Greg Butler: Gregory B. Butler is Senior Vice President and General Counsel of the Northeast Utilities system (NU). During the Administration of President George H. W. Bush, Butler was a senior attorney-advisor with the United States Department of Justice. Butler and his wife, Rev. Nancy Carroll Butler, live in Glastonbury,
Connecticut, with their daughters Liza and Sarah.
Chris Cooney: Chris Cooney was campaign manager for the Governor-Elect's first campaign for governor in 2006. He is the founder and president of The WilMark Group, a marketing consulting firm. Chris has more than 20 years of experience specializing in marketing, communications and general business operations for a wide range of organizations, from large publicly traded companies and established small businesses to start-ups and venture capital.
In state tuition for children for undocumented immigrants could be back on the table.
On the heels of an ambitious city program to help New Haven kids afford college, Democratic politicians vowed to even the playing field for undocumented students like Lorella Praeli.
Praeli (pictured) a 22-year-old originally from Peru, came "out of the shadows" for the first time Thursday to announce that she is living in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant. She said she was lucky enough to land a full ride to Quinnipiac University through a private scholarship. Otherwise, she would have had to pay three times the rate of in-state tuition at an in-state college or university.
At a press event at Southern Connecticut State University, members of New Haven's state legislative delegation pledged to help students like Praeli by passing a bill next session that would grant in-state tuition to all Connecticut residents who graduate from state high schools, regardless of immigration status. State Sen. Martin Looney, state Rep.-elect Roland Lemar, and state Reps. Gary Holder-Winfield and Juan Candelaria all attended the event in support of the legislation.
In a letter to future Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, the Democrats told Republicans that if they oppose government health care so much, they should voluntarily give up the unbelievably good government health care they currently receive for being legislators.
Via The Raw Story:
"You cannot enroll in the very kind of coverage that you want for yourselves, and then turn around and deny it to Americans who don't happen to be Members of Congress," wrote Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY). "If your conference wants to deny millions of Americans affordable health care, your members should walk that walk."
Crowley's letter was signed by three other Democrats: Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) and Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-CA). Politico's Glenn Thrush, who first reported on the letter, describes them as "fierce defenders of President Obama's health care reforms."
I personally can't wait to see George in action. As someone who will seek to challenge the Defense of Marriage Act, he will follow Massachusetts' example in challenging that law in federal court. Connecticut faces a somewhat similar set of legal standards for challenging the law when compared to Massachusetts (just a wee bit of background info). Anyway, you've all heard the pitch before, but he will be an amazing advocate for women's rights and gun control as well. I am very excited to see my new Attorney General at work, and I hope you are too.
update (ctb): George Jepsen released the following statement:
"As Attorney General, my door will always be open to Martha and her supporters as we all work together to get Connecticut moving again," Jepsen said. "Even while disagreeing on most issues, I always respected Martha Dean's sincerity, her intelligence, or her commitment to the people of Connecticut. Our contest showed that candidates can disagree without being disagreeable, let alone getting personal, something all too rare in today's politics."
Dean said the passage of time and the legislature would likely resolve any questions remaining on the eligibility criteria for Attorney General. "At this juncture, I believe the best path forward is allow the AG-elect to focus on trying to run the AG's Office in a way that helps pull Connecticut out of its severe crisis," Dean said.
If you haven't kept up on the news or been to the airport recently, the TSA recently used stimulus funds to purchase x-ray backscatter and/or millimeter wave scanning devices, which have been nicknamed "pornoscanners" since they can see anatomical features under your clothes; i.e., they can totally see your junk. Though deemed safe by the TSA, a group of scientists from UCSF have written a letter urging more studies on the health risks of the supposedly low dose of radiation, especially with regards to children, pregnant women, and cancer patients. In regards to potential privacy issue, the scanners are not supposed to store images, but a scanner in Orlando was found to have stored many images of naked airline passengers.
What happens if you object to having your anatomy scanned? You can always opt out... and enjoy an "enhanced" pat down, which involves having a TSA agent put their hands on your genitalia. And if you don't want that, like this guy didn't... they can sue you for $10,000.
"We spend my child's whole life telling him that only mom, dad and a doctor can touch you in your private area, and now we have to add TSA agent and that's just wrong," he told Reuters. "At some point the terrorists have won."
Here is a background video, featuring security alarmist Joe Lieberman. As you can probably guess, he doesn't think the radiation and the groping are too big of a problem:
"I was devastated," said City Council member Bob Walsh, describing what he saw at Central High School, where more than 200 voters lined up, waiting for ballots. For some, the front of the line meant finding out they were at the wrong polling station, he said. "I wouldn't have waited an hour and a half even to vote for myself."
Back at Black Rock School, Pia said the wrong batch of photocopied ballots arrived at one of the school's two polling stations, which had run out of machine-readable ballots hours before. When Pia walked inside to protest, he said the moderator told him that "only a few ballots" were missing his candidacy. "If you've got a problem, then call the registrar of voters' office," Pia recalled the moderator saying. Pressed further, the moderator exclaimed: "You're not voting. Get out!"
[...]
One woman, Karen Jackson, said she arrived at Bassick High School at 8:30 a.m. to vote, but there was already a 90-minute wait. "They told me there were no more ballots and to come back later," she said, estimating that was at 10 a.m. Unsure of when to come back, she never did. Unlike 12 polling stations that stayed open on a judge's order until 10 p.m., Jackson's precinct did not.
[...]
James Zavodjancik, who voted at Blackham School, complained that poll workers there never asked for his identification -- nor for that of the three people behind him. When he asked a poll worker why, he recalled the woman replying: "As you can see, we are busy now with other problems. Contact the state."
Jeraldlyn Mebane went to the polls at Chopsey Hill School between 1 and 2 p.m., she said. She was handed a photocopied ballot. The front side said to see the reverse for directions, but the back side was blank. When she asked for a manila folder to shield her ballot, a poll station worker said they'd run out of folders.
On Election Day, Adinolfi could not give his tired old campaign saws a rest, fanning out among the district's polling stations in search of targets. His ire seemed particularly aroused by the high-school students working with the Esty campaign who, though too young to vote, had volunteered because they (how quaint) wanted to experience the democratic process firsthand.
Instead of praising these young people or simply wishing them luck, Adinolfi went out of his way to insult them. At two separate locations, Adinolfi approached Esty supporters to vent his spleen. One group of teenagers, standing with a "We Love Elizabeth" sign, received this bon mot from Adinolfi: "You must love Hayes and Komisarjevsky too."
One of the young women targeted by Adinolfi said his remarks were like "being punched in the stomach to be accused of loving people who would perpetrate those crimes."
Another group of teens at a different polling station received this priceless offering from someone six decades his senior: "I see we have a Hayes and Komisarjevsky sympathizer here." The target this time was 17-year-old Mansoor Alam, who told the Cheshire Herald, "I have had a lot of bad things said to me in my life, but this is by far the worst. There is no way I misheard him or misunderstood him." Standing nearby, 16-year-old Joe Noonan added, "[Adinolfi] knew exactly what he was saying and it was a ridiculous statement to make ... we are high schoolers; the same age as the Petit girls."
[...]
Adding insult to injury, Adinolfi claimed that he did not make the remarks that several witnesses have attributed to him. He, in effect, is calling these fine young people liars.
Governor-Elect Dan Malloy announces his choice for leader of Office of Policy and Management.
Governor-elect Dan Malloy today named one of the top aides from his mayoral administration in Stamford for the pivotal role of overseeing the budget and contract negotiations with state employees.
Ben Barnes, 42, who held three top jobs in Stamford, brings an outsider's perspective to the post of secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, a job that in recent administrations often has gone to former legislators.
Along with the chief of staff, the OPM secretary tends to have one of the closest and most important relationships with a governor, especially one who will be confronted with a deficit of as much as $3.7 billion.
"He knows how I work," Malloy said with a smile, talking about some of Barnes' qualifications. "I think ultimately in my choosing an individual to move forward with, I had to feel confident the person fully understood what it is I am trying to accomplish."
Rep. John Larson (Conn.), the House Democratic Caucus chairman who is expected to keep his position in a vote on Wednesday, said that his party did not do enough in the eyes of voters to help bring down the nation's 9.6 percent unemployment rate.
"We never did enough in terms of that area for us to have the kind of success we would have," he said on MSNBC. "We had a Roosevelt moment and responded like Hoover."
Larson's comments are a stinging assessment of his party's efforts to help create jobs during the 111th Congress.
SNIP
I agree with Larson on this point. Course, I read elsewhere that Obama claimed to have acted faster than FDR on the economic problem. Obama said that FDR waited 6 months before acting on the Great Depression, but Obama forgot that FDR couldn't initially take office until March 4, 1933. The 20th Amendment, which was passed later in 1933, changed the date to Jan. 20. Also FDR's first 100 days became the milestone upon which subsequent President's have been measured.
I think the national Democratic Party should fire it's marketing consultants and find new ones. The Democratic Party has had a messaging problem for a long time, although Howard Dean did a decent job when he was DNC Chair.
Bridgeport officials, citing a lack of authority for Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, have rejected a request to recount ballots in the 12 city voting precincts that were kept open an extra two hours on Election Day.
Bysiewicz's office said Arthur C. Laske III, deputy city attorney, called Monday afternoon to announce that the city would not be redoing the count that they originally performed in the days after the Nov. 2 election.
You can't make this up folks!
UPDATE 11.17.10: The City of Bridgeport issued the following:
"There have been reports in the press that Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz stated that she, or members of her staff, had previously spoken to the Bridgeport Registrars of Voters and that the Registrars had agreed to do some sort of selective recount of the November 2nd election. To clarify, no such agreement was ever made.
It was also incorrectly reported that Deputy City Attorney Arthur Laske had had a conversation with the Secretary of the State's office on Monday, November 15, regarding this request in which he communicated the city's alleged refusal to comply with the Secretary's order or request, as the case may be.
In fact, City Attorney Mark Anastasi, acting on behalf of the Registrars, had spoken to an attorney in the elections division of the Secretary's office on Monday afternoon to indicate that no one in the city had agreed to such a recount, and seeking an explanation as to what legal authority, if any, existed for either the Secretary to order, or for anyone else to undertake a selective, non-random, recount of all or a portion of the ballots cast in the City of Bridgeport. Also, it was requested that the Secretary outline how such a procedure would be undertaken and how her office would fund it. It seems the Secretary was mistaken both as to whom her office spoke with from the City of Bridgeport and what was said on Monday.
The Bridgeport Registrars of Voters had preliminary discussions with Deputy Secretary of the State Leslie Mara about this subject, but neither Registrar agreed to the proposal or received a promised follow-up call about the proposal.
Section 9-311a of the General Statutes sets forth the criteria under which a recount for a particular office is undertaken. This criterion was not reached in any office on a statewide basis, or in Bridgeport locally. Section 9-320f provides for a random audit of machine-cast ballots, a process begun yesterday by the Secretary's office, but no precinct in Bridgeport was chosen and, in any case, this specifically relates to machine-cast ballots, not to the hand-counted ballots to which the Secretary refers.
The City can find no legal authority which either requires or even allows the State or the City to conduct such a recount. We believe that the Secretary of the State is equally aware of this absence of legal authority.
As a result, the Bridgeport Registrars are not prepared to undertake any process until the Secretary clarifies her, and their, legal authority to act. The Registrars are fully prepared to follow state statutes on this issue, and we assume the Secretary of the State is also prepared to do so."
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