Dating back to the contentious presidential election of 2020, Democrats have been working hard to discredit questions about the security of mail-in voting, but recent events in Connecticut's largest city appear to vindicate the very sorts of concerns long raised by former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters.
As the Washington Examiner explains, this week saw the latest phase of a lingering dispute in which the same type of mail-in ballot vulnerabilities about which Trump has sounded the alarm were found to have been so potentially pervasive that an election re-do was required by a judge.
The scenario unfolded in Bridgeport, where on Tuesday, Mayor Joe Ganim won his fight to become his party's pick to compete for another term in office, triumphing over challenger John Gomes.
This battle was significant due to a pair of prior face-offs between the two – a primary election in September and the subsequent general election in November – contests which brought some scandalous accusations to light.
In the initial primary election, Ganim also beat Gomes, but by a margin of just 251 votes, and in the November general election, he won by an even tighter margin.
However, surveillance video was subsequently brought forward in which a supporter of Ganim's was seen placing bundles of absentee ballots into a collection box, actions that would run counter to state election law.
The footage was so startling that a judge eventually overturned last fall's primary results and ordered a new election, as the Associated Press noted at the time.
Presiding Superior Court Judge William Clark declared, “The volume of ballots so mishandled is such that it calls the result of the primary election into serious doubt and leaves the court unable to determine the legitimate result of the primary.”
It is still uncertain whether Ganim will secure yet another term as mayor, however, because the general election is set to be held anew on Feb. 27, and Gomes currently remains in the race, this time as an independent candidate.
The situation in Bridgeport calls to mind for many the same type of concerns raised by Trump and others about the widespread use of mail-in voting during the 2020 election, something which proponents championed, in large part, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lending further credence to the arguments of those who have sounded the alarm about the security vulnerabilities of mail-in ballots are newly released government documents showing that the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was fully aware that it should not have censored critics of this type of voting in advance of the last election, but did so anyway, as the Epoch Times reports.
According to materials obtained and published by America First Legal (AFL), CISA had substantial knowledge of the potential security problems plaguing mail-in balloting prior to the still-controversial 2020 contest, yet, in the words of AFL vice president and general counsel Gene Hamilton, embarked on “an unprecedented censorship campaign to mislead the American people about the truth.”
A press release from AFL quoting Hamilton went on, saying, “Common sense dictates that ballots submitted via mail are inherently less secure than verified, in-person voting by a citizen who shows identification before casting his or her ballot. The American people were lied to, and there must be accountability.”
Whether AFL's findings combined with the example of the Bridgeport mayoral race will help turn the tide and force greater scrutiny -- or at least heightened skepticism -- of mail-in voting as the 2024 presidential election draws nearer, however, only time will tell.
