The vote totals changed by hundreds. Now Hartford candidates are considering election complaints

Despite Arunan Arulampalam’s ironclad victory in Hartford’s mayoral race, several of his opponents gathered at city hall on Friday demanding an independent audit into the election results.

According to unofficial results posted to the Secretary of the State’s Office website, the vote tallies listed for several candidates are different than what the registrar reported last week after Election Day.

Arulampalam received 4,701 votes, the Hartford registrar of voters reported the morning after election night. In the new unofficial count on the SOTS website, Arulampalam only picked up one extra ballot to give him 4,702 votes.

But the numbers swung much higher for the petitioning candidates.

J. Stan McCauley, who originally placed second in the race behind Arulampalam, received 737 votes as reported by the registrar of voters on Nov. 8. However, according to the SOTS unofficial municipal results released this week, he shed 294 votes to drop to 443 total votes.

Nick Lebron also saw his numbers shift by several hundreds of votes. The candidate received 623 votes, the registrar said on election night. The SOTS unofficial municipal results gave him an additional 284 votes for a total of 903, pushing him past McCauley to put him in second place overall.

Eric Coleman, who was a write-in candidate, also saw a large swing in votes. Coleman, who received 527 votes, according to the registrar on Nov. 8, gained 276 votes in unofficial results posted this week. Coleman received a total of 803 votes, according to the SOTS unofficial municipal results, putting him in third place overall behind Lebron and Arulampalam.

In the city’s treasurer race, Democratic endorsed Carmen Sierra received 5,022 votes, according to the SOTS unofficial municipal results. Her opponent, Matt Hennessy, received 1,079 votes. Sierra, who received 320 more votes than Arulampalam, lost just 19 ballots since the registrar’s reported results on Nov. 8. Voters had to flip over the ballot to vote as the treasurer race was on the backside. This election marks the first time a treasurer candidate in Hartford received more votes than a mayoral candidate in recent history.

But results remain unofficial and vote tallies are subject to change after election night, Hartford Democratic Registrar of Voters Giselle “Gigi” Feliciano said. She said the discrepancies were due to clerical errors and there was no malicious intent. The receipts or “tapes” printed from ballot tabulators had some candidates listed in different order from the state’s official voter system, which led to them being input incorrectly, according to Feliciano.

“In the middle of the making of the ballot, it was corrected by the Secretary of the State and noted to the town clerk’s office, that the way the petitioning candidates were lined up was wrong. It needed to be corrected. I believe it was J. Stan McCauley that was first and then Nick Lebron. That made a change when the corrections were done when we finally got our ballots turned in,” Feliciano said.

“So when we’re entering the numbers in the late evening of the night, were reading off 1-J or 2-J and not necessarily saying individual names. We should have read names, but it’s just easier to read off line numbers. As someone is reading off numbers, another person is typing them in. What happened was Stan’s name and Nick’s name were transposed differently on the system report we were entering from the tapes. When we show the system report and the tapes, anyone can see the names are lined up differently.”

Feliciano said when they caught the mistake they had already closed out of the state’s system reporting process. In order to re-open it, they needed to request an amendment with the SOTS office.

“It was probably already a little after 2 a.m. when we put the amendment request in,” Feliciano said. “But what ended up happening was we held off doing all of the amendments until the re-canvass on Monday. So when we finished the re-canvass we came back into the office and we started to re-enter and go through everything line by line. That’s when we made the corrections for Eric Coleman as well. We found a couple of hand counts that we didn’t catch earlier on.”

A recount was ordered Monday in the city council race for Hartford Party candidate John Gale and Working Families Party candidate Tiana Hercules after less than 20 votes separated them. Any election that is decided with fewer than 20 votes automatically triggers the state’s close recount rule. Gale ultimately won the election by 18 votes.

“There’s nothing illegal that happened. Every town goes through the same process. I welcome anyone who wants to come in and read the tapes. We have an open-door policy here.”

But at a press conference in front of city hall, former mayoral candidates Lebron, McCauley, Eric Coleman, and Giselle “Gigi” Jacobs said that they want answers and an independent investigation conducted to ensure the integrity of the ballot counting process.

“In October, my campaign specifically made all offices involved aware of this mistake and we were ensured it was rectified,” Lebron said at the press conference. “As we can see now, it was not. One of the things I noticed during this time was no one wanted to take the responsibility for the correction. What happened after that was more than just a clerical error or someone who inaccurately transposed the data. What we have is a breakdown of systematic processes that was suppose to ensure checks and balances.”

Lebron said that he is concerned that the error was not picked up earlier ahead of Election Day.

“Not only are the numbers incorrect, but we are to believe that the test runs of the machines didn’t catch this mistake weeks before the election?” Lebron said. “That’s 24 machines that go to 24 polling districts with potentially 24 minimum errors. These incidents that have occurred need common sense oversight. We are personally asking the SOTS to do a recount so we can instill trust in our democratic process. Political apathy is on the rise. We had an election here in Hartford for mayor that saw the lowest turnout in our history.”

This year, voter turnout deceased in Hartford since the last mayoral election in 2019, the registrar of voters said. This year’s mayoral race had a turnout rate of just 13.74%, down from 18.14% in 2019.

“We have voting machines that supposedly transposed my name with Lebron’s name. I find that very interesting because the machines are suppose to be tested and certified before the election,” McCauley said at the press conference. “So if the mistake is there after the election, why wasn’t it picked up before the election? We know Lebron’s team mentioned this to the SOTS. This is just incompetence. I like all the people involved. All of us know each-other. But if I don’t know what happened, how can I have faith in the very system I tell people to believe in?”

McCauley said he is calling on the SOTS to conduct an independent audit into the results.

“I was told this is not an issue for the SOTS because it is an off-year election and therefore this is a municipal election and it belongs to the registrar. I then called the registrar and the registrar called me back, apologized, and told me what happened. Well the registrar should be out here then calling for an independent audit to ensure the integrity of the process. If democracy is to survive, people have to at the very least believe in the integrity of the system. There is no doubt that the integrity of this process is in question.”

Coleman, who also supports an independent audit, said the confusion around the vote tallies hurts trust in the electoral process.

“There is a certain mistrust, lack of faith, and lack of confidence already in the electoral and governmental process,” Coleman said. “It contributes to a frustration for voters when they already feel that their vote does not count.”

Tara Chozet, director of communications for the SOTS, explained that when ballots are fed through tabulators, the machines are able to both read and register vote tallies immediately. The information is then printed out on a receipt or “tapes” when the polls close. However, those tallies must be manually put into the state’s election reporting system. Tabulators are not connected to the internet as a safety feature to ensure they cannot be hacked or tampered with.

While the town clerk’s office is tasked with certifying municipal election results, tallying votes is one of the main jobs of the city’s registrar of voters. The state currently uses the Election Management System software to collect vote tallies from the registrars. However, that software will be changing next year, according to Chozet.

“The tabulators are not connected to any software or electronics system, so it’s not as though when you’re feeding your ballot it automatically drops into a cloud or system somewhere,” Chozet said. “It’s just basically digitally counting within the machine there. Those results have to be inputted into EMS.”

Candidates have until Nov. 21 to file an election complaint with the state’s Superior Court, according to the SOTS election’s calendar.

Stephen Underwood can be reached at sunderwood@courant.com