A Connecticut voting-rights group is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Bridgeport Generation Now has worked to broaden voting access and ensure fairer elections for city residents. Some of its most important work came at a time when many Bridgeport residents felt their votes didn't matter, pointing to absentee ballot fraud as the cause.
During the city’s 2019 mayoral primary, co-director Callie Gail Heilmann said the group found unauthorized campaign workers were harvesting absentee ballots to the benefit of their preferred candidate.
"They go into low-income public housing, low-income senior housing, they target monolingual Spanish-speaking voters and manipulate them, lie to them about eligibility, they forge their signatures on an application," Heilmann said.
Voters sued to overturn mayoral election results in 2019, but the case failed. However, when a similar case played out after the 2023 election, election results were overturned and a new primary was ordered.
Since the state implemented universal absentee voting, reported cases of ballot harvesting have decreased, but now Heilmann said there's more work to do in educating voters about submitting an absentee ballot on their own.
Heilmann considered the city a "canary in the coal mine" for what happens when people in power undermine democratic norms. Heilmann said when it became clear the organization was up against a major threat to local democracy, the mission changed.
"From a simple 'let's be more civically engaged,' to 'no, we actually need to dismantle systemic corruption; we need to fix our democracy,'" Heilmann said.
If the state can’t do that for its largest city, Heilmann said, it can’t claim to have a functional democracy.
For the next decade, Heilmann said, the group will continue with some of its ongoing programs such as a candidate bootcamp for anyone who wants to run for office, and a two-day workshop about democracy and civic engagement.
CT election security group honors 10 years of fighting for democracy was first published by Public News Service and was republished with permission.
Edwin Viera is a producer with PNS.
