Was Your Write-In Vote Counted?

Three days after polls have closed, there are still several towns that have not reported write-in votes. The Vachon Campaign began recieving complaints from voters Thursday morning, after the Secretary of State posted the official vote-tally spreadsheet(available at: http://www.statementofvote-sots.ct.gov/StatementOfVote/WebModules/ReportsLink/USSenSumStat.aspx). Voters from Hartford, New Haven, Mansfield, Salem, East Lyme, West Haven, West Hartford and Middletown all expressed concern about whether their vote had been counted. "Being a write-in campaign it becomes very easy for voters to determine if their vote had been counted," said Vachon, "if their town shows 'zero' and they know that they voted, then they know something is not right."

The campaign has urged all supporters to check the SOTS website to ensure that their votes had been counted. If they discovered that they had been disenfranchised they were urged to take two steps: 1) contact their town's clerk, and if that did not resolve the problem, 2) contact the secretary of state's office to complain.

Complaints have thus far led to the appearance of votes from Salem and New Haven. When a Vachon supporter called in Middletown to inquire about her vote, a representative "discovered" a whole pile of write-in votes that they "forgot to submit," however the votes are yet to be counted on the official tally. While representatives of the Vachon Campaign and the Socialist Party of CT deny that this is any kind of organized conspiracy to quiet their voice, they do add that "the two-party system itself is a conspiracy in that two groups have conspired to write and enact laws which block any challengers." The shear lack of regard for the votes of dissent, the write-in votes which most challenge the status quo, says a lot about the state of democracy in America--money may not be able to buy elections, as we've seen with Linda McMahon, but it certainly can guarantee ballot access and media coverage.

If you voted for Vachon, or any other write-in candidate, you should take a moment to ensure that your town has counted your vote. Many people, including countless socialists, fought hard for equal rights to vote in this country; they certainly did not do it so that votes for certain groups would count while others would be ignored. Every single person has a right to vote for an official candidate, and every single vote must be counted, period.

-The Vachon Campaign

CT Blogger Kerri Provost, of RealHartford.org, elaborates on the vote count problem in her recent piece, "Something Rotten in a Blue State."(http://www.realhartford.org/2010/11/04/something-rotten-in-a-blue-state/)