Connecticut lawmakers crafted several pieces of legislation earlier this year aimed at ending a long string of election-related crime in Bridgeport and preventing future political contests in the city from being marred by ballot fraud.
But most of the proposals failed to make it over the finish line during the 2025 legislative session, even though seven political operatives, campaign workers and elected officials are currently facing charges for allegedly manipulating Bridgeport’s absentee voting system.
One measure would have banned anyone who is convicted of an election-related crime from passing out candidate petitions or absentee ballot applications to voters for 12 years.
Maria Pereira, one of the defendants who is accused of mishandling absentee ballots during the 2023 election, is already passing out absentee applications for Bridgeport’s municipal primary in September.
Records reviewed by The Connecticut Mirror show Pereira, a member of the city council, obtained 300 absentee ballot applications in late May to distribute to voters ahead of that upcoming election.
Callie Gale Heilmann, one of the founders of Bridgeport Generation Now, said Pereira’s ongoing involvement in the absentee process in Bridgeport is evidence of why the legislature needs to act.
The prohibition against passing out petitions or applications was something that Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas requested, and was a direct response to the ongoing criminal cases stemming from Bridgeport’s 2019 and 2023 Democratic mayoral primaries.
But even with Thomas’s backing, neither the House or Senate took up the legislation before the session closed on June 4. The measure was initially in a Senate bill and was later repackaged into a different House bill that involved several other election reforms.
The Secretary of the State’s office called the measure a “commonsense improvement” to the state’s election laws and vowed to introduce similar bills in future legislative sessions.
“It’s not uncommon for good bills to die on the calendar — it happens every session. In years without a presidential election, election-related legislation can struggle to gain attention amid other priorities,” Roger Senserrich, a spokesperson for the Secretary of the State, said.
But advocates in Bridgeport, who have repeatedly called for reforms to the state’s absentee ballot laws, were less accepting of the legislature’s failure to take up the measure this session.
Heilmann and Gemeem Davis, the founders of Bridgeport Generation Now, said they felt like there was finally momentum this session to address the wave of alleged absentee ballot crimes that have taken place in the city in recent years.
But they said that optimism faded as the final days of the legislative session ticked by and most of the election reforms stalled.
“We were very disappointed this session, because despite having people arrested and trials about to begin, our state legislature chose not to move any of the bills forward,” Davis said. “That’s incredibly disappointing because Bridgeport residents and voters across the state deserve to have this issue settled and deserve a democracy that works for all of us.”
“If we want changed behavior, we have to do things to make sure that that behavior is changed,” Davis added. “It needs to be codified in the law.”
Lawmakers did approve funding through the state budget to authorize an election monitor in Bridgeport through the end of 2026. But Davis and Heilmann said that is unlikely to prevent the people who have been criminally charged from continuing to influence the city’s elections.
Heilmann said she would prefer that the state ban every political operative from distributing absentee applications, but she said the 12-year ban for people who are convicted of an election crime would be a start.
“I guess we just expected that the governor, the Secretary of the State and the leaders of the legislature to all prioritize protecting the voters of Bridgeport, given that it’s the largest city in the state of Connecticut and that this scandal has made international news,” Heilmann said.
Several lawmakers, including Rep. Matt Blumenthal, D-Stamford, and Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, told CT Mirror that there was bipartisan support for implementing the 12-year ban on anyone who pleads guilty or is convicted of an election crime.
But that was not enough to get the bill to a vote as lawmakers raced in the last week to pass a mountain of other legislation.
Blumenthal said there was a bipartisan agreement in the House to pass the election bill “expeditiously,” but he said the House leadership wanted a similar commitment out of the Senate before they would spend the time to pass it.
Meanwhile, Sen. Bob Duff said he and his colleagues were waiting on the House to pass the final version of the bill, since it originated in that body.
“As Senate Majority Leader, I am in charge of bills that are before the Senate,” Duff said in a written statement. “I cannot pass a bill that never passed the House and was never before the Senate.”
Sampson, who is the ranking member on GAE, said he intended to offer up more than 15 amendments to the bill, including proposals to implement ID requirements and signature verification for absentee voting.
But he said that would not have prohibited the House and Senate leadership from passing the legislation, since he didn’t intend to filibuster a bill that he supported. With no other election-related bills coming up for a vote during the session, Sampson said it was his only opportunity to offer up various election policies favored by Republicans.
As a member of the Republican minority, Sampson said he does not have the power to decide what bills get called up for a vote, and he said it was on the Democrats, who have a supermajority in both chambers, to explain why the election reform wasn’t prioritized.
“That bill, had it been brought to the floor, I suspect, would have passed unanimously,” Sampson said. “It was their choice whether or not they were willing to potentially pay the price of having to debate some other election-related issues in order to get it across the finish line. But I was not going to filibuster for hours at a time, certainly on bills that I supported.”
“The fact is that when bills do not pass, that is on them,” Sampson said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
