Opinion: Registrar Responds to False Claims by Brenda Kupchick

The following is a statement from Fairfield Democratic Registrar of Voters Matt Waggner:

I read the long rationalization made by First Selectwoman Kupchick for her personal decision to violate Connecticut’s election regulations by seizing control of the voting equipment and ballots from the elected Registrars of Voters. It was deeply troubling, because the claims and allegations she made are entirely and provably false. First, I do want to address the specific claims that she makes:

• Setting Up Tabulators: It is not a violation of statutes for the tabulators (voting machines) to be set up over a weekend, nor for each party to set up tabulators separately for each primary – Republicans did for theirs as well. It is, in fact, what we are advised specifically to do by the Secretary of the State’s office. This work was done in accordance with statute, was properly noticed, and despite Kupchick’s claim that I worked on the tabulators “alone,” this work was performed with the assistance of my Deputy Registrar.
• Postcard Mailing: I proposed the polling place notice postcard in our FY23 budget, designed and provided it to my fellow Registrar for his approval on July 11th, and finalized the production details with the printer on July 15th. The reason it had not arrived by August 1st was that the First Selectwoman personally intervened to stop production because she did not want it to be sent to every address in Fairfield, and to modify the postcard, violating her own office’s policy requiring mailings be approved by both Registrars. When I called the printer to see if changes had been made, they confirmed it had, and that it had already been printed and was on the way to be delivered. I did not ask for production or delivery to be stopped, nor was it.
• Town Website: The Kupchick administration issued a written order to our office that nothing could be posted on the Registrars’ website without the approval of both Registrars. When I consulted with the town webmaster, I was advised that the Chief of Staff had directed her to remove the list I had published of the polling places that had been approved by the RTM (incidentally, on the “Where Do I Vote” page they accuse me of deleting.) The day I learned that they intended the policy to apply to previously published material, I removed the files I had published without the consent of my fellow Registrar to comply with policy (mainly PDFs of old election results and historical postings about public registration sessions), though these files remained preserved in accordance with state record retention requirements. Further, the “Where Do I Vote” page was not removed by me or anyone else at any time: as it was created by an admin user in 2015, I could not have deleted it even if I wanted to.
• “Hostile Work Environment”: I was notified of a hostile workplace complaint that was filed due to my request that my fellow Registrar and I have a management discussion about how to spend our seasonal payroll budget – which funds both pollworkers and office staff like Deputies – after it was cut by $60,000 by the Board of Finance. Importantly, I consulted in advance with the HR director about my intention to have this budget discussion with my counterpart.

I can provide the documents where the state tells us Registrars are separately responsible for setting up tabulators for their party’s primary, where I was the person who ordered the print job that Kupchick says I tried to stop, and showing that the webpages Kupchick says I deleted were not deleted (and have shared them, with Alfred at the Patch and other reporters). Fabricating claims like these is unprofessional, unethical, and defamatory, but is perhaps an unavoidable consequence of a refusal to review the laws and consult with department heads directly and honestly before taking action. If Kupchick believed these claims were true, legitimate issues, they should have been addressed in a brief email exchange instead of stored for a complaint and litigated in public.

Up until this spring, the relationship between the Registrars and the First Selectwoman’s office was professional and amicable. In any administration, regardless of party, there are positives and negatives, but we operated as we always did: we’re a small department, we’re elected officials, we handle almost every problem internally among colleagues, and only very rarely need to engage with administration officials.

In April, that changed. Meetings between our office and the administration became Republican-only affairs. They began issuing directives about our office without even speaking to the Registrars. The experienced and ethical Republican Deputy Registrar, herself a life-long Republican, was fired for being insufficiently partisan in carrying out her election duties just days after we had sent her to a training conference. Whenever we would have to make a decision, instead of negotiating priorities between the Registrars (our normal practice, and a must for any body of elected officials that is split 50-50), the administration instead insisted that we not negotiate, that they would decide which rules to follow or break. They inserted themselves in day-to-day procedures of our office to an unprecedented degree, but also made decisions and carried out changes in secret, leaving us guessing what was going on.

And it became clear that they believed they could force both my Republican counterpart and I out of office; telling him he’d have to leave halfway through his term with the potential of finding him a different job, and believing they could induce enough complaints about me that they could force me out of office as well.

I want to make it clear that despite all of this, I don’t think of myself as a victim in this situation. I’ve dealt with worse, and having uninformed people lie and make accusations about you is a normal part of working in elections these days. Some years it’s Democrats accusing us of being in league with Trump and Vladimir Putin, some years it’s Republicans accusing us of using rigged voting machines to install Biden in office. It’s upsetting that the First Selectwoman of my town would make these false claims and personal attacks, but Kupchick’s claims are what election misinformation looks like when it’s made by government officials instead of frustrated partisans.

The administration’s efforts to exert control over the election process and bully Registrars out of office are outrageous affronts to the legitimacy of our public positions that no other elected official should or would ever tolerate. This week it was confirmed that Kupchick’s actions to take control of our voting machines was not legal, but it doesn’t sound from the letter I just read that she sees this as a moment to change her approach. But she should.

I don’t intend to buckle under these gross personal attacks and actions to compromise the office, because I believe it’s the sacred duty of the Registrars to ensure that elections must remain independent from the whims of parties and politicians. I know that my work and reputation is measured by the thousands of constituents I’ve helped and the hundreds of colleagues in the election field I’ve worked with to improve elections all over Connecticut.

Fairfield voters have seen the work our office has done to expand accessibility and safe voting options, improve voter education with annual custom voter mailings, provide live election-night returns and faster results, improve outreach to new residents and students, and increasing accuracy and integrity with improved absentee counting procedures and outreach to former residents. Much of this has involved years of struggle and debate and compromise to achieve, and many of the Kupchick administration’s unilateral actions have sought to directly reverse this work. I think of my coworkers who have either been forced out or threatened with their livelihoods as victims. And the nonpartisan dynamic that has characterized our office and served the public for decades as a victim of these actions as well.

Public confidence in elections depends on preventing politics from having an undue influence on election administration, and I can say that it’s incredibly hard to preserve when town leaders are willing to deploy false claims and the full force of their administration to compromise that principle. If it is possible, I will do everything I can to protect it; if it is not, then it will be my deepest regret to have failed.