It's starting to come out in a piece by Courant journalists Daniel Goren and Mark Pazniokas.
A Hartford Democrat who was fined and barred from involvement in absentee ballot activities last year is working for a company hired by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's campaign to do voter outreach in the city - including the distribution of absentee ballot applications.Prenzina Holloway was fined $10,000 in July 2005 and ordered not to distribute absentee ballot applications or to assist voters with the ballots for two years, after the State Elections Enforcement Commission found that she had forged a voter's signature in the 2004 election.
Holloway acknowledges working for Urban Voters and Associates, a company paid $17,550 by the Lieberman campaign since September to do "field work." But she said she isn't involved in the company's absentee ballot operations.
"That is just a no-no," she said. "And I know it is a no-no."
But five people at a Vine Street housing complex for the elderly have told The Courant that Holloway and another person came to their doors to give them absentee ballot applications, and a security worker at another complex on Woodland Street said Holloway tried to get into the building to distribute applications there. Holloway was barred from the building after getting into a verbal altercation with the worker after he made supportive comments about Lieberman's main challenger, Ned Lamont.
Other sources at the building said she called back a week later to try to "sweet talk" her way into the facility.
Sherry Brown, manager of the Lieberman campaign, said she was unaware of any inappropriate handling of absentee ballot applications.
"If there is any evidence of wrongdoing by individuals working for our campaign either directly or indirectly, then [that] should be brought to us and the proper authorities," she said. "I have no knowledge of anything like that happening."
Brown said Urban Voters was hired to help with voter contacts in Hartford, including the distribution of absentee ballot applications.
She said she was under the impression that the company was run by Holloway's daughter, city Councilwoman rJo Winch.
Brown knew Holloway had an elections enforcement issue, but she believed it had been settled. She said the Lieberman campaign did not, however, do any background checks on any company hired to do campaign work.
Political machines are impressive, but at their core they involve people doing illegal things for small amounts of money and candidates looking the other way so they can benefit. Campaign manager Sherry Brown and Senator Lieberman knew exactly what they were getting by hiring this firm, and they did it for the same reason that they put a $387,000 slush fund on the street without disclosing where it went.
This was the Lieberman GOTV operation, in the primary. And now it appears that it's the GOTV operation in the general as well.
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