Five people, including three Bridgeport council members and the vice chairwoman of the city’s Democratic party were charged with election-related crimes on Friday as part of a sprawling investigation into the city’s 2023 Democratic primary, which resulted in widespread allegations of absentee ballot fraud and a judge overturning the results of that election.

The Connecticut Chief State’s Attorney’s office announced Friday that city council members Maria Pereira, Alfredo Castillo and Jazmarie Melendez are facing numerous criminal allegations for either mispresenting who is eligible to vote absentee, fraudulent voting, taking possession of voters’ absentee ballots or being present while voters filled out those ballots.

Meanwhile, Wanda Geter-Pataky, the vice chair of the city’s Democratic Town Committee, is facing 92 separate criminal charges including conspiracy to take possession of multiple voters’ absentee ballots.

The fifth person who was charged is Margaret Joyce, a Stratford resident, who participated in the absentee ballot push during the 2023 election, and allegedly took possession of at least four absentee ballots.

Geter-Pataky, who is facing the most serious charges, became the face of the 2023 election scandal after she was captured on surveillance footage allegedly depositing stacks of absentee ballots into a drop box outside the city’s government center.

Patrick Griffin, Connecticut’s Chief State’s Attorney, released a statement about the mountain of election related charges Friday afternoon, and he said he hoped they would help to deter future absentee ballot fraud in Bridgeport and Connecticut moving forward.

“The Office of the Chief State’s Attorney takes allegations of voter fraud seriously,” Griffin said. “To protect the integrity of our voting process in Connecticut, it is important that our elections are fair and free from fraudulent activity and criminal intent. These prosecutions hopefully send the message that deters tampering with election results in the future in Connecticut.”

The criminal charges filed against the Bridgeport Democrats are the first to emerge out of the months-long investigation into alleged absentee ballot fraud during the 2023 election between Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim and his Democratic challenger John Gomes.

Ganim won that primary election by roughly 251 votes, based on the strength of his absentee ballot returns, but several weeks later, a state Superior Court judge overturned Ganim’s victory and ordered a new primary, arguing the election had been marred by “shocking” evidence of “blatant” ballot harvesting.

Ganim later defeated Gomes in two subsequent court-ordered elections that were held in early 2024, and he retained his position running Connecticut’s largest city.

In the meantime, dozens of complaints were filed with the State Election Enforcement Commission, alleging campaign operatives, political candidates and Democratic Party officials associated with both mayoral campaigns committed election-related crimes.

The SEEC, which is responsible for investigating election violations, dismissed some of those complaints for lack of evidence or because witnesses would not cooperate. But SEEC members also voted to refer nine of the cases to the Chief State’s Attorney’s office for potential criminal prosecution.

The Chief State’s Attorney’s office then worked with other state investigators to build criminal cases out of some of those complaints.

Joyce could not be reached for this story. Pereira and her attorney did not return phone calls Friday. Neither did John Gulash, the attorney for Geter-Pataky.

Frank Riccio, Castillo’s attorney, confirmed Friday morning that his client was voluntarily turning himself into the police, but did not have any further comment on the pending charges.

Alex Taubes, Melendez’s attorney, said it was problematic that his client was being charged with a crime, while he has not been presented with a criminal complaint outlining the evidence against her.

Taubes pointed out that unlike the four other defendants Melendez’s only alleged crime was mispresenting people’s eligibility to vote absentee. He said that prosecutors would need to prove that Melendez willfully misrepresented such eligibility requirements in order to convict her, and he said he finds it “highly, highly doubtful” that Melendez did so.

Democratic primaries in Bridgeport often decide who is elected to state and local office in that city, and those elections frequently feature warring factions that aggressively pursue absentee voters.

This is not the first time allegations of absentee ballot abuse have sprung out of Bridgeport elections. The city has a long history of elected officials and party leaders being accused of violating the state’s election laws.

Castillo and Geter-Pataky are already facing separate criminal charges for allegedly taking possession of voters’ absentee ballots during Bridgeport’s 2019 Democratic mayoral primary. Both of them are also close allies of Ganim, who returned to office in 2015 after serving a seven year prison sentence on federal corruption charges.

Pereira and Melendez, on the other hand, were supporters of Gomes, who was seeking to unseat Ganim after working within the mayor’s administration.

Geter-Pataky, who previously worked in the Bridgeport government, was terminated from her government job late last year after being placed on paid administrative leave following the 2023 election. But even with all of the criminal allegations leveled against her, local Democratic leaders reelected her as the vice chair of Bridgeport’s Democratic party last year.

Roberto Alves, the new chairman of the Connecticut Democratic Party, issued a statement in response to questions about the criminal charges filed on Friday and said that if Geter-Pataky and others are found guilty of election-related crimes they should not be allowed to serve in any party leadership post.

“Since the beginning of this investigation, the CT Democratic Party has said the law is clear about how to handle absentee ballots and ensure that voters rights are not violated,” he said. “If individuals are found guilty of election-related violations, they will be held accountable and have no place in party leadership.”  

An investigation by the Connecticut Mirror found that Geter-Pataky helped to sign up at least 537 Bridgeport voters for absentee ballots during that election. And she was assisted in that effort by Alfredo Castillo, who signed out many of those absentee ballot applications from the Bridgeport town clerk’s office.

Pereira, Melendez and their allies orchestrated a similar campaign to sign up hundreds of Bridgeport voters for absentee ballots, the CT Mirror’s investigation found.

The records from the 2023 primary show Melendez helped at least 230 people fill out applications for absentee ballots. Pereira assisted another 179, and also helped several voters request replacement ballots after she alleged that Geter-Pataky and other Ganim supporters stole those voters’ initial ballots.

Under Connecticut’s laws, political candidates, campaign staffers and party officials can help people to request an absentee ballot.

But the charges unveiled on Friday alleged that some of that work strayed into criminality, especially in the cases where political operatives helped people fill out the absentee ballots or collected those ballots so they could be submitted to local election officials.