Date: Fri 08-Mar-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

GOP-primary-vote-Dole

Full Text:

Newtown Doles Out A Lopsided Victory In GOP Primary

B Y K AAREN V ALENTA

Carrying her son, Benjamin, 3, Tiina Maurey pushed open the door of the

District 2 poll in the Sandy Hook Firehouse and stepped out into the

rain-swept parking lot.

"Benjamin, whom did you vote for?" a reporter quickly asked the child.

"Can you say `Bob Dole?'" Mrs Maurey whispered to her son.

"I don't know how to say that," Benjamin responded somberly.

Benjamin might not have been able to say Bob Dole but Newtown Republicans

certainly did, casting 626 votes for the US senator from Kansas in Tuesday's

presidential preference primary in Newtown.

Sen Dole captured nearly 53 percent of the vote in Newtown's four districts.

Steve Forbes came in second with 273 votes, or 22 percent; Patrick J. Buchanan

finished third with 162, or 13 percent. The other contenders included Lamar

Alexander, who received 62 votes; Alan Keyes, 35; Richard G. Lugar, 16; Phil

Gramm, 5; Robert K. Dornan, 2, Morry Taylor, 1. Twenty voters pulled the

"uncommitted" lever.

Turnout was light. Only 1,219 Republicans, or 27 percent of the 4,493 who were

registered and eligible to vote, went to the polls.

The count was taken immediately after the polls closed at 8 pm. Some election

workers were on the job until 10 pm, however, after a one-vote discrepancy was

discovered on a machine in District 3B. That machine registered a total of 258

votes for the nine candidates and uncommitted slots on the ballot while only

showing a count of 257 voters.

Nancy Larin, the head election moderator, said the discrepancy probably was

either due to a mechanical malfunction or an error in the initial reading of

the machine count before the polls opened.

"These machines are stored, shipped, moved, re-set up every time there is an

election," she explained. "They are hauled all over these roads and things

jiggle. Then they are set up in a dark gym at 5 am."

The moderator at each poll then checks the back of the machine to make sure it

reads 0 voters.

"The moderator said he did not see a "1," Mrs Larin said. "It is conceivable

that the machine could have jiggled enough when it was moved to begin to

advance it to 1."

If that happened, when the first vote was cast, the machine count may have

moved to 2, she theorized.

Mrs Larin said the count was checked by the moderator three times and could

not be explained. So she called the Office of the Secretary of State on

Wednesday morning to report it.

"The machine will be thoroughly examined before it is used again," she said,

"although we may never know exactly what happened."

The one-vote discrepancy worried the election officials and Town Clerk Cindy

Curtis, not because it would have made a difference in the Dole landslide but

because local municipal elections sometimes have been decided by margins as

slim as one or two votes.

"Something like this has never happened, that I know of, since I've been the

town clerk," Ms Curtis said. "Thank heavens it wasn't in one of the municipal

elections that have been so close."

As he did in Newtown, Sen Dole wound up with more than 50 percent of the votes

across Connecticut, easily capturing the 27 delegates in the state's

winner-take-all primary. He posted wins in every town in Fairfield and New

Haven counties, and swept to victory in all eight primaries nationwide.

The light voter turnout meant a long day for the election workers in Newtown,

many of whom were on the job from before the polls opened at 6 pm until after

they closed at 8 pm.

"It was quite exciting once when we actually had five people in line waiting

to vote," Marilyn Alexander said at the District 1 poll in the Middle School

gym. "Then it turned out that two of them were in the wrong district."

Gail Halapin, a Legislative Council member who was a moderator in District 3A,

arrived at Tuesday night's council meeting after the polls closed. Twenty-five

percent of the eligible voters cast ballots in 3A, she said, and many left the

voting booth asking the same question - "Who is Morry Taylor?"