CT Bureaucrat Charged With Changing GOP Registrations To Democrat

A Connecticut state mental health worker has been accused of fraudulently changing Republican voter registrations to Democrat following a September voting event.

Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services employee Arlanda Brantley, 57, faces “five counts each of Fraudulent Registration and Primary or Enrollment Violations,” according to Fox61. As the Hartford Courant reported, police arrested her Monday. 

After a “national voting event” at the Western Connecticut Mental Health Network in Torrington, Connecticut on Sept. 17, Brantley allegedly changed “several” voter registration cards with an affiliation of “Republican” or “No” to “Democrat” “without the consent of the registrants.” Police said she then submitted the cards to the Torrington Registrar of Voters clerk, according to Fox61.

Officials noticed white out on the voter registrations, Torrington Registrar of Voters Clerk Melissa Russell told The Federalist. A “handful” of registrations — close to 10 — were affected, according to Russell. She said she does not know if Brantley altered registration cards in other jurisdictions, but the affected Torrington voters fixed their party affiliation before November’s election. 

The Torrington Police Department and State Elections Enforcement Commission led the investigation, according to reports. 

Police got a warrant for Brantley’s arrest and she turned herself in on Monday, reports say. As of Tuesday, she was out on a $10,000 bond and scheduled to appear in Torrington Superior Court on Feb. 10.

Republican state Rep. Joe Canino said he was “outraged” to hear about the fraud, adding that he and his team are “committed to fixing gaps in our election laws that allow these incidents to take place” through “increased enforcement of election related crimes, voter identification requirements, chain of custody requirements, and other proposals related to election security.”

“What was meant to be a non-partisan, state-led, voter registration event, has now been tainted by Ms. Brantley’s illegal actions,” Canino posted to Facebook on Tuesday. “Whether it’s this incident in Torrington, or down in Bridgeport where individuals were stuffing ballots into a drop box during the eleventh hour before an election, the bottom line is that voter fraud is happening in Connecticut.” 

Republican State Rep. Craig Fishbein posted on X that he agrees with Canino, adding, “Voter fraud, and the intentional fabricating of voter registration information has NO PLACE in the State of Connecticut!”

Connecticut has a particularly concerning history of voter fraud. In Bridgeport, the state’s most populous city, a video surfaced in September 2023 apparently showing municipal employee Wanda Geter-Pataky — affiliated with the incumbent mayor’s campaign — stuffing ballot boxes, as The Federalist’s Mark Hemingway reported at the time. Following this evidence, a judge overturned the results and ordered a new election. Geter-Pataky and Democrat city councilman Alfredo Castillo also allegedly helped a “Spanish-speaking” noncitizen vote the same year, according to a complaint.

Brantley’s alleged fraud following September’s “national voting event” in Torrington recalls how “get-out-the-vote” efforts are vulnerable to bad actors. In the past, such campaigns have helped activists engage in things like data harvesting and partisan targeting of voters, as The Federalist has previously reported. Former President Joe Biden essentially ordered federal agencies to “get-out-the-vote” from left-leaning demographics through his “Bidenbucks” program, which Trump has since rescinded.