An ex-Bridgeport city councilman in Connecticut was sentenced to three weekends of incarceration on Nov. 21 in connection with federal election fraud charges.
Democrat Michael DeFilippo, 38, pleaded guilty to completing voter registrations and absentee ballot applications and directing the tenants in apartment buildings he owned to sign them.
Election integrity advocates and some attorneys say the sentence is too light.
“That’s an awfully light punishment for the perversion of one person, one vote,” attorney Kenneth J. Krayeske told The Epoch Times on Nov. 22.
“Part of DeFilippo’s sentence should be he can never serve in public office again and there should be other creative means of restorative justice.”
Krayeske represents 61-year-old Nilsa Heredia, who was arrested and charged with absentee ballot fraud in the 2019 Bridgeport mayoral election.
DeFilippo was indicted by a federal grand jury on multiple election fraud charges in 2021 and three years later on May 6, he pleaded guilty to deprivation of rights under color of law.
“That’s a slap on the wrist at best,” Fight Voter Fraud (FVF) founder and CEO Linda Szynkowicz told The Epoch Times on Nov. 22. “The state doesn’t want to go after people who commit voter fraud because it does not appear to be the priority that it should.”
Based in Connecticut, FVF is a national nonprofit that promotes election integrity.
DeFilippo did not respond to requests for comment.
His sentence does not prevent him from seeking office again in the future.
“If you look at Bridgeport’s current mayor Joe Ghanim, he was convicted of a felony and after he served his time, he ran for mayor and he was elected again,” election law attorney Cameron Atkinson told The Epoch Times on Nov. 22.
The offenses are related to DeFilippo’s run for Bridgeport City Council in 2017 and 2018 when he was already serving as a council member representing the 133rd District near Sacred Heart University.
“We are one of, if not the worst state in the country when it comes to election integrity because nobody cares—Connecticut is a small state and we have very few electoral votes in the presidential election,” Szynkowicz said.
The Bridgeport case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jonathan N. Francis and Heather L. Cherry. Neither responded to requests for comment.
“That someone can get off on that light of a sentence doesn’t serve any deterrent function to keep this from ever happening again and we have a history in Bridgeport where no matter how many times the police and state investigate these activities, people keep doing it,” Atkinson said.
DeFilippo was also accused of forging signatures and submitting fraudulent documents to election officials in the name of some of the tenants who resided in his buildings.
“DeFilippo’s conduct caused Bridgeport and Connecticut election officials acting under color of law to deprive DeFilippo’s tenants of their right to vote (by counting stolen ballots), and to deprive all 133rd District voters of their right to have their votes fully counted (by diluting election results with fraudulent registrations and ballots),” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut said in a statement online on Nov. 21.
DeFilippo pleaded guilty on May 6 to deprivation of rights under color of law.
He was ordered to serve a year of probation, including three weekends of incarceration, and to pay a fine of $15,000.
Atkinson said DeFilippo’s sentence indicates a need to have conversations about election fraud and criminal violations of election law.
“Based on my understanding of what he pled to and the federal sentencing guidelines, I would’ve expected a sentence somewhere between six to 18 months given the alleged nature of the offenses and the impact it has on our system of self-government as a whole,” Atkinson said.
Heredia’s election fraud case is set to reconvene in court at 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 11.
A supporter of Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim’s 2019 reelection, Heredia was arrested in June and charged with improperly advising registered voters on which candidate to select on their absentee ballots, misrepresenting voting eligibility requirements by absentee ballot, tampering with a witness, and not providing the City of Bridgeport clerk’s office with an absentee ballot distribution list.
Krayeske argues that Heredia was a campaign worker who merely followed orders.
“This is the culture of the Democratic Party in Bridgeport, Connecticut,” Krayeske said. “We need public campaign financing in every municipality and what we really have to ask is how do we change the fact that Democratic Party machines in Connecticut’s largest cities enjoy power with less than 10 percent of voter turnout?”
