The front door of former Alder Ron Hurt’s church on the day before Election Day. Yaneiza Perez sat in the front passenger seat of a car as it traveled up Columbus Avenue. Behind the wheel was a woman she had accused of arranging for her to cast a fraudulent early vote in the Nov. 4 municipal e lection in return for a meal. As the driver pulled to the curb to park, Perez told a new story: That she had lied about the driver. Because someone else had paid her to concoct the false accusation, which is now the subject of a state investigation. This time, Perez insisted, as the driver listened to her words, she was telling the truth. The car-ride revision took place this past Friday. The driver in the car was Sandra Pittman, who helped her husband Miguel Pittman wage an ultimately unsuccessful campaign this year for Ward 3 alder. Perez, who is homeless, originally told the Independent that Sandra Pittman and a campaign ally had pressured her to list a fake address, a shelter where she didn’t live, in order to cast a vote on Oct. 30 for Pittman’s husband, Miguel. Perez said that she received a free meal at the Pittmans’ Congress Avenue restaurant in exchange for that vote. Now, in the car ride, Perez claimed that incumbent Alder Angel Hubbard, whom Miguel Pittman sought to unseat, had “coached” her — and paid her — to come up with that initial story, which she now called false. Hubbard has denied these new accusations, and suggested that Perez’s reversal might have been coerced — a claim the Pittmans have denied. (See more below for Hubbard’s full response.) “All I know is that she didn’t offer me food in order to vote,” Perez said about Sandra Pittman on Friday. “She gives food out to the community all the time.” “I’m embarrassed about it,” Perez added. “I don’t want to do any harm to anybody, and especially her [Sandra]. I don’t understand how it got so big.” Perez’s election-misconduct-allegation reversal comes roughly a month after Hubbard beat Miguel Pittman by a final vote of 347-302 in the Nov. 4 general election for Ward 3 alder. On the day before Election Day, Perez and her husband Joel Torres publicly accused Pittman’s campaign of garnering votes from homeless people in exchange for free food from his family’s Congress Avenue restaurant, Sandra’s Next Generation. They also claimed that Pittman’s campaign had convinced them to register at an address — Christian Community Action’s headquarters and family shelter at 168 Davenport — that they have no connection to. At the time, this reporter interviewed Perez over the phone, conducted a follow-up interview with Perez and Torres in person outside the warming center at 555 Columbus Ave., and reviewed letters signed by Perez and Torres that were included in a formal State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) complaint filed by Hubbard against Pittman. SEEC is currently investigating that complaint. This reporter also reviewed early voting data maintained by the Secretary of the State’s office that showed that Perez and Torres did indeed vote early at the Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) polling place on Oct. 30. They were two of eight people who voted early at SCSU who listed their address as 168 Davenport. A third homeless person from the Hill who voted early at SCSU and who listed 168 Davenport as their address — Aniyah Thompson — later told the Independent that he too had voted for Miguel in exchange for a free meal. The head of Christian Community Action told the Independent that none of those eight voters — including Perez, Torres, and Thompson — reside at the 168 Davenport shelter, and none have permission to use that address for voting purposes. Last week, roughly a month after the election, Perez reached out to this reporter to say that her initial accusation of wrongdoing against Sandra Pittman was all a misunderstanding. She agreed to meet up with this reporter at the 555 Columbus warming center on Friday to explain. Sitting in Sandra’s car next to Sandra herself, Perez told this reporter that it is “not true” that Sandra gave her free food in exchange for a vote for her husband. Back in early November, the staff at the 555 Columbus warming center had asked this reporter not to interview Perez inside of the warming center itself; our interview was conducted instead in the warming center’s parking lot. On Friday, as temperatures dipped below freezing, Perez said she wanted to do the follow-up interview inside Sandra’s car instead. She told this reporter she felt comfortable telling the truth in front of Sandra, even though she had initially accused Sandra of election-related wrongdoing and was now going back on those claims. “All she did [was] ask me, ‘Are you registered to vote?'” Perez said about her Oct. 30 encounter with Sandra. “I said, ‘Yeah.’ So I went and I voted. After I voted, she handed me a plate of food. It’s just a misunderstanding.” Perez stressed on Friday that no one told her to vote for Miguel. “It wasn’t like that,” she said. But then why did she sign a Nov. 3 letter, submitted as part of Hubbard’s SEEC complaint, stating that “I was told to vote for Miguel” by Sandra and by another Pittman campaign supporter, identified in the letter as “an older lady with glasses named Lisa”? Why does that same letter state that, when she got her ballot at the SCSU polling place, “I asked for help and Lisa pointed to Miguel Pittman on the ballot”? And why did she tell this reporter in a Nov. 3 interview: “I don’t think people getting bribes with food, it’s not right”? Perez said that, in addition to being homeless, she struggles with addiction. Back in early November, she and her husband spent most nights sleeping in St. Bernard’s Cemetery between Columbus Avenue and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. Perez now said she is staying at her mom’s place in East Haven. “Sometimes I don’t really know a lot of things that’s going on, like my rights,” she said. “I think I was fucked up,” she added about her state of mind when she first spoke with this reporter in November. Perez leveled new accusations of wrongdoing against Miguel Pittman’s political opponent, Hubbard. Perez claimed that she did not write the letter submitted as part of Hubbard’s SEEC complaint. She said she did sign that letter, though, while inside the church of Hubbard’s campaign ally, former Alder Ron Hurt, and while in front of Hurt and Hubbard. Perez then claimed that Hubbard “put money in my pocket” — $10 or $20 — on the day that she signed that letter accusing Pittman’s campaign of misconduct. (“She didn’t directly tell me, ‘I’m going to give you this for this,'” Perez said about Hubbard. “She would just put money in my pocket.”) And she claimed that Hubbard and her campaign “were putting words in my mouth” when she made her accusations against Pittman. “I was coached,” Perez said. “When I see the money and stuff,” she agreed to go along. Perez’s husband Torres was not with her in Sandra’s car for Friday’s interview. This reporter has not been able to reach Torres to ask if he too is going back on his initial accusations against the Pittmans. Hubbard: “We Have Not Bribed Them. We Have Not Coerced Them” In a separate phone interview on Monday, Hubbard adamantly denied any claims of wrongdoing made by Perez. “I’m so disheartened on this false accusation,” she said. Hubbard said that Perez and Torres “came to us” in early November to lodge their complaints against Pittman’s campaign. Their initial accusations were not the result of any attempts by her to “dig up something negative” on her opponent, she said. “I don’t need to exploit the unhoused for publicity, for a campaign purpose, or even to downplay or disrespect my opponent,” Hubbard said. Hubbard said she believes that Perez “has been coerced to now recant her statement. It’s just sad.” “We have not bribed them,” she insisted. “We have not coerced them. I stand by what she stated and I stand by what her husband has stated.” Hubbard said that Perez did not sign the Nov. 3 letter in front of her. “That’s not true. She submitted the letter.” Hubbard also said she has never given money to Perez or Torres. “I stand on what she said” in November, Hubbard concluded about Perez’s initial statement. “I believe what she said when she came to me. I really hope that nobody’s bullying her into changing the story because now there’s a SEEC investigation.” In a follow-up interview on Tuesday, Miguel Pittman told the Independent that he and Sandra “didn’t play any role” in getting Perez to come forward and recant her initial accusations. “She’s in the neighborhood. We see her daily walking up and down the street,” Pittman said about Perez. “We treat her as just another regular person. We don’t go out and try to find her. … We let life really take its course.” Asked directly if he or his wife pressured Perez to speak out this time, Pittman replied, “Absolutely not.” Pittman pointed to a video recording Sandra made on the day that Perez and Torres voted.(See below.) Those are not people, he said, who look like they were just pressured to do something they didn’t want to do. A Nov. 3 letter submitted as part of Hubbard’s SEEC complaint, and signed by Perez. The post Vote-Fraud Accuser Changes Story appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less