Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, but these days racism may be the first.

Responding the other day to the latest absentee ballot scandal in Bridgeport, supporters of Mayor Joe Ganim held a rally to charge that the scandal’s central figure, Wanda Geter-Pataky, a City Hall employee and vice chairwoman of the Democratic City Committee, is being criticized by the campaign of the mayor’s challenger in the Democratic primary, John Gomes, and by news organizations, because she is Black.

But no one denies that Geter-Pataky is the woman shown in the sensational security camera video making four trips to an absentee ballot deposit box outside City Hall in the early-morning darkness a week ahead of the primary and stuffing it with what apparently were absentee ballots. It is illegal for absentee ballots to be delivered by anyone who is not a member of the family of the voter or the voter’s caretaker, and the state Elections Enforcement Commission recently, if belatedly, asked the chief state’s attorney to investigate Geter-Pataky and two other Ganim campaign workers for absentee ballot fraud in the Democratic mayoral primary four years ago.

Other video appears to show a Gomes supporter making eight deposits in a different absentee ballot box before the primary.

Absentee ballots often have made the difference in Bridgeport elections and there is evidence that Ganim’s absentee ballot efforts this year particularly targeted residents of government housing who might feel vulnerable to eviction if they were found to be on the wrong side of the city administration. Ganim campaign workers soliciting absentee ballots might not want to let such voters complete and return the ballots by themselves. Those campaign workers might want to help the voters complete and deliver their ballots.

All that would be illegal, but this is Bridgeport, which has become notorious for its absentee ballots without prompting alarm from state government, whose Democratic regime relies on Bridgeport for decisive pluralities in state elections.

Geter-Pataky has been inaccessible since the infamous video was disclosed and broadcast. She may fear criminal prosecution involving both the recent primary and the one in 2019. But as a city government employee and vice chairman of the Bridgeport Democratic City Committee, and as someone who is said to be devoted to the city as well as to the mayor, she might be thought to have an obligation to come clean fast.

All she has to do is answer elementary questions in public. Is that her in the video? What was she doing both inside and outside City Hall before dawn on the Tuesday before the primary? What was she putting into the absentee ballot box? If she was depositing completed absentee ballots, where did she get them? Were they provided by other Ganim campaign workers? If so, who were they and where did they get the ballots? And how is it racist to ask her such questions?

Of course the mayor could hasten accountability here too. As a city government employee, Geter-Pataky -- lately the greeter at City Hall, but placed on leave following disclosure of the video -- answers to him. He could put the questions to her himself and then report to the public. He also could be asked what he knows about his campaign’s absentee ballot operations. So could Gomes.

Failing such appearances by Geter-Pataky and the mayor, Gomes’ lawsuit seeking another primary and the chief state’s attorney’s investigation of Bridgeport’s absentee ballot practices probably won’t produce anything before the election on Nov. 7.

But would Bridgeport’s voters, having already elected Ganim mayor twice since he returned from a federal prison sentence for corruption during his long first stint in office, really care much if there were definitive findings before the election? Amid state government’s long indifference to the plight of their city, are they so demoralized that they think corruption is simply Bridgeport’s fate?

If they do, this may be one case where mere thinking indeed makes it so.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.