Mail-In Voting Applications Start Pouring In

Applications are flying into 200 Orange St. for absentee ballots for the Nov. 3 general election, with the city well on track to break a record for mail-in voting.

That word comes from City-Town Clerk Michael Smart.

Smart said Wednesday that his office has already received between 7,000 and 9,000 applications so far for absentee ballots. And the wave is just beginning.

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, all voters this year were mailed applications for absentee ballots. Voters have until Nov. 1 to fill out and return the applications to the local clerk’s office either by mail or at a drop-box outside the 200 Orange St. government office building in order to receive a ballot in time for the election.

The clerk’s office received around 9,000 requests for absentee ballots for the Aug. 11 presidential primary, according to Smart. Around 5,000 voters then filled out the ballots and sent them in, he said.

He said he anticipates that this fall, his office will receive double the 14,000 applications it received for the 2016 presidential general election.

“They’re coming in by the stream. People are using the ballot boxes like crazy,” Smart said.

Clerks statewide are dealing with the flood of requests already starting to come in. Secretary of the State spokesperson Gabe Rosenberg said right now is the crunch time for the offices since voters have just received the applications. So while applications will continue coming in through the end of October, the bulk are expected now.

“There’s no doubt this is going to be a record,” Rosenberg predicted.

State Pumps Out Lists

Amid the rush, said GOP State Chair J.R. Romano (pictured), his party is struggling to catch up with people planning to vote by mail, so it can make the case to vote Republican.

Romano expressed concern this week after New Haven Ward 20 Republican Co-Chair Oliver Augustin called the clerk’s office seeking a list of absentee ballot requests to review.

“The office staff gave me the runaround by saying they didn’t have a list (+5000 requests came back and they didn’t organize any of it yet) then when I asked to check the requests and make the list myself, they said that City Hall was closed even for appointments,” Augustin wrote to Romano.

“They don’t want to provide us a list— that’s fine. But we should at least be able to inspect” the applications with names of the voters, Romano subsequently argued in a conversation with the Independent. ​“We want to talk to them.”

Smart said Wednesday his office didn’t provide the list — because no list yet exists. His staff is in the process of drawing up lists of ballot applications.

Once ballots start getting mailed to voters on Oct. 1, his office will compile weekly lists of requesters, as it has in the past, Smart said. He promised that if Romano or anyone else wants to view the lists, he will arrange to bring them downstairs to the outdoor entrance of 200 Orange St. for review. (The building itself is closed to the public because of Covid-19.)

Meanwhile, Rosenberg said the secretary of the state’s office has been making available real-time lists of all absentee requests statewide. Every two days, the office releases all the latest names that have been entered into the statewide voter database. The national Republican Party as well as state-based party operatives are among those receiving updated lists every two days, Rosenberg said.

Smart said the New Haven office is immediately entering the info on applications into the state database the same day the applications come in.