Election Moderator Q: Where’s Our Raise?

A pay-raise dispute led a longtime local polling place moderator to City Hall — not to oversee an election, but to criticize New Haven’s top elections officials for allegedly failing to live up to past promises.

That critique came to light Thursday during a public workshop hosted by the Board of Alders City Services and Environmental Policy (CSEP) committee in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.

The first item on the aldermanic committee’s agenda Thursday was a so-called ​“workshop” with the city’s registrars of voters to get an update on the upcoming general election on Nov. 8. 

Neither Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans nor Republican Registrar of Voters Marlene Napolitano attended the meeting. 

Instead, Evans sent a two-page writeup to CSEP Committee Chair and East Rock Alder Anna Festa in which she apologized for not being able to make it to the meeting because of ​“short notice along with personal reasons.” Evans also provided in that letter written answers to the committee’s questions about the upcoming election, and rebuttals to complaints about pay and training put forward by some election moderators. (See more on that below.)

One of the moderators whose complaints had made their way into the alders’ initial questions of Evans and Napolitano did attend the meeting.

That moderator was George J. Gillin, Jr.

Gillin told the committee alders that he has worked as a Democratic election moderator — responsible for overseeing the operations of a given polling place on primary and general election days — at locations all across New Haven since 2008. A retired former rubber and chemical industry worker, Gillin said that he’s spent the past few years’ worth of elections working at the Atwater Senior Center polling place in Fair Haven.

He claimed on Thursday night that he and other moderators had not received the $100 per-primary raise that they were promised by the Registrar of Voters back in 2019.

Gillin told the committee alders that the pay raise was explicitly promised to moderators, as well as poll workers, at a mandatory meeting on June 12, 2019. Evans and Napolitano were both present at this meeting, according to Gillin.

A second longtime local election moderator, Paul Chambers, testified after Gillin on Thursday. He said that he too had not received the raise he was promised and lamented that the registrars had not come to the meeting to address this, even as he added that he has ​“always had a good relationship” with the registrars’ office.

In her letter to the alders, which can be read in full here, Evans responded to a question about a lack of a pay raise for moderators by saying that she would tell Festa ​“the same thing I told the one moderator who asked and also brought to your attention” this matter. She then quoted directly from her response to that other moderator by writing:

“I am aware that most moderators were paid $400.00,” Evans wrote. ​“A few years ago when you brought it to my attention at a meeting that moderators were paid $400.00 I, at that time, stated due to us not warning everyone ahead of time that primaries going forward would be $400.00 so we gave the moderators $500.00 (one time deal). As Covid-19 approached we increased pay for hazard pay. We went back to our pre covid-19 standard pay which is $400.00 for primaries and $500.00 for general elections. Thank you for reaching out and I hope this clears up anything that was misunderstood.”

Also at Thursday’s committee meeting, Gillin alleged that the registrars had deducted pay for clerical errors without presenting any specific evidence of those errors, and that poll workers have received inadequate training. In her email to the committee alders, Evans responded by writing that ​“the only time there is a deduction is if someone shows up late or leaves early.” She said that poll workers and moderators have in fact received additional training.

Gillin added during the meeting that clerical errors are bound to happen, given the immense amount of municipal, state, and federal rules and regulations that election workers must be aware of. He also said that local election workers are given inadequate training. (Evans disputed this claim as well in her letter, writing that election workers have indeed received additional training in recent years.)

Gillin’s final complaint Thursday night was that moderators have no means of appealing their loss of pay. He said that no one in the registrars’ office was ever disrespectful or impolite, but rather used what he called ​“subtle intimidation” by not answering when moderators called about the raise. In her email to alders, Evans said, ​“This is false information. In addition, moderators as well as poll workers are all provided debriefing sheets to express anything to us along with phone calls.” 

“I don’t think this will affect the upcoming election,” Gillin told the Independent after Thursday’s meeting when asked about his bevy of concerns about pay and training. He said that moderators are dedicated to their jobs and understand the responsibility that they have to ​“get the job done, to make sure every eligible voter can vote.”

Gillin presented a wide set of requests to the alders that he thinks would improve working conditions for moderators. Those included providing back pay for the elections in which moderators were not given the $100 raise, paying moderators for required pre-election meetings and tests, eliminating pay deductions for clerical errors, providing lunch and free parking for moderators, and streamlining the process of reporting election results.