EDR Hums Along This Time — So Haley Copes Gets To Vote

Haley Copes hustled to cast a ballot after all this year, and not repeat her 2016 mistake. Fortunately for her, City Hall was ready this time for last-minute ​“Election Day” voters.

Copes passed on voting in 2016, in part because she isn’t the most political of people, in part because she was so confident that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump.

Four years later, the 27-year-old filmmaker and bartender hustled on Tuesday from polling place to polling place to polling place — including the city’s same-day registration venue downtown — just to make sure she had her electoral say this time around.

Copes was one of several hundred local voters to cast their ballot Tuesday as of 1:30 p.m. at the Election Day Registration (EDR) setup at City Hall. That’s where locals can register to vote, or change their registration to New Haven, and cast their ballot all on the same day, in the same place.

The EDR system — bulked up this year after disasters in previous years — was humming, with no long lines or major confusion. The longest wait time, during a 4 p.m. rush, was about an hour for 15 – 20 people, but that was it. The combination of a surge of absentee ballots and a dearth of Yale students (many of whom stayed off campus this semester due to the pandemic) helped alleviate the crush from other years. (Read more about that later in this story.)

Standing at the top of the steps in the municipal building’s second-floor atrium, Copes said that she made the extra effort to cast her ballot this year because she regretted not voting in 2016.

“Four years ago, I literally did not think Trump was going to win. I kind of thought it was a joke,” she said about the real estate developer-turned-reality show host-turned-Republican candidate’s campaign. ​“I was just so shocked when he won.”

This wasn’t her first time voting ever. Copes said she voted for former President Barack Obama in 2012. But a mix of not following politics and skepticism of Trump’s odds in 2016 saw her drop off the electoral map. Until this year.

“I learned about the importance of American rights and … holy shit, we need a change.” She said that Trump’s presidency has stoked division within her family, and has had her re-engaging with politics for the first time in years. ‘“I know what’s right and wrong,” she said. And voting against Trump was her way of actively participating in what she thinks is right.

But that vote didn’t come easy.

Copes, who is from Waterbury, said she tried to register to vote online in late October. She was unfamiliar enough with the practice that she wasn’t sure if her registration had gone through.

So she said she printed out a piece of paper showing her registration Tuesday morning and went to Hillhouse High School, the polling place she believed was closest to her apartment.

Copes said the polling place volunteers told her at Hillhouse that she was in the wrong place. She had to go to Edgewood School to vote. So she got in her car, and headed over to Edgewood School.

Once at Edgewood, Copes said, the polling place volunteers said that her name wasn’t on the list of registered voters in the district. So they directed her to City Hall to confirm her registration and cast her ballot there.

So she travelled downtown, visited with the EDR team, confirmed her registration, and finally filled out and submitted her ballot.

“I’m definitely getting a drink after this,” she joked.

But her ballot was in, and, proudly wearing an ​“I Voted” sticker with a picture of Norwalk suffragette Elsie Hill, Copes headed down the steps and back out into the early afternoon sun.

EDR Head: ​“I Love The System”

While Copes spent over an hour trying to find out exactly where she could vote (just like Westville voter Naszier Robinson earlier in the day), one hiccup she didn’t experience was an extraordinarily long and stressful line at City Hall’s EDR.

Which, based on previous even-yeared elections, is a bit of an exception for that often-fraught, same-day registration process.

In recent elections, an understaffed EDR has been swamped by mostly Yale students looking to change their registration last-minute so that they can vote in their temporary hometown.

As of 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, the same-day setup seemed to be running pretty smoothly.

EDR Moderator Dominic Tammaro said that roughly 300 people had registered and voted at EDR so far. He said he did not have an exact number because, unlike at the other 33 polling stations around the city, the EDR team does not keep a running tally of exactly how many votes have been cast over the course of the day.

Instead, the EDR team will bring their bins of cast ballots over to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in the basement of the municipal office building at 200 Orange St. after the last newly registered voter has voted after 8 pm. That’s where they’ll separate the ballots by district and tabulate the votes. They won’t at that time need to check if the voters have already cast their ballots elsewhere, Tammaro said, because that double-check is completed when a voter first arrives at EDR to register and before they even fill out a ballot.

Tammaro did confirm that, unlike in previous years, there have been no two-hour waits, and no complaints from voters looking to register and cast their ballot on the same day without spending hours upon hours in City Hall.

He credited better outreach this year about the EDR process, as well as fewer Yale students on campus because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He also said that the 25 staff members registering new voters at 20 new computer terminals on the second floor of City Hall, as well as the eight EDR workers helping newly registered voters cast their ballots in the Aldermanic Chambers across the hall, have provided sufficient manpower to keep the operation running apace.

“I love the system,” Tammaro said about why he has been volunteering on Election Day in New Haven since the early years of the DeLieto administration in the early 1980s. ​“The system is very important,” and needs to work well in order for people to feel truly connected with and engaged with politics.

Tammaro said he grew up in the Annex, where his father Daniel served as an alder in the 1950s. His dad was a Republican when first elected, Tammaro said, and then changed his party affiliation to become a Democrat when DeLieto came to power.

He said he has volunteered as a pollworker in just about every district in the city over the years, and served as co-moderator for EDR last year. This year is his first time helming the EDR ship.

Outside of City Hall, newly registered voter Ni’ya Oliver (pictured with her grandmother, Darrin Carter) confirmed that voting through EDR went pretty smoothly. And, having recently turned 18 years old, she was proud to be able to cast her ballot in this year’s election.

“It’s an important election,” she said. ​“With all that’s going on, we just need to come together.”