Ward Maps Changed; Voters Shuffled; Election Impact Unclear

When alders sat down for their August full board meeting on Monday night, Downtown Alder Eli Sabin represented the residents of the Dwight public housing complex George Crawford Manor.

By the time the alders rose from their seats at the meeting’s close less than an hour later, those hundred-plus George Crawford Manor tenants had a new representative: Hill Alder Ron Hurt.

That sudden change has left the secretary of the state’s office stumped so far as to whether or not new ward maps can legally apply when voters cast their ballots in September’s primary.

Without fanfare — or a public hearing — alders accelerated the implementation of new ward boundaries based on 2020 census demographics on Monday evening.

The new lines, approved by the full local legislature in May 2022 after a number of redistricting committee public meetings, were originally slated to take effect on Jan. 1, 2024 to coincide with the start of a new term for alders and other local politicians. However, on Monday, alders unanimously voted to have the map apply immediately. 

As a result, George Crawford Manor tenants — along with residents affected by the updated ward lines in nearly every neighborhood of the city — instantly received a new local legislator and polling place.

The St. Martin Townhomes at 200 Goffe St., for instance, transferred from Troy Streater’s Ward 21 to Frank Douglass’ Ward 2. The luxury apartment building at 360 State St. moved from Sabin’s Ward 7 to Carmen Rodriguez’s Ward 6. And the Prescott Bush elderly housing complex shifted from Streater’s Ward 21 to Tom Ficklin’s Ward 28. (To find out who your alder is as of Monday, look up your address on this updated map. As of Friday morning, the old map remained on the city’s website here.)

The accelerated ward map change was intended to give voters this fall a chance to elect people who would actually be representing them come January.

According to Amity/Westville Alder and Majority Leader Richard Furlow, if the new ward map’s effective date had remained January 2024, tenants at George Crawford Manor would have voted in a Ward 7 election this fall — only to be represented by a Ward 3 alder in January.

The ordinance amendment ​“lines up the elections with the redistricting,” said Furlow on Monday. Furlow said the intention is to allow residents to vote within the new ward lines, and at their new polling places, in both the Sept. 12 primary and the Nov. 7 general election.

But the alders’ decision on Monday is now raising both legal and logistical questions. City and state officials do not yet agree on where George Crawford Manor residents and others affected by ward changes will be voting in September.

Will Polling Places Change By September?

Although alders meant for the new ward map to take effect in time for the Sep. 12 primary election, Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas’ office is now looking into whether that timeline is legally possible.

According to state law (CGS§ 9 – 169), changes to municipal voting districts have to occur at least 90 days before an election. Alders amended the effective date of the ward map on Aug. 7, only 36 days before the Sep. 12 primary election.

A representative of the Secretary of State’s office told the Independent on Wednesday that this state statute may prohibit the new ward map from taking effect ahead of the primary. 

When asked about this potential roadblock, a Legislative Services staffer argued that the alders’ Monday vote did not conflict with state law. The staffer noted that the alders had drawn up and approved the new ward map in 2022, well ahead of the 90 day limit. Since alders merely changed the effective date of that map — and not the map itself — on Monday, the staff member maintained that the primary election can roll out according to new ward lines.

Shannel Evans, New Haven’s Democratic registrar of voters, confirmed on Thursday that her office has been planning to conduct the September election according to the new ward map.

City Spokesperson Lenny Speiller said that the Corporation Counsel and other departments in the Elicker administration were not consulted on or involved with the change in implementation.

By Friday morning, the Secretary of State’s office could not provide a definitive answer on whether the September primary can take place with new ward districts according to state law. 

“We are reviewing the information regarding the ward map changes in New Haven,” said the office’s spokesperson, Tara Chozet.

After initially agreeing to a follow-up interview, Furlow did not answer numerous calls from the Independent in time for the publication of this article.

When asked, the Secretary of State’s Office did not provide information in time for this article on how other towns in Connecticut implement new district maps.

When asked about the state’s process, Chozet referred the Independent to an FAQ page on the state legislature’s website, which wrote ahead of the legislature’s most recent redistricting process, ​“The Reapportionment Committee must complete its task by September 15, 2021. If it does not agree on a plan by that deadline, the Reapportionment Commission must agree upon a plan by November 30, 2021. The first general election held in the new districts will be in November 2022.”

Creating A Problem Or Fixing One?

According to the Legislative services staffer, the last time New Haven changed its ward map after the 2010 Census results, the new ward boundaries were finalized in 2012 and slated to become effective on January 1, 2013. The ward lines changed exactly halfway through the aldermanic term, well before the elections in the fall of 2013.

The staffer said that Monday’s ordinance amendment would correct the timeline originally planned for the post-2020 Census ward map to mirror the timeline in 2013 as much as possible. 

Meanwhile, Steve Mednick, a Connecticut lawyer specializing in governance who served as a New Haven alder in the 1980s, recalled being elected to local office after a new ward map had passed, but before it had been implemented. The ward lines used in the elections did not correspond to the ward lines in place when he took office.

“It was weird, because for the first two years of my [tenure as alder], I was serving in a ward that would no longer exist,” Mednick said. 

Without weighing in on any legal questions raised by the ordinance amendment, Mednick made the case that operating elections based on the most up-to-date ward lines is a matter of ensuring that everyone’s vote counts as equally as possible. 

“You have redistricting every ten years so that your districts reflect accurately the population,” he said. ​“We really try to have those districts conform to the concept of one person, one vote.”

Local elections watchdog and redistricting reform advocate Aaron Goode offered a different take — criticizing, in particular, the decision to change ward boundaries in the middle of a term rather than between terms.

“Changing the wards in the middle of a term — having alders represent constituents who didn’t actually elect them — I don’t understand why that works,” Goode said. ​“And it seems to me that it presents a number of practical, legal, and philosophical challenges.”

“I don’t see other towns doing that. It does raise some red flags to me,” added Goode, who runs the New Haven Votes Coalition. 

Goode (who stressed that he’s not a lawyer) suggested that the Registrars of Voters, as part of their ​“ministerial” powers, could have conducted fall 2023 elections based on a ward map set to take effect at the start of the next term in 2024.

“If what they’re doing is helping people be less confused in November and September, that’s great,” said Goode. ​“I worry that they’re actually exacerbating the confusion.”

As city and state officials hash out these questions, New Haveners whose alders changed this week can familiarize themselves with their new representatives here.

Correction: After the publication of this article, the Secretary of State’s office followed up on Friday evening to clarify that both the primary and general elections will take place according to the same ward map. The office is still determining which map will be used.