Next year won’t be a year for vacations for registrars of voters. It’s looking like the 2020 presidential election will have one of the highest voter turnouts in history.
On this week’s episode of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities’ “The Municipal Voice,” we brought on Laurie Brangi and Patty Jackson-Marshall, the Republican and Democrat registrars of voters for the Town of North Haven, to speak about the underappreciated position of running democracy’s most crucial function, the election.
Just days after the 2018 municipal elections, both Brangi and Jackson-Marshall were planning out the 2020 election. With 2016 seeing a voter turnout in the high 80s, they both immediately agreed that next year was going to bring even more people to the polls.
This is in stark contrast to the 2018 elections in which only 30 percent of registered voters came out to vote. This is largely due to the fact that municipal elections always see a drop in voter turnout. But also, First Selectman Mike Freda was running unopposed, so as the guests theorized, people didn’t feel the pull to get out there.
But voting is important: The episode started with a reminder from Thomas Jefferson that we do not have a government by majority, but a government by a majority of those that participate.
Putting together a voter registration list, a duty that falls to registrars, is a list of all the people that are willing to participate. And while much of the holding of records is now digital — residents can now register online — maintaining that list is still a “day-to-day” job, which includes cross referencing lists from the DMV, and even checking the local newspapers for obituaries.
Once you are registered to vote, you are always registered to vote. From their experience the registrars seem to have come across individuals who register to vote every time they go to the DMV. But as a matter of fact, being found in the obituaries is the only way for someone to be removed from the voter registration rolls without the consent of the voter.
“It’s against the law to remove someone,” Brangi said, even in the case of a person moving out of town. They will address that case in their individual canvas, but that voter will only go into the inactive roll after four years with no attempts to vote nor a response to the annual canvass.
All of this hard work culminates in the elections that allow us to make democracy happen. Both registrars emphasized that elections are not just one day a year, but a yearlong job that makes this essential function happen.
