Fixes Floated For The Big Vote

Michael Smart has an idea for how the state can better navigate the next flood of absentee ballots coming our way on Nov. 3.

Smart, New Haven’s city-town clerk, got the idea while spending four days rushing back and forth from a voter info table outside the Hall of Records to cars at curbside to help thousands of people figure out how to cast those ballots for this week’s presidential primary.

If the state could send voters their absentee ballots a few more weeks before the election, maybe this crush of confusion and resubmitted ballots can be avoided in the general election, Smart suggested.

Then he hopped back to help a driver pulled over on Orange Street figure out how to fill out her absentee ballot.

“Write down ​‘Covid-19” right at the bottom,” he advised here. ​“See where it says primary?”

Smart’s office staff worked all day through the weekend and into the night during the week to help people get second ballots because first ones didn’t arrive; or figure out how to work the process. They weren’t alone. All over the state local officials conducted their first elections with massive absentee balloting, due to expanded eligibility prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Around 300,000 voters statewide requested absentee ballots — 15 times as many as in the 2018 primary, according to secretary of the state spokesperson Gabe Rosenberg. (It’s not known yet precisely how many turned in those ballots.)

A lot went right: A record number of people were able to cast absentee ballots and avoid the risk of contracting Covid-19. And others got to vote safely in person thanks to the reduced polling-station demand and poll workers’ preventive protocols.

But in the view of Smart and other local officials, much went wrong — and they want state officials to fix some of the problems before the even greater number of people cast absentee ballots in the Nov. 3 presidential contest. At least 2.1 million registered voters will get absentee ballot applications in the mail for that election; depending on how many new people register before then, the number could climb higher. (Then voters who want to vote by absentee return the application, on which they can cite concern about Covid-19, in order to receive an actual ballot.)

State legislators would need to alter the law when they meet in coming weeks in special session to allow for an earlier mailing of absentee ballots. Under current law the state would send the ballots out Oct. 3.

New Haven Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans suggested that the state allow local officials to start tabulating absentee ballots when they arrive rather than wait until the day of the election. That, too, would require a change in state law.

“If they started earlier, that will help a lot,” Evans said this week while immersed in the days-long round-the-clock ballot tabulation. Other states, such as Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, and Oregon, start their absentee tabulation in advance of in-person voting day.

State Senate President Martin Looney of New Haven said he and his colleagues are open to considering legislating those and other ideas to improve the absentee ballot process. He argued that perhaps a bigger problem was that the vendor hired by the secretary of the state to mail out ballots sent them late. (Then, when Tropical Storm Isaias hit, the delivery of those ballots was delayed further.)

“I have no problem” with Smart’s and Evans’ suggestions, Looney told the Independent. ​“It’s something we’re exploring. The problem this year was not so much the deadline; it was the fact that the vendor didn’t meet the deadline. I hope they will not use that vendor again.”

He added that the slowdowns at the U.S. Postal Service makes the issue even more pressing.

Secretary of the state spokesperson Rosenberg disagreed with Looney’s criticism of the vendor’s delayed mailing out of ballots: He said the secretary of the state asked the vendor to wait three days beyond the original deadline out of concern about potential routing problems for the ​“40 different styles” of ballot being sent out.

“We wanted to make sure we got the correct ballot to the right person,” Rosenberg said. ​“We hit pause to just to make sure.”

The office learned from that experience and doesn’t expect to need to do that again in November, he said.

Unlike other states, Connecticut had never conducted a massive vote-by-mail operation before, Rosenberg noted. And this first attempt occurred amid a pandemic and a devastating tropical storm.

Given all that, this week went quite well, he argued: ​“Were there hiccups? Sure. But there was an historic election that you have to classify as a success. … In the face of a once in a century pandemic, an historic storm, power outages across the state, and delayed mail delivery, we got tens of thousands of people to vote safely and conveniently. They were able to use a drop-box without contact with other people and be able to bypass the post office. We had extremely safe polling places because so much of the demand was placed on absentee ballots.”

Hamden Town Clerk Vera Morrison reported that, in addition to the extra work necessitated by the late mailing of ballots, a change in the ballot mailings themselves made her crew’s job harder this year. Voters had to place their envelope with their ballots inside a second outer envelope that had no identifying code to help the clerk’s office sort them once they arrived in the office. ​“So in addition to what we were doing, we had to open thousands of outer envelopes” in order to sort the right ballots in the right piles, she said.

Rosenberg said the post office informed him that its machines could more quickly sort the mailings and get them out faster without that identifying code on the outer envelope. ​“It’s a trade off — once it arrives it makes it a little more difficult to open the envelope to get the information. But it makes it arrive faster,” Rosenberg said. He added that the state added a new bar code to the absentee ballots that helps local clerks scan the ballots more quickly.

All that said, the secretary of the state’s office will be meeting with the statewide associations of clerks and registrars to revisit this week’s primary and to come up with improvements for November’s Main Event.

Sam Gurwitt contributed reporting.