Samuel Hadelman Graphic
Number of voters moved to inactive status and added to rolls.
An annual sweep turbocharged with a new statewide tool has led the city’s registrars of voters to remove more than 10 times as many people from the active rolls than in previous years.
The 25,015 people removed from the active rolls in the first six months of 2017 can still vote this year and sign petitions for candidates. Their names will be removed permanently from the rolls if they don’t vote in any elections for another four years.
The more immediate impact of the sweep is that candidates petitioning their ways onto ballots for either the Sept. 12 Democratic Party primary or the Nov. 7 general election need to collect far fewer signatures of registered voters than in previous years. That’s because the number of required signatures is based on the number of active registered voters, either in a party (for the primary) or the electorate at large (for the general election). Mayoral, probate judge, and alder candidates are currently collecting those signatures in advance of an Aug. 9 deadline. Candidates for citywide offices need 1,872 validated signatures (or 5 percent of the newly reduced party active registry) to make the Democratic primary ballot and just 220 to make the general election ballot.
The registrars of voters office conducts a review of the voting rolls each year to locate people who have moved, failed to vote for years, or failed to return postcards confirming their registration.
This year for the first time it made use of the Electronic Registration Information Center (or ERIC), a database made available by the secretary of the state’s office. Twenty states plus Washington D.C. contribute to the database. Secretary of the state spokesman Tina Prakash described it as “a sophisticated and secure data-matching tool to improve the accuracy and efficiency of state voter registration systems” that enables states to “compare official data on eligible voters, including voter and motor vehicle registrations, U.S. Postal Service addresses, and Social Security death records in an effort to keep voter rolls more complete and up to date.”
New Haven Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans said her office undertook a more thorough check of the lists than in years past. In addition to using ERIC for the first time, it consulted the federal change of address registry, for instance.
Samuel Hadelman Graphic
Voters removed from the rolls.
The result: 15,698 Democrats, 885 Republicans, 8,224 unaffiliated voters, and 208 members of minor parties — a total of 25,015 people — were moved from “active” to “inactive” status, according to statistics compiled by the city’s IT department in response to a request from the Independent.
That compares to a total of 1,435 who were inactivated in all of 2016 and 2,486 in 2015.
Another 1,522 were taken off the voting rolls altogether for reasons such as moving. That compares to a total of 794 withdrawals in 2016 and 564 in 2015.
Deputy Democratic Registrar Liz DeMatteo said the inactivated and removed names are not mostly those of, say, Yale students who leave after four years. “It’s a wide assortment” of people across all parts of the city, DeMatteo said. They include “people who moved and didn’t notify us” and “people who registered to vote when Barack Obama came in” and never returned.
Meanwhile, the registrars have added a total of 2,114 new voters to the rolls so far in 2017. (That includes 900 Democrats, 107 Republicans, 1,070 unaffiliateds, and 8 minor-party members.) The city added 11,994 new voters in all of 2016, 3,301 in 2015.
Other Connecticut cities and towns began using ERIC in 2015 and 2016 and saw similar dramatic removals of voters from active status, according to Prakash. She said the numbers then leveled off in subsequent years.
“We would anticipate it leveling out in New Haven as well in the coming years, now that the registrars have performed this thorough canvass,” Prakash stated.
Samuel Hadelman Graphic
In general, based on rules in state and federal laws, voters are removed from active lists if they fail to vote in any two consecutive federal elections or any elections in between, and failed to return a postcard confirming they still live at their listed address, according to Prakash. If voters then fail to show up at the polls for another four years, they are permanently removed from the rolls.
According to the most recent available figures, the city now has a total of 54,216 active registered voters: 37,048 Democrats, 2,348 Republicans, 14,321 unaffiliateds, and 499 minor-party members.
Connecticut's regressive voting policies always surprise me. It's almost like we are living in Texas.