Paul Bass Photo
Stephen Wizner thought he got his long-awaited chance Thursday to cast an absentee ballot for Joe Biden — until he looked at the envelope he was about to mail.
Wizner (pictured) is one of over 11,000 New Haveners (and counting) who have requested absentee ballots for the Nov. 3 general election. At 82 years old, he didn’t want potentially to expose himself to Covid-19 by voting in person.
He was enthusiastic about voting in the general election. He was among the first wave of New Haveners to receive their actual absentee ballots in the mail this week; his arrived at his Westville home on Wednesday afternoon. Thursday morning, he filled it out, then prepared to slip it into the envelope provided for mailing it to the City Town Clerk’s Office.
That’s when Wizner noticed that that envelope identified the ballot as coming from a different voter, from a different neighborhood: one Gregory Alain Huber.
Wizner, a professor emeritus at Yale Law School, felt disappointed —and “outraged.”
“It seems to me a lot of people wouldn’t notice” the error, he said. “I’m worried that too many of these votes might not be counted. It’s so important to vote in this election.”
He also expressed concern that errors like this, even if innocently committed, might contribute to efforts by President Donald Trump to discredit the results of the election.
Over in the Prospect Hill neighborhood, Gregory Alain Huber (pictured) returned home from a bike ride with his family Thursday afternoon and opened the absentee ballot that had arrived at his home.
“Look!” he called out to his wife. “I got somebody else’s absentee ballot. It’s Steve Wizner’s!”
It turned out Huber knows Wizner: Wizner was among a group of professors who took Hubert to dinner at the Union League in 1999 to woo him to take a job as a political science professor at Yale. Huber took the job, and is still here. (File under, “New Haven = Small Town.”)
Huber — who chairs Yale’s poli sci department and whose recent publications have explored “Local demographic changes and US presidential voting, 2012 to 2016,” “The Policy Basis of Measured Partisan Animosity in the United States” and “Partisan Bias in Factual Beliefs about Politics” — had already been concerned about whether absentee balloting would work well in this election. He said he had contacted the secretary of the state’s office to look into the issue.
Upon receiving the wrong ballot Thursday, his concerns were renewed.
“I’m not surprised this would happen” given that Connecticut is conducting a far greater exercise in voting by mail than ever before.
“The question is: If I vote with Steve Wizner’s ballot,” and if Wizner were then to show up at his polling station on Nov. 3, he then wouldn’t get to vote, noted Huber, who teaches American politics.
And the bigger question: How widespread is this error?
He and Wizner weren’t the only ones to receive incorrect ballots in New Haven.
Huber sent a message to a neighborhood listserv after receiving his ballot Thursday, asking if others had also gotten the wrong ones.
Huber’s mother-in-law, Susan Simon, for instance, received an absentee ballot this week intended for a Fair Haven woman named Kiara llize Jimenez.
Wizner’s wife Rachel received a ballot intended for a woman in the Dwight neighborhood named Victoria Vebell.
Vebell (pictured) hasn’t yet received a ballot in the mail. She’s eager to get it. The day she received the application for the ballot, she walked to the government office building at 200 Orange St. to turn it in. This week she attended a Dwight Community Management Team meeting, at which she pressed a local elections official about when she’d receive the actual ballot.
“My daily prayer,” she said Thursday, “is: Please God. Make Trump and the Republicans go away.”
Smart Vows 24-Hour Remedy
Michael Smart helps a voter figure out how to vote by absentee in the August presidential primary.
City Town Clerk Michael Smart told the Independent Thursday that so far he has received a handful of complaints about people receiving absentee ballots intended for different voters.
He urged anyone receiving the wrong ballot to call his office at (203) 946‑8349. Smart promised to get new ballots to people within 24 hours.
Since the surge of absentee ballot requests this summer because of the pandemic, Smart’s five-person staff has been working hard to explain the rules to people and help them vote. They set up extra-hour outdoor sign-up events; Smart spent hours there helping people complete forms and drop them into boxes set up outside the 200 Orange St. government office building.
“We’re not flawless,” Smart said. “If you think there’s a mistake, give us a call.”
His office has already received over 11,000 requests for absentee ballots for the general election, with thousands more expected. It has so far mailed out some 5,000 ballots to voters, Smart said.
Thanks to an infusion of $93,000 from the state, Smart is temporarily beefing up his staff to handle the flood of applications. So far he has brought on another nine workers this week, with six more expected next week.
The Right Envelopes?
Another voter contacted the Independent with a different concern. It also concerned that interior envelope that arrives with the ballots, and in which voters are supposed to mail back their completed ballots— and whether the voter would be breaking the law by mailing it in.
The envelope this voter received directs voters to sign their names to attest, “under the penalties of false statement,” that they’re voting absentee for a legally approved reason:
“1) my active service in the armed forces;
“2) my absence from the town in which I am eligible to vote during all of the hours of voting;
“3) my illness or physical disability;
“4) the tenets of my religion which forbid secular activity on the day of the primary, election or referendum; or
“5) my duties as a primary, election or referendum official.”
No mention of Covid-19 as a reason.
This reporter discovered that his absentee ballot, also received this week, contained the same inner envelope (pictured) with those five listed reasons.
Secretary of the State spokesman Gabe Rosenberg told the Independent that his office had sent all municipal clerks new interior envelopes to use for absentee ballots in the general election. Those new envelopes added an option for concerns about Covid-19. He said his office directed clerks to use the new ones instead of the old versions of the envelopes.
“We spent millions of federal dollars on all of us this stuff [to help local officials prepare for the flood of mail-in ballots], including buying new materials for everyone in the state. It would be nice if they use them,” Rosenberg said. He said his office delivered the new envelopes to New Haven on Sept. 9.
That said, he assured voters in New Haven that their votes will definitely count and be legal if sent back, even if mailed in with the old interior envelopes. That’s because a gubernatorial order allowed people to vote by absentee ballot this year out of concern about contracting Covid-19, and the state Supreme Court’s chief justice upheld that permission after a Republican court challenge.
New Haven Clerk Smart said his office was using the old envelopes for the first batch of absentee ballots because the new ones hadn’t arrived yet. He said it is mailing the new ones from here on out.
Wow! Important article.
Time for folks of both parties to ward off Trump's attempts to destroy our democracy.
Put on your masks, disinfect yourself with sanitizer on every exposed area, and vote in person.