Election Day in Connecticut will be different this year as the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated changes to the voting process.
It’s why people have been casting absentee ballots in record numbers, as Gov. Ned Lamont and Secretary of the State Denise Merrill sought to expand absentee voting provisions in the name of public health. It’s why those who vote in person will see socially distanced lines, masks on everyone’s faces and Plexiglass between poll workers and voters, among other precautions. And it’s why counting votes will likely take longer than usual.
“There really is no frame of reference with which to form expectations as there has never been an election like this in Connecticut history, and every town will be different,” Secretary of the State spokesman Gabe Rosenberg said.
Municipalities throughout the state are required to report preliminary results by midnight on election night, Rosenberg said. Those numbers would include results tallied from polling places and absentee ballots up to that point. Final results must be submitted within 96 hours, a change from the usual 48, “but most towns will not require that long,” Rosenberg added.
At a news conference held outside the State Capitol building Monday, Merrill said more than 600,000 absentee ballots have been returned by Connecticut voters, indicating a voter turnout rate already hovering around 25% and dwarfing the total of 125,000 absentee votes in the 2016 election.
During the same news conference, Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut President Sue Larsen also mentioned the possibility of delayed results. She and others have made the point that large towns and cities will be more susceptible to delays than small towns. On Monday, she said towns will begin counting absentee ballots at 6 a.m. and continue until the count is finished.
“Some of the small towns will be finished on election night. Medium-to-large towns and cities are probably going to do some of the counting on Wednesday to ensure every absentee ballot was counted,” Larsen said. “We’re also going to make sure that if somebody did go to the polls and drop an absentee ballot in the ballot box, that isn’t counted twice. We’ll have a verification process at the end of the night to make sure every voter gets one vote.”
Waterford Town Clerk David Campo said he thinks the town will be done counting Tuesday night unless an influx of absentee ballots come in on Election Day.
“We expect to be done that night except for the ones that come in that day, we’re planning the next day to count them,” Campo said. “We should be done by Wednesday at midnight. I think a lot of towns of comparable size will be doing it somewhat the same way, but they may not have the staff to do it quickly.”
Campo said in his town, the inner envelope, which contains a voter’s submitted ballot, will not be removed from the outer envelope until the counting begins. In some municipalities, the outer envelopes will be opened ahead of time to verify the inner envelope is signed in a effort to get a jump on the counting.
Campo said the new statute allowing the separation of inner and outer envelopes before Election Day is mostly for places like Hartford, which has been bombarded with absentee ballots.
“We’re not opening our envelopes prior to Election Day, though some towns are. On Monday night, we’re just counting absentee ballots to make sure the total count is correct,” Campo said. “Most of the other towns around here are doing the same thing we’re doing. They’re going to start Election Day.”
In Stonington, Democratic Registrar of Voters Peggy Cawley said the counting of absentee ballots is tentatively scheduled to begin in a partitioned section of Town Hall on Nov. 3 at about 10 a.m. She said the counting could begin earlier in the morning if she and Republican Registrar Karen Linehan feel more time will be needed to complete the work.
After the ballots are opened and stacked, Cawley said 12 counters, six pairs of one Democrat and one Republican, will then feed them into a machine that counts and allocates their vote to the district where the voter resides.
Cawley said she expects that all absentee ballots will be counted on Tuesday unless there is a last-minute onslaught, which she said could push the counting into the next day.
“But we’re trying to avoid that,” she said.
Mara Suttmann-Lea, a professor of government at Connecticut College, said that while Connecticut, a Democratic stronghold, likely won’t have a competitive race for president, some state-level House and Senate races will be close.
“As registrars process much larger volumes of mail ballots, we may expect, though this is not guaranteed, that some of these closer races won’t be known on election night,” Suttmann-Lea said. “Whatever numbers are being reported in these races on election night may not be indicative of the final results if there are large swaths of mail-in ballots.”
This is Connecticut’s first year allowing all people who would like to vote absentee to do so; anyone can cite COVID-19 as the reason they’re voting absentee.
“Connecticut is a state, unlike others that have had no-excuse absentee voting or all-mail elections for years, that does not have what I would call the ‘institutional grooves’ for processing large volumes of mail-in ballots,” Suttmann-Lea said. “It’s not that the state has not had excuse-based absentee voting, but processing large volumes of mail-in ballots is something that is new, and there is a learning curve.”
Groton expects final results around 10 p.m. Tuesday, though this year is difficult to predict. Old Lyme Town Clerk Vicki Urbowicz said she believes the town will be done counting votes by the end of Tuesday night. The outer and inner envelopes of absentee ballots were separated on Saturday, Urbowicz said, “so we’ve gotten a head start on things.”
The New London registrar’s office noted that there is a slim possibility absentee ballot counting continues into Wednesday. In Norwich, absentee ballot counts will not be announced until all absentee ballots are counted, which could take all night on Election Day or into the next day.
If a city or town uses just one machine to handle all absentee ballots, results from that machine cannot be produced until all absentee ballots have been fed into the machine, according to Rosenberg. The machine must be closed out before results are tallied.
In East Lyme, Democratic Registrar of Voters Wendi Sims said last week that five teams of two people each will be counting absentee ballots throughout the day Tuesday. The town clerk will pull ballots out of the absentee ballot drop-box during the day and bring them to the registrars.
"We will count all of the absentee ballots on the day of the election," Sims said, saying the process would not continue into Wednesday. She expects to have results from in-person voting in East Lyme by 8:30 p.m.
Republican Registrar Mary Smith said they've had "great turnout for people wanting to work the polls. That's been unbelievable."
In addition, to the 10 people counting absentee ballots, Sims said the registrars expanded checkers in each polling place and have dedicated teams for curbside voting. She said curbside voting was very popular in the referendum on Oct. 1, so they've revamped how they're conducting it.
In terms of learning about how to run an election in a pandemic, Smith said "it was to our advantage to have the referendum."
President Donald Trump has repeatedly made the claim that voter fraud will be an issue in the election. Town registrars and clerks throughout Connecticut have said voter fraud is of minimal concern and occurs very rarely.
Day Staff Writers Joe Wojtas, Claire Bessette, Kimberly Drelich, Greg Smith and Erica Moser contributed to this report.
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What to expect on Election Day in Connecticut - theday.com
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