New Haven Poll Issues Prompt Complaints, Lines, Legal Questions

As a winding line of young, unregistered voters snaked around New Haven City Hall and the clock ticked toward 8 p.m. on election night, the city’s much-maligned registrars of voters had done something rare — brought together the Democrats and the Republicans, both of whom were contemplating taking them to court.

An attorney for Republican candidate Bob Stefanowski did file a last-minute motion seeking a tem- porary injunction to stop some of those Election Day registration votes — known as EDRs — from being counted, claiming the voters were illegally registered. Democrats meanwhile were contemplating asking a judge to extend polling hours so those same people could actually vote.

But the long lines at city hall were only part of what was a nightmare Election Day in the Elm City that has left many asking why city officials there can’t seem to get elections right, and has the American Civil Liberties Union contem-

plating a lawsuit against the city.

“New Haven was just a disaster,” said Herb Shepardson, the attorney who went to Hartford court for the Republicans seeking an injunction to stop the voting.

“They were driving machines around to polling locations and at one point they planned to take bags of votes to a central location to count them,” Shepardson said.

Shepardson said given the results of the election, he will not pursue his court case. A judge had scheduled a hearing for Friday on the Republicans' motion to review EDR votes made between 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. on election night. But while the Republicans are dropping their case, the ACLU is considering its options, according to Connecticut legal director Dan Barrett.

“If you are an eligible voter who traveled to New Haven to vote and were turned away, the ACLU of Connecticut would like to hear about your experience,” Barrett said.

“New Haven's repeated failure to staff its polling places with enough workers to ensure people's rights to vote is practically inviting a lawsuit. The long lines and discouraged voters we saw today were a completely avoidable situation,” Barrett said.

For some reason the problem of wet ballots gumming up voting machines im- pacted New Haven more than any other town. Election officials brought in new machines at some of the city's 40 polling places, and at others they stuffed ballots into bags with the intention of driving them to a central location to be hand-counted, before someone realized that might not be the way to preserve the sanctity of the vote.

Eventually the wet ballots were counted by hand which is why New Haven was the last municipality to tally its votes while also being one of the most closely watched because as a Democratic stronghold it swung the election to Ned Lamont's favor.

“We know that people left when they announced it could take up to four hours to get registered,” attorney William Bloss said of voters waiting in line. Bloss was representing the state Democratic Party.

“We discussed bringing a court action against the registrars and ask the judge to extend voting hours because it probably would have meant another couple-hundred votes,” Bloss said.

He said this is the third straight election that the city has had issues with same-day voter registrations.

“Why were two people in charge of literally hundreds of people trying to sign up is a question that someone needs to answer for,” Bloss said. “You would think a college town would be better prepared.”

Wednesday afternoon, it was difficult to get New Haven officials, those who would talk on the subject, to explain why conditions that were present in all of the cities — rain-soaked voters, wet ballots, heavy voter turnouts, and long lines to register on Election Day — ended up paralyzing only New Haven's vote tally.

Delores Knight, the Republican registrar, said her work kept her in the office all Tuesday night, and she referred questions to her Democratic counterpart, Shannel Evans, who declined through co-workers to answer any questions. Evans and some moderators were still hand-counting ballots Wednesday afternoon, and she couldn't be disturbed, the co-workers said.

Liz DeMatteo, the deputy Democratic registrar along with another deputy, were the two employees using the state's database to verify names of people who were registering on Election Day. She said that training is required to use the database “and it is hard to find the volunteers willing to take the training.”

They are required to look the person up in the state voting records to make sure they aren't registered in another town and if they are to contact that other registrar to ensure the person hasn't already voted there.

DeMatteo said that after moisture from the dampened ballots fouled machines at some polling places, “we had to get back-up machines out, and that took time.” She said that as a result, moderators were late getting their vote counts back to the office. In turn, there were delays in counting the absentee ballots.

She said that eventually the staff, which includes many poll workers who are only paid a stipend for the day, had to rest for an hour or so to recuperate.

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill Wednesday acknowledged the situation in New Haven on election night “wasn't ideal.”

“The big concern was getting people actually registered not actually voting,” Merrill said. “So in an effort to get through this very long line, and in fairness to locals, it was enormous turnout for EDR and many were first-time voters who had never registered before in Connecticut.”

New Haven had 657 people signed up through same-day registration. The other town that Republicans questioned was Mansfield, where UConn is located, which had long lines and 687 people register on Election Day.

Merrill said the lines in New Haven were slow but moving until the the very end when there were about100 people who they were afraid weren't going to get registered so they “basically rushed the system a little bit and while they all did register and fill out registration cards they didn't have time to get them into the system.”

“They were treated like provisional ballots, which I believe they sort of were. I mean the effort was a good one, a little unorthodox, but the effort was to get these young people to be able to vote,” Merrill said. “And they are right. They felt it was their right to vote. They were in line and they wanted to vote, and for my money I would say we have to do everything we can to let them vote.”