New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
State says absentee voting system is sound
STAMFORD – “Sorry, you can’t vote.”
To Jo-Anne Consiglio, they were fighting words.
“What are you saying?” she asked the worker at the polling place where she went on the afternoon of Aug. 11 to cast her ballot in the presidential primaries.
Consiglio, 77, pulled out her voter registration card, which she has carried in her wallet for decades. The poll worker eyeballed it.
“You still can’t vote,” he said. “You’re not on our list.”
Consiglio told him she’s been on the voting list in her town, North Branford, for 53 years, so it made no sense that she was suddenly off. He sent her over to the poll monitor, who gave her a form.
After she filled it out, the monitor said, “Thank you. You can go.”
“I am not leaving this building until I vote,” Consiglio said.
The monitor called town hall, where he learned that Consiglio was, in fact, on the voter rolls in the registrar’s office. In an apparent clerical error, her name somehow fell off the list that was sent to her polling place.
So Consiglio voted. But she isn’t leaving it there.
No time to be left out
With the Trump vs. Biden presidential election – expected to draw record turnout – fast approaching, Consiglio wants fellow voters to be on guard.
“This is not a time for complacency,” she said. “I’m afraid what happened to me is the tip of an iceberg. How many people were told they couldn’t vote and just walked out?”
Consiglio said she’s concerned about absentee balloting, projected to hit an all-time high on Nov. 3 as Connecticut voters seek to avoid long lines and COVID-19 exposure at polling places.
“In person, I fought for my right to vote. I was there. If I had mailed in my ballot I would not be there to fight,” she said. “How many people mailed in their ballot but their name was not on the list and the town threw it away? How would the person know that happened?”
Ballots are not tossed in the garbage — they are kept for seven years, said Gabe Rosenberg, communications director for the Office of Secretary of the State, which oversees elections. But it’s true that voters are not likely to be notified if their ballots are rejected, Rosenberg said.
“In some towns the town clerks might notify them, but there is no law requiring it,” he said.
It is a criticism cited by J.R. Romano, chairman of the Connecticut Repubthe lican Party, who said the state does not have the proper system for handling the expected surge in mail-in voting for the Nov. 3 election.
Sign the envelope
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, all registered voters in Connecticut will be sent absentee ballot applications. Normally voters must attest to one of a small number of reasons for requesting an absentee ballot, and only 6 percent to 8 percent do so in a given election. It could be 50 percent to 75 percent on Nov. 3.
“The safest and most secure way to vote is in person, because you don’t know if your mail-in ballot gets counted,” Romano said. “It’s not like the town clerk will call voters to say, ‘Just want to let you know, we counted your vote.’ You just assume it was counted.”
Rosenberg said that, in last month’s primaries, the portion of absentee ballots that went uncounted averaged about 2 percent. The most common reason was that voters failed to sign
inner envelope containing the ballot, as the law requires, Rosenberg said.
According to the secretary of the state’s website, 166,413 absentee ballots were received in the Democratic primary statewide and 163,655 were counted, so 2,758 were rejected.
In the Republican contest, 39,967 absentee ballots were received and 39,071 were counted, so 896 were rejected.
“It’s a small number of people, but you want to eliminate the possibility that any ballot will be rejected,” Rosenberg said. “That’s why we make the instructions clear and we do as much public education as we can.”
That does not alleviate the consequences of a mistake, Romano said.
“What do you say to the people whose votes didn’t make it to the primary? ‘Sorry?’” Romano said. “And that’s just the primary. How are people going to feel if it happens in the general election?”
Romano said he understands that voters like the convenience of balloting by mail, and he does not oppose it.
“What I’m saying is that the state does not have the infrastructure for it,” Romano said. “It’s not political.”
The state’s data, however, shows that Democrats are significantly more likely to vote by mail than Republicans. In the primaries, 62 percent of Democrats
cast absentee ballots, compared with 41 percent of Republicans.
Romano said opportunities for mail-in voting fraud increase when the state sends lots of absentee ballot applications because voter rolls are not up to date.
“Deceased people are listed as active voters; so are people who moved out of state,” he said. “Someone can get one of those applications, fill it out and then fraudulently obtain a ballot.”
But Rosenberg said the state’s voter rolls are clean.
Fraud is risky
Registrars in Connecticut’s 169 municipalities send address verification cards to voters each year, he said, and the state Department of Motor Vehicles notifies registrars when motorists change addresses on licenses and registrations.
Town clerks, who record death certificates, also help update voter rolls, he said.
“If you use a deceased person’s ballot application to obtain a ballot, you do so not knowing when the town clerk will be notified that the person has died,” Rosenberg said.
Chances of getting caught are enhanced by Connecticut’s participation in the Electronic Registration Information Center, a consortium of 31 states that share voter files, Rosenberg said.
“If someone who is registered to vote in Connecticut dies in Florida, where they spend the winter months, the town clerk will get that death certificate because we are a member of ERIC,” he said.
During the primary, the return rate for absentee ballot applications that could not be delivered was 8 percent, compared with a national average of 16 percent, Rosenberg said.
Romano said there may not be massive ballot fraud; there’s just a faulty system.
“I’m saying that if you leave the doors of your house unlocked, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get robbed. It just increases the chances,” he said.
Rosenberg said in-person voters also are rejected. They may go to the wrong polling place or fail to register, he said.
“Sometimes they just see a long line and go home,” he said.
It’s more reason for voters to be vigilant, Consiglio said.
“I lost my uncle in World War I. My cousin died in World War II. Over the years, thousands and thousands of men and women lost their lives to give us the right to vote,” she said. “The legacy they left us is our freedom to choose our leaders. If we don’t vote, what did they die for?”