Towns consider mass absentee ballot mailings
A year after a huge influx of federal relief money paid for the mailing of absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in Connecticut, town clerks throughout the state have been reminded they can again send out mass ballot applications for the upcoming municipal elections.
Some Republicans opposed the mass mailings of applications in the 2020 elections on the grounds that town voters lists contained many names of people no longer living there — raising the risk of fraud, the critics said.
But the problem now is that city and town budgets were set months ago and some towns might not have the money for additional printing, postage and office workers. Time is also a factor because absentee ballots are supposed to be ready for the public by Oct. 1 for the Nov. 2 local elections.
Town clerks such as Marc Garofalo of Derby are studying the issue. And while the turnout is not likely to come close to the little city’s 80 percent turnout for the 2020 presidential vote, the municipal election takes planning.
“Our budget’s all set,” Garofalo said in a Friday phone interview, stressing that there is a lot of interest among voters who liked the option to vote by mail. “We’re a small town, so I am hoping we have a little more flexibility for it. When the weather gets cold and people are inside, our biggest worry is an onslaught of COVID at the end of the election cycle, which could create more problems.”
In an email sent to town clerks this week, Theodore E. Bromley, director of elections for Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, reminded the local officials that a provision in the state budget that took effect July 1 allows for a continuance of COVID-related excuses for voting by mail-in and dropoff ballots this fall. He suggested that towns and cities limit absentee ballot applications to active voters using updated voter lists and correct name information.
While Derby officials figure out what to do in the next few days, Garofalo, a member of the board of the Connecticut Town Clerks Association, recommends that people who plan to vote by absentee, download an application soon from their local websites or the Secretary of the State, fill it out and send it to City Hall.
“We’re going to have work together with the voter registrars to settle whether we’re going to do it and how,” Garofalo said. “When they were sent from the state, there were bar codes and return postage-paid. The bar codes made it significantly easier to put them into the system. The question is, do we send them out to everybody, the people who voted last time and those who have registered since the election?”
Last year, about 1,800 of the city’s 7,000 registered voters cast votes by mail or drop-boxes. The previous high was in the 2016 presidential election, when 300 absentees were recorded. Garofalo expects 40-to-50 percent turnout for the fall election this year.
“Although our office will not be mailing applications to all active registered voters in the state, it would be allowable for each town clerk to mail out applications to all active voters within their town,” Bromley wrote. “If you decide to mail applications to all active voters in your town, you will need to keep a list of those active voters that have received an application.”