Legal challenge to voting chaos dropped

A legal challenge to the process used in New Haven to register a small number of voters through the Election Day Registration process has been dropped.

Also, by late afternoon Wednesday, the city had not yet officially filed the vote tallies from its 30 wards.

The delay was attributed to problems with voting machines in several wards Tuesday and the complications of registering almost 700 residents through the same-day registration process. Turnout throughout the state also hit record levels for a mid-term election.

Liz DeMatteo, the Democratic deputy registrar Wednesday, said the way to avoid problems in the future was to recruit more volunteers to process the same-day registrants, a recommendation that has been made by others when there was chaos in previous elections.

The office used only two people to input registrations to Secretary of the State Denise Merrill’s office, the second step, before a ballot can be cast.

DeMatteo said the training is not difficult, but it is hard finding volunteers to do it. Tuesday night, however, dozens of city workers, Yale Law School students and others poured in around 6 p.m. when the extent of the backup became more widely known.

When asked why Hartford and Bridgeport — where it also rained — did not seem to have the same problems with wet ballots, DeMatteo said she did not know. As far as the absentee ballots are concerned, she said they are counted after the wards have reported, many of which were late for the reasons already stated.

She said the machines had been serviced before the election as they typically are.

The Connecticut Republican Party had filed a challenge to the 64 ballots cast by residents in New Haven who filled out registration forms, but were not entered into the secretary of the state’s database at the time that they had voted.

The secretary of the state’s office confirmed the challenge had been dropped.

It was likely that if it had gone to a hearing Friday, it would not have met the standard of review established in an earlier case where the court would only weigh in if the votes in question were larger than the margin of victory.

State Republican Party Chairman J.R. Romano said the challenge had always been conditional, depending on the number of ballots cast.

The unofficial gubernatorial count for Tuesday’s election had 683,687 votes for Democrat Ned Lamont, which included a partial tally from New Haven, to 648,573 for Republican Bob Stefanowski, who conceded the race Wednesday.

Shannel Evans, the Democratic registrar of voters in New Haven, would not comment Wednesday on the chaos in the city Tuesday when voters waited up to four hours to register through the EDR process.

DeMatteo, who had been up all night inputting ballots into the state system after several machines continued to be jammed, was in her office Wednesday. Evans, who also had not slept, was tallying votes in a basement office in the Hall of Records.

DeMatteo said Evans and the head moderator, Arnold Amore, had all the machine tabulations and they were working on counting the last of the absentee ballots and overseas military ballots so the final numbers could be sent to the secretary of the state’s office.

DeMatteo said multiple machines had jammed when wet ballots had been inserted by voters.

Gabe Rosenberg, spokesman for Merrill’s office, said the problem of wet ballots was an issue across the state. He said the downpour Tuesday was heavy at times and because of the large number of participants, many voters ended up standing in the rain before entering the polling places.

In addition, New Haven had more ballots to count than smaller communities in the state, which took more time.

Rosenberg said the secretary of the state’s office feels its advice to New Haven that the 64 first-time Connecticut voters, who were state residents, could vote as long as they attested to that criteria was on solid legal ground. He said attesting to the veracity of their registration forms, as a group, may have been problematic.

Romano said, in his opinion, it was not legal. He also questioned whether the 64 had been vetted as to whether they were Connecticut residents.

Evans could be seen walking down the line of these potential voters checking their registration forms Tuesday night.

“If we have checked your sheets, you will be OK to get a ballot to vote,” Evans said, as long as it was checked before 8 p.m.

Romano said the right to vote is one of the most important aspects of being a citizen. “We should be striving for a pristine process,” he said.

As for the confusion at City Hall where the Election Day Registration took place, Rosenberg said the state office sent election officials, after the 2016 election, to New Haven to advise them how to avoid problems in the future.

“They ignored it,” he said.

A community with university students should anticipate large numbers of registrants, he said. Rosenberg said the New Haven office was told to prepare as if it was a presidential election.

The spokesman said it is not acceptable to disenfranchise voters because of flawed implementation of the EDR.