Mail-in ballots sent to 277 voters in the wrong district

STRATFORD — Nearly 280 voters in a Stratford neighborhood received Election Day ballots for the wrong state House of Representatives district, and local voting officials Wednesday were trying to sort it out after 59 of the wrong ballots were filled out and received in Town Hall.

An apartment complex on Stratford Avenue near the Main Street intersection erroneously received ballots for the 120th House of Representatives District.

The ballots residents should have gotten were for the 121st District race between third-term Democrat state Rep. Joe Gresko and challenger Republican Ed Scinto.

The area became part of the 121st district after the 2010 Census, but the Forest City apartments, 1111 Stratford Ave., were built in 2013, after the 2012 statewide redistricting. Both House districts vote at Lordship school in the town’s South End.

Gabe Rosenberg, counsel for Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, confirmed the mixup was a districting error.

“It’s new housing that was put into the wrong House district,” Rosenberg said, stressing that state law directs town voting officials to reissue correct ballots and use the serial numbers on the erroneous completed ballots to track them down and void them.

The race for the 120th House seat pits incumbent Phil Young against Jim Feehan in a rematch of a close 2018 election that was itself a controversial race that ended up with a failed challenge on the floor of the House. The November 2018 contest was a rematch of a February special election to replace Laura Hoydick after she became mayor.

The erroneous districting might have played a role in the two contentious 2018 elections that Young won by narrow margins in February and November of that year.

Young and Jim Feehan are locked again in a tight race in what historically had been a Republican-held district prior to Young’s twin wins in 2018.

“This is a difficult situation,” Young said on Wednesday. “The apartments were built in 2013, so since then, they’ve been voting in the wrong district. This is a screwup that no one seems to be able to answer for me.

When I heard about this today, I felt my stomach drop.”

Lou DeCilio, the town’s Republican voter registrar, said late Wednesday afternoon that leaving the apartments out of the correct district in previous elections could have affected the Young-Feehan races of 2018.

“Of course, we don’t know that it has been that way since the apartment was built,” DeCilio said. “At least we caught it in time for Election Day.”

The apartment complex, on the site of the former Keating Ford auto dealership, is the southern edge of

Young’s zig-zagged-shape 120th District.

Fifty-nine ballots already have been filed from the complex, according to the secretary of the state. Town officials are contacting the voters and advising them of the error.

“They are in the process of fixing it now,” Gresko said Wednesday afternoon. “We have a couple of days to figure it out.”

DeCilio said that town officials began to investigate the apparent mixup early on Wednesday and went to the complex after explaining to the state what the problem was.