Absentee ballots on the way

State mailing ‘unprecedented’ number starting Friday

Connecticut towns and cities are poised to mail more than 500,000 absentee ballots Friday. It is, according to state and local elections officials, an unprecedented situation.

“There is nothing in Connecticut history that would provide any sort of precedent for this election,” said Gabe Rosenberg, a spokesman for the Secretary of the State’s Office. Friday is the first day the ballots can go out.

There’s no telling how many eligible voters will ultimately vote by mail-in ballot for the Nov. 3 election. It could be all of them. For the first time in history, the Secretary of the State’s Office sent absentee ballot request forms to every voter in the state.

“Because this is unprecedented we really don’t have a frame of reference,” Rosenberg said. The Secretary of the State’s Office has been attempting to prepare for every eventuality, including “the largest case scenario, which is almost everyone.”

As of Thursday, about 426,000 ballots were ready to be mailed. That number was likely to rise by Friday.

In Danbury, the town clerk’s office planned

to mail nearly 9,000 ballots for the November election on Friday, Mayor Mark Boughton said on social media.

Registered voters should have received an application to request an absentee ballot in mid-September. Those who mailed the application back will receive ballots. State residents can also continue to request an absentee ballot.

Completed ballots may be mailed to the town clerk’s office or dropped off in the designated box outside of City Hall or the King Street Firehouse. Final collection of absentee ballots from the drop boxes will be at 8 p.m. on Election Day.

The town clerk estimated the city could see between 15,000 to

20,000 absentee ballots for the presidential election. This is much higher than normal because residents are allowed to request a ballot if they are concerned about voting in person during the coronavirus pandemic. About 5,000 voters requested ballots for the presidential primary.

Statewide, more than 426,000 absentee ballots have been requested. Ridgefield has more than 5,000; Newtown nearly

4,900; New Milford nearly 3,300; Bethel about 2,700; Brookfield nearly 2,500 and New Fairfield about 1,200.

Many voters may be waiting until the day of the election to make a decision, according to Patricia H. Strauss, the town clerk in Westport.

“They really still want to go to polls,” she said. “Voters want to make sure that when Nov. 3 comes there’s not another large outbreak of COVID-19. They’re getting a paper ballot and plan to hold it until Nov. 3 and make a decision that day.”

Westport voters do traditionally vote in greater numbers by mail-in ballot than the rest of the state. Rosenberg said that, in a standard year — when there isn’t a hotly contested presidential election amid a global pandemic — between 6 and 8 percent of votes are cast by absentee ballot.

In Westport, that number is usually between 10 and 11 percent. This year, more than 23 percent of the town’s population has requested a mail-in ballot, according to a data analysis by CT Insider.

‘Prepare for all’

Thus far, Stamford has processed the most absentee ballot requests, 15,335 as of Thursday morning.

“We still have a 1,000 laying there because we got the supplies late,” said City Clerk Lyda Ruijter on Thursday afternoon.

Ruijter is expecting those

15,000 ballot applications to more than double : “In my line of business you have to prepare for all.”

She said there are “more or less

72,000 registered voters in Stamford” and, in the 2016 presidential election there was an 82 percent turnout, with more expected this year. That’s a minimum of about

60,000 total voters.

As of Thursday, Norwalk was not far behind Stamford with

12,924 ballot requests processed. Fairfield, with 10,650 was just behind that.

But not all cities have yet processed that scale of ballot applications. By contrast, for example, New Haven has processed 1,332 mail-in ballot requests. Bridgeport has so far processed 6,235 absentee ballot requests.

“That number is going to grow in every town,” Rosenberg said. They potentially could double. There's 169 town clerks that are currently processing absentee ballots. For sure, we are closer to the beginning of this process than the end. I suspect that here are a lot of people that have the application sitting on their kitchen counter.”

A larger percentage of votes are usually cast by mail-in ballot in Westport and other towns in Fairfield and Litchfield counties. They are, Rosenberg said, “commuter communities,” an assessment with which Strauss agreed.

Absentee ballot requests ask voters for a reason and, usually, commuting is the most common answer provided in Westport. This is the first year COVID-19 is an option.

“On any other election that is the reason, this year it’s CO

VID-19,” Strauss said. “Most of the applications say they are voting on paper ballot because of

COVID-19.”

That, according to Rosenberg, is why there is no telling how many ballots will be cast by mail this year.

“We don’t know what the COVID situation will be on Nov. 1,” he said. “We have no frame of reference.”

More Democrats voting by mail

So far, about 40 percent of the total number of absentee ballot requests that have been processed statewide were submitted by Democratic voters.

That’s not to say Republican voters haven’t requested mail-in ballots — about 12 percent of the total requests processed were from Republican voters. Unaffiliated voters requested 26 percent of the total so far.

That does not necessarily mean that most mail-in ballots in Connecticut will be cast for Democrat Joe Biden.

There are more registered Democrats than Republicans in the state, but unaffiliated voters outweigh them both

Town by town, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans requesting mail-in ballots is a complicated picture. Though more Democrats have requested absentee ballots in every town, the number of unaffiliated voters asking to vote by mail is significant in some municipalities.

Concerns with scale

There is little chance of any voters casting ballots twice, Rosenberg said. Mail-in ballots are not a new concept, and “Connecticut has contemplated this for the last 200 years,” he said.

Every absentee ballot is assigned to a specific voter with a specific serial number created by the town clerk. Voters who have sent in ballots earlier than one day before Election Day will be turned away should they appear at the polls.

The specter of foreign interference has been raised.

“There are still foreign entities that are attempting to interfere with the election,” Rosenberg said. “We’re still getting warnings from the Department of Homeland Security that this is something that hostile powers are trying to do.:

But the ballots are printed on special paper using special ink. Rosenberg believes falsified absentee ballots would be caught.

Ruijter agreed. “It’s a very tight system,” she said. “I never was worried about the integrity of the system.”

Her concerns were with the sheer number of absentee ballots with which town clerks are dealing. Ruijter actually resigned her position when she felt that she did not have the necessary resources.

“I resigned over this because I felt I couldn't do it,” she said. “I felt it was my duty to make a statement that it couldn’t be done.”

She has since rescinded her resignation, and said things are going well despite the unprecedented number of absentee voters.

“In fact, I’m more relaxed than ever,” Ruijter said. “It’s going smoothly.”

While Strauss, who has been clerk in Westport for 22 years — six presidential elections — said this year was presenting some challenges, she was not overly concerned. When asked where the 2020 presidential election would rank in her mind, she couldn’t say.

The 2000 election, “with the hanging chads,” presented some difficulties, as did the 2016 election.

“You can’t ask me now. I’m in the middle of this one,” she said. “Ask me on Nov. 4.”