The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Towns quietly disqualify faulty absentee ballots
There will be different kinds of accommodations made Tuesday for people who show up at the polls without face masks.
First, they will be offered masks from stockpiles at each of the state’s nearly 800 polling places. If they claim to be mask-less for physical or political reasons, voters may be offered curbside service similar to those who have physical afflictions, such as broken legs.
Some of the maskless may even get their own private corners of polling places that will be open from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m., to get them in and out with minimal fuss, delay and threat to public safety.
But for thousands of voters who improperly filled-out their mail-in ballots, there might not be a second chance to exercise their constitutional rights.
Their votes might be disqualified without their knowing it.
More than 40 towns and cities got permission to began preprocessing mail-in ballots over the weekend, and many have been notifying voters that their ballots were improperly filled out and were disqualified, giving voters another chance to make their voice heard Tuesday.
But ballots in the rest of the state won’t be opened until 6 a.m. on Tuesday, and those ballots disqualified during the day may not be known by the voters until after the election.
Gabe Rosenberg, general counsel for Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, said Monday that municipal voting officials are not required to notify those with improper absentee ballots. But in practice, the names of disqualified ballot filers are announced in town clerk offices, and local party activists are free to get in touch with them.
With close to 600,000 or more mail-in ballots, an estimated 12,000 could be disqualified, but Rosenberg believes that with a $2.7 million voter-awareness campaign, errors are less likely to be substantial in number. He said that about 2 percent of mailed-in ballots for the party primaries were disqualified for mistakes such as a lack of signatures.
“I think the public information campaign will have substantial benefits,” Rosenberg said. “We said that names had to be announced in a public process and anyone can listen, especially those who have an interest. Every town has people there, calling voters.”
Rosenberg said that a bigger issue might be those who depended on the mail getting their ballots to town and city halls. State law requires all ballots be cast by 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
Nancy DiNardo, chairwoman of the Democratic State Central Committee, said Monday that in many towns, voting officials or local political operatives are contacting those who ballots were disqualified through errors in filling out the forms or envelopes.
“Nobody has ever dealt with these kinds of mail-in numbers,” DiNardo said. “It’s unfortunate. It does seem that there are some registrars doing it and in some towns, volunteers from the parties are doing it.”
J.R. Romano, Republican state chairman, agreed that for the towns not opening the outer envelopes early, it will be extremely hard to tell voters whose ballots will be negated because of failures in filling them out. “It is what it is,” he said, adding that unaffiliated voters may not even get the benefit of a call from an interested municipal official or party activist.
Greenwich, which received more than 14,500 mail-in ballots, intends to set up a hotline for people to call, and a list of names will be read on a recording so they can know. But it will not include anyone whose absentee ballot was received on Monday or Election Day.
Middletown Voter Registrar
David Bauer said that as election officials have been opening the outer envelopes, only about half of one percent of nearly 8,000 ballots — about 44 — have been found to have errors. Staff members have been calling voters and notifying them, to give them a chance at a do-over in City Hall or at the polls on election day.
Matthew Waggner, one of Fairfield’s voter registrars, said Monday that they will not start opening the outer envelopes until Tuesday morning, and that they generally find a one-percent disqualification rate. But there is no plan to give another chance to those whose ballots were flawed and thrown out. The Secretary of the State reported that Fairfield had received more than 13,000 completed ballots by Sunday night.
Torrington voting officials will be among those municipalities that will not notify those with disqualified ballots among the nearly 4,700 received by Monday morning.
In Stratford, Republican Registrar Lou DeCilio said election officials had opened the outer envelopes for about 8,200 absentee ballots back from voters as of Monday and found no issues with the vast majority of them. “The voters did a great job following directions,” said DeCilio, who is also chairman of the Republican Town Committee. Of the mail-in ballots received so far, DeCilio said 10 have been rejected.
“We’re making attempts to contact those 10 people,” DeCilio said. “I don’t know if we can con
tact all of them.”
DeCilio said Town Clerk Susan Pawluk was still processing absentee ballot requests Monday and voters whose ballots were rejected could also vote in person Tuesday.
The GOP registrar said Stratford officials probably won’t be done counting all the absentee ballots until Thursday, but hope to have post unofficial results available Tuesday night at Town Hall. He estimated the town will receive a total of about 9,000 of the 10,000 absentee ballots requested by voters for Tuesday’s election.
Danbury Democratic Town Committee Chairwoman Andrea Gartner on Monday complained that she expected local voting officials to begin pre-processing the more than 10,500 ballots they had received — removing the inner envelope with the ballot from the outer mailer envelope — on Monday, but City Hall won’t begin that process until Tuesday.
“By starting today, ballots could be cured so voters would have the option to vote in person at the polls should their mail-in or absentee ballot be rejected due to an omission or error when the ballot was completed and filed,” she said. “Voters have the right to know that their vote will be counted, especially if their intentions to vote were made clear by requesting, receiving, completing and returning their ballots by mail or using the drop box,” Gartner stated.
Stuart W. Wells III, Norwalk’s registrar, said Monday that of the
15,000 completed ballots received, they all were pre-processed over the weekend, and a total of 129 were rejected. “With less than a 1 percent reject rate overall, we feel good about the process,” Wells said, stressing that while his staff doesn’t have the time to call, candidates and town committee leaders were given the list of those disqualified voters.
As for the mask-less voters, whom Merrill said Monday will not be refused their rights to vote, local polling moderators will have a variety of options to vote.
“You have a constitutional right to vote, but you don’t necessarily have a constitutional right to vote in a certain way,” Merrill said. “It is a question of public safety. Absolutely no one will be refused that constitutional right.”
Sue Larsen, a South Windsor registrar who is president of the state Registrar of Voters Association, said during a news conference in the State Capitol on Monday that with social distancing lines at polling places on Tuesday might appear long, but they should flow smoothly. “We’ve got plenty of masks available,” she said. Larger districts will have distanced booths for those without masks.
Curbside voters will put their finished ballots into so-called privacy folders and two assistant registrars will take the ballot back in for insertion into the tabulation machine.
Voting officials will start counting ballots at 6 a.m. Larsen predicted that medium to large-sized cities and towns won’t finish
counting mail-in ballots until Wednesday.
Romano, the GOP chairman, warned that while poll workers are well-intentioned, mistakes can happen. “We’re in a situation we’ve never been in before,” Romano said. “You hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.” In particular, he is worried about the custody of curbside ballots between the voter and the tabulating machine back in the polling places.
Attorney General William Tong said he is confident that local registrars have proper procedures in place for curbside voting. “You do not have a constitutional right to endanger other people,” Tong said. “And you don’t have a constitutional right to make other people sick. It is the law in the state of Connecticut right now that you should wear a mask. Registrars across the state are giving multiple options to people if they choose not to wear a mask.”
Michael J. Brandi, executive director and chief counsel for the State Elections Enforcement Commission, said local voting officials will handle curbside issues and make sure that all votes are properly tabulated. If voters cannot obey the publicsafety requirements of wearing face masks, the assistant registrars will make sure their ballots are protected, Brandi said.