Vote YES to approve grants for Greenwich town registrars

This Tuesday the Representative Town Meeting will have the opportunity to vote to accept two grants, to enhance election infrastructure, that our Registrars of Voters were awarded in recognition of their excellent work. We urge our colleagues at the RTM to vote YES to approve these important grants, which will help Greenwich to remain at the forefront of election excellence.

In order to ensure that elections are run in a non-partisan manner, Greenwich elects two registrars — one Republican and one Democratic — to oversee elections. Our two registrars were recently recognized as a “Center for Election Excellence,” along with nine other municipalities nationwide, by the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence (AEE) The AEE is a national, nonpartisan program to support excellence in U.S. election administration. In line with this award, our registrars were offered a $500,000 grant to enhance election infrastructure and administration, and a $9,600 grant for membership in the alliance, to share best practices and knowledge with thousands of other municipal election officials.

The $500,000 grant will be used for things such as supporting poll-worker education, replacing old equipment, upgrading out-of-date technology, and enhancing security. The $9,600 grant for membership in the Alliance will help our registrars stay on top of best practices, investigate new election tools and technology, and exchange knowledge with other Registrars and election officials. These grants will help our town registrars accomplish their mission of running effective and efficient elections, and enhancing citizen participation, benefiting Republican, Democratic and Independent voters alike. The registrars that we elected have been working tirelessly to explain to RTM members why this grant will enhance their ability to do the job we elected them to do.

Unfortunately, some of our colleagues have expressed unfounded concerns about the grants that are based on debunked internet theories of voter fraud. We would like to set the record straight.

First, the grants are NOT political in nature, have nothing to do with undermining the integrity of our elections, and cannot be used to influence or bias election outcomes. As noted above, the grant is to be used only to upgrade election infrastructure, education, technology, administration, and security, and, in fact, the terms of the grant specify that the receiver is prohibited from using them to “influence the outcome of any specific public election.” If there was any political motive behind the grants, surely our elected Republican and Democratic Registrars would have spotted it.

Second, there are no strings attached to the grant. There is no obligation to turn over local data, to attend meetings or to use any tools. The provider of the grant is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization that has a rating from Charity Navigator of 97 percent, and that reports transparently about its funding sources and all of its activities.

Third, there will be oversight for how the grant funding is spent. If approved, the specific spending plan by the Registrar’s office for the grant will go through a normal appropriation and approval process of the Board of Estimate and Taxation. In addition, RTM colleagues can review and approve how the grant is to be spent if they vote in favor of the L&R Committee motion to amend Resolution 10, which adds the RTM to the approval process.

Finally, a little context about objections to this grant may be in order. Extremist right groups brought over a dozen frivolous lawsuits against CTCL, the nonprofit founder of the Alliance, based on unfounded claims that grants it made to election officials were used to “steal the election” from Trump. Conservative, liberal, and two Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices rejected every one of these lawsuits, with one judge dubbing the claims a “conspiracy theory.” In response, a number of red states where these lawsuits were raised have since banned private funds from being used to support public election infrastructure, but Connecticut is not one of those states.

We should not allow discredited conspiracy theories and fear mongering about rigged elections, as purported by the Capital Research Center, an extremist right wing publication, to take root in our town and prevent us from accepting a lawful and welcome grant to upgrade our election infrastructure.

Our registrars, Fred DeCaro and Mary Hegarty, have provided a great deal of information on the context of what they do and how the grants work, and we recommend that you read carefully through the excellent Q&A documents they have prepared. Fred and Mary are elected by the town, represent both major parties, and by design, are bipartisan. Their only interest is to foster well-run elections and enhance citizen participation in the election process. We should be proud of their work and support them in their efforts to maintain and improve their excellent track record in election administration.

Please vote YES to approve Items 10 and 11, regarding the grants to our town Registrar of Voters