Town clerks ‘inundated’ with absentee ballot application requests — but not from voters

BETHEL — Higher than usual numbers of absentee ballot application requests from campaigns have prompted concern about potential voter confusion this election.

“Town clerks are being inundated with requests from many campaigns for applications for absentee ballots,” said Bethel’s town clerk, Lisa Bergh, who is also the Fairfield County vice president for the Town Clerk’s Association.

With state law allowing them to distribute “large amounts” of absentee ballot applications, Bergh said more campaigns from both sides of the aisle have been doing just that ahead of this year’s gubernatorial election.

It poses a problem for not only town clerks, she said, but constituents as well.

“The campaigns are going to be mailing unsolicited applications to all these households, and people don’t know that they’re going to be receiving them,” Bergh said, noting that some people may have already started receiving applications from campaigns in the mail.

It’s unclear why more campaigns are doing so, but in the 2020 election, all Connecticut voters received absentee ballot applications in the mail due to concerns about voting in-person due to COVID-19.

People may get several applications in the mail from different campaigns, Bergh said, and there’s a good chance some will mistake them for absentee ballots.

“They’re going to be scratching their heads and contacting us (town clerks),” she said.

In an effort to circumvent confusion, Bergh posted a message on the Bethel Town Clerk’s Facebook page last week to let people know that the absentee ballot applications they receive are just applications and voting absentee is optional.

“My main goal is to let people know they’re going to be receiving unsolicited applications in the mail and it doesn’t mean they have to vote absentee,” she said. “I want them to know what to expect, and that what they’re receiving are not actual ballots.”

Bergh said people have mistaken applications for ballots in the past.

“A lot of times, people think they’re ballots, but they’re not,” she said, noting that absentee ballots won’t become available until Oct. 7.

To date, Bergh said Bethel Town Clerk’s Office has issued nearly 6,000 absentee ballot applications to requesting campaigns — but that number is small compared to what some other towns have been dealing with.

“Westport and Wilton are way up there,” she said. “Westport

was the first town to get contacted, and one party alone wanted about 5,000 absentee ballot applications.”

Other towns

It’s not just Bethel, Wilton and Westport, according to Bergh — all Fairfield County town clerks, as well as those in other parts of the state, are being overwhelmed with campaign requests for absentee ballot applications.

“We’re all getting hit with this,” she said.

Brookfield’s town clerk, Andrea DiStephan, said the number of registered absentee ballot application distributors in her town is higher than in years past — and the amount of applications requested for this election is “significantly higher.”

As of Thursday, Ridgefield had issued more than 10,000 absentee ballot applications to organizations that have requested them, according to its town clerk, Wendy Gannon Lionetti.

“We have experienced quite a large number of absentee ballot applications, and there are several organizations issuing them,” she said. “That’s perfectly fine, but my concern is that they’re not talking to each other, so somebody might get a duplicate application and find that confusing.”

Even though the entities are required to include cover letters with the applications, explaining why they’re being sent out unsolicited, Lionetti said there may still be confusion.

“It’s a lot of paper and people don’t always read it carefully — and many times, they assume it came from the town or from the state when it’s not,” she said.

To date, Lionetti said her office has issued absentee ballot applications to four organizations and a fifth reached out expressing interest earlier this week.