Stamford first in quest to vote by mail
STAMFORD — Ballots are arriving in a daily barrage.
Voters are mailing them and placing them in drop boxes to be gathered and logged by the office of the town clerk.
“We are getting thousands of absentee ballots a day,” Town Clerk Lyda
Ruijter said this week. “We are emptying the drop box at the Government Center four times a day and it’s full each time.”
So far Stamford leads the state in volume of absentee ballots prepared and mailed to voters by the town clerk – 22,144 as of this week, according to information from the secretary of the
state. Stamford is followed by West Hartford, with 17,456 ballots processed, and Norwalk with 15,511.
So far, 7,360 Stamford voters have returned completed ballots. But voters are continuing to request them, Ruijter said.
“We are getting hundreds of applications a day,” she said. “We have never had this experience.”
The vote is on
In the explosive race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, taking place during a deadly pandemic, state officials broke precedent and sent absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in Connecticut. Their goal was to allow voters fearful of COVID-19 contagion to avoid polling places.
Voter participation this year is expected to hit a new high, given that a record 2.2 million of the state’s 2.6 million eligible voters are active and registered, and the number is rising.
The president of the Connecticut Town Clerks Association has said they should be prepared for 70 percent of the votes to be cast by absentee ballot. In a more typical year, 6 percent to 8 percent of Connecticut voters cast ballots by mail.
For Stamford, which has 72,500 registered voters and counting, it’s a big number,
Ruijter said.
“We are working off two predictions,” she said. “One is that we will get 30,000 absentee ballots and the other is 40,000. But I have to prepare for 50,000. If there is a COVID outbreak between now and the election, for instance, more people may vote by absentee ballot.”
Last minute?
The job of processing returned ballots begins with assigning each absentee ballot a serial number and tagging it to a specific voter.
“When the ballots come in, we make sure they are properly signed, we stamp them with the date of arrival and enter them into the computer system,” she said. “After that we organize them by voting district and, within each district, we organize them alphabetically by street name.”
That’s to prepare the ballots to be handed off to the registrars of voters on the morning of Nov. 3, Election Day. The registrars remove the ballots from their inner envelopes and count them using scanning machines called tabulators, said Ron Malloy, the Democratic registrar.
“The tabulators record the ballots, just like at a polling place,” Malloy said. “If someone overvotes in a particular race, the tabulator identifies it, just as the scanners at polling places spit out ballots that have errors.”
If, for example, someone
votes for four Board of Education candidates when they should have voted for three, that vote won’t be tabulated but the person’s votes in the remaining races will be, Malloy said.
For a ballot to be counted, it must arrive in Ruijter’s office on Nov. 3 by 8 p.m., when polls close. The four ballot drop boxes set up around the city will be emptied at that hour, Ruijter said.
“I expect there to be quite a few ballots in the drop boxes at 8 p.m. on Election Day,” she said. “I think there are a lot of people who like to vote on Election Day, even if it is by absentee, and we are hearing
people say they would rather vote in person and will use the AB only if there is a COVID outbreak. So they are waiting until the last minute.”
Days of counting
Malloy said his office is allotting three days to count absentee ballots.
“We hope to have it done by the weekend after Election Day,” he said. “We have to get the final count to the secretary of the state by 4 p.m. Monday,” Nov. 9.
Malloy said he thinks the number of absentee ballots in Stamford will be less than predicted, since applications went out to more than 72,000 voters but only
about 22,000 have been returned so far.
Republican Registrar Lucy Corelli said she thinks in-person voting will be greater than expected.
“From the calls I am getting I am hearing that people don’t trust the system,” Corelli said. “They are saying, ‘I’m afraid. What if the mailman doesn’t deliver my absentee ballot? What if it gets lost? What if it doesn’t get picked up from the drop box?’”
Voters are anxious, Ruijter said.
By law the state could not begin to send out ballots until Oct. 2, and Stamford received its last batch on Oct. 9, she said. But many voters sent in their ballot applications weeks ago, and now are contacting her office, mostly with one question.
“It’s ‘Where’s my ballot?’” Ruijter said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the time or staff to track ballots for all the people who call or email.”
Sound system
Voters may track their ballots themselves by visiting the secretary of the state’s website at https://portaldir.ct.gov/ sots/LookUp.aspx.
Dara Kurtz of Stamford, who didn’t get her absentee ballot in time to vote in the Aug. 11 presidential primary, said officials appear to have worked out the kinks in the expanded program.
She received her ballot around Oct. 9, filled it out and placed it in a drop box, Kurtz said.
“It seemed logical to drop it in the box as soon as possible. That is the option. Then you’re not mailing it,” Kurtz said. “I feel comfortable with the process since I got it on time and it was very clear what to do.”
Corelli said police officers escort city employees who collect ballots from the drop boxes. The system is sound, she said.
“Republicans and Democrats are working together. Parties don’t matter,” the Republican said. “We only care about the democracy.”