Registrars say help needed to make early voting work
Dianne Daniels, Norwich’s Democratic registrar of voters, said she likes the idea of helping more people cast their ballot.
But she said she also sees the challenges of implementing early voting when municipal budgets are tight. While she said cities and towns have been offered assurances that the state will provide funding initially, she is not sure how municipalities are going to pay for it moving forward and how they are going to get people to staff early voting.
Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas said in a phone interview Friday that while she has no control over the budget, she has been advocating for full funding. The cost of early voting will vary based on the town, but she estimates it will be closer to $5 million a year in total for all the municipalities to hold early voting.
She said, like with any new program, it’s important to make it part of the state’s budget from the beginning, so in future years, towns aren’t left having to make the choice in their budgets between money for schools and money for voting.
Staffing and training
Local registrars said they support a new early voting measure, but want to ensure local municipalities have the staffing and training they need and that the towns and cities won’t be on the hook for the costs.
Daniels added most election workers have other jobs or commitments, so it’s going to be difficult for them to be available for two straight weeks.
“On principle, I’m in favor of early voting but the actual logistics of manifesting the idea is going to take some more discussion, some more planning,” Daniels said.
Gov. Ned Lamont said in a news release that he plans to sign a bill passed by the General Assembly, which, starting in 2024, calls for 14 days of early voting for general elections, seven days for most primaries, and four days for special elections and presidential primaries.
He said each municipality in the state would need to operate at least one polling place.
“We are one of the only states in the nation that do not allow early voting, and once I sign this bill Connecticut will finally implement this long-overdue, needed reform,” Lamont said in a statement. “In today’s economy, it is not realistic to expect every eligible citizen to travel in person to one specific location during a limited set of hours on a Tuesday to cast their ballot.”
Kristen Venditti, Groton’s Republican registrar, said the plan moving forward is more user-friendly than some of the other options that were under discussion. For example, she said it closes down early voting on holidays, when it would have been challenging to find workers. She also pointed out that the initiative for early voting does not include a referendum, so it will not affect towns that have to hold multiple budget referenda.
“I think overall it’s a good thing,” Venditti said. “We’ll see how it works out.”
Venditti said she thinks the biggest struggle will be finding workers to staff early voting, and the town has already begun reaching out to some of its loyal election workers.
East Lyme Democratic Registrar of Voters Wendi Sims said that before moving to Connecticut in 2017, she had lived in many different states where early voting was just a fact of life. She said early voting is convenient, fair, accurate and safe, and it baffled her that Connecticut didn’t have it.
“I’m very pleased that Connecticut finally caught up with the rest of the country and decided to implement an early voting law,” she said.
Sims said as a registrar, she has every confidence that her office and fellow registrars can implement early voting with the support of the Secretary of the State and hopefully with funding from the state. She said she fully is in favor of early voting, but the cost can’t be passed on to the municipality.
Patti Waters, Waterford’s Republican registrar of voters, said she voted in favor of early voting, but was hoping it would be three to five days of early voting and finds 14 days of early voting to be unnecessary.
She said she is concerned that Connecticut, with its individual towns, including some very small ones, doesn’t have the structure to have early voting like other states. She said she feels it’s going to be difficult for small towns to find people to staff 14 days of voting, although it’s unclear how many people will be required to work each day and it’s potentially only one person.
She added that Waterford is fully committed to doing what it is asked and ensures the public that early voting will be rolled out well.
Andrew Stockton, Democratic registrar in Preston, said he supports the concept of early voting, but he too thinks some towns will face challenges to find workers to staff early voting and to find a suitable polling location, which must be handicap accessible and have the ability to connect to the Connecticut voter registration system.
Thomas said that, like the registrars, she has been concerned about the human capital that will be required, so very early on her office decided it would help recruit and train poll workers and have already begun reaching out to national associations and colleges to get ahead.
“I feel that we’ll be well-positioned to make that a reality,” she said.
She said a measure for no-excuse absentee ballot voting passed the General Assembly in a bipartisan vote and is slated to appear as a question for voters on the 2024 ballot. She said that if that passes in the future, her recommendation would be for the General Assembly to take another look to see if the time period and number of hours for early voting could be changed, so it’s not duplicative.