On the second day of early voting last week, as many as 519 voters received the wrong ballots in Stonington, where voters from two different state House districts use the same early polling place, Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas said Monday.
“The registrar was able to determine that one of the poll workers handed out the wrong ballot, so she very quickly and smartly sequestered those ballots,” Thomas said. “And because early voted ballots are under seal and someone has signed them, they are contacting those voters and giving them an opportunity to come back and recast their ballot.”
The mistake was one of the few significant glitches in the first week of early voting, which had drawn 313,550 voters to the polls across Connecticut as of 10 a.m. Monday, Thomas said. That represents about 14% of all active voters.
Some communities ran short of the envelopes in which the ballots are sealed and cast, but supplies were replenished and no voter was turned away, she said.
Early voting continues daily through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day except for extended hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday.
“I’ve been hearing from poll workers that they’ve seen more seniors, more people with physical disabilities, than they’ve ever seen before on election day, and they’ve told me that voters are just happy to have a choice,” Thomas said.
Voting fell off sharply over the weekend, a sign of the need for better promotion, she said.
“I’m on the ground traveling around the state every single day. And when I was talking to people, no one knew it was open on the weekend, and I think that’s why the numbers were so low,” Thomas said.
The heavy use of early voting raised concerns about delays in counting and posting results. Early ballots are cast in envelopes that cannot be open and run through tabulators until election day.
Thomas said some communities have ordered and tested additional memory cards allowing them to use backup tabulators to count the early ballots.
Under state law, early ballots can be open and tabulated beginning at 6 a.m. on election day; absentee ballots at 10 a.m. No results can be made public until after the polls close at 8 p.m., with a midnight deadline for completing the counts.
“Most towns have already set up a process where they will start counting at 6 a.m. to make sure they meet our midnight deadline,” Thomas said.
As of Monday morning, more people had voted in the suburbs of West Hartford and Fairfield, where the early turnouts were about 17%, than anyplace else: 7,304, West Hartford; 7,036, Fairfield; 6,627, Stamford; 6,538, Norwalk; and 6,248, Milford.
The others in the top ten were Hamden, Stratford, Greenwich, Manchester and Glastonbury, with votes cast ranging from 6,222 in Hamden to 4,658 in Glastonbury.
The General Assembly ballot mix up in Stonington involves the reelection campaigns of Rep. Greg Howard, R-Stonington, and Rep. Aundré Bumgardner, D-Groton. Howard is confident of reelection in the 43rd District, where he is opposed by Democrat Ty Lamb; Bumgardner is unopposed in the neighboring 41st.
Howard’s 43rd District includes North Stonington and portions of Ledyard and Stonington. Bumgardner’s 41st includes portions of Stonington and Groton.
House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, and House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, joined in a letter Friday urging Thomas to remind local officials of the need to have clear procedures in early voting, when most communities have just one polling place for numerous voting districts.
“While we hope that the situation that occurred is limited to early voting during October 22nd in the Town of Stonington, we fear that may not be the case,” the House leaders wrote. “Such a mistake can easily happen in any town that contains more than one Assembly district.”
The early polling places should have separate lines for each district, they said.
Howard, who was elected in 2020 and is seeking his third term, said Stonington has five voting districts, each in different polling places on election day. Voters in two of them are in Bumgardner’s district; the other three in his.
Howard said he is aware of four voters in his district who realized after casting their ballots that his name was missing. One immediately returned to the polls, alerted officials of the mistake and was allowed to vote again with a correct ballot, he said. The incorrect ballot was retrieved and invalidated, he said.
The Stonington experience should be reviewed by legislators next year with a view toward improving the process, such as using color-coded ballots where there is more than one Assembly district, Howard said.
A similar mixup occurred in 2018 on election day in Stratford, where voters from two districts use the same polling place. An estimated 75 voters got the wrong ballot in a race that Democrat Phillip L. Young won by just 13 votes over Republican Jim Feehan.
On a party-line vote, the House declined to order a new election.
Feehan had to wait until 2020 for a rematch. Young won again, this time by 451 votes. Republican Laura Dancho unseated Young in 2022 in another close race, winning with 50.6% of the vote.
Thomas said mistakes occur, but she she warned voters against spreading misinformation, such as the faked video purported to show Donald J. Trump ballots being burned in Pennsylvania. The video was posted on an X social media account traced to Russia.
“There are thousands of people working here in Connecticut tirelessly to make sure that our elections are safe and secure,” she said. “So please help all of us by not spreading disinformation and misinformation.”