Allan Appel Photo
Registrar Ferrucci consults poll workers Rozalind Shaw, Beth Lyons.
A dozen or more voters went home without casting their ballots as crowds overwhelmed poll workers at Wilbur Cross High School Tuesday.
An unanticipated turnout found lines of voters snaking through the front lobby of the school and out the door by 9 a.m.
“In my 30 years, I have never seen such a turnout,” said Democratic Registrar of Voters Sharon Ferrucci, who arrived the scene mid-morning with her Republican counterpart, Rae Tramontano. They straightened out the mess, for now, around 11 a.m.
Allan Appel Photo
In the meantime, former East Rock Alderman and state representative candidate Roland Lemar (pictured) said, he saw at least 15 to 20 people go home without voting. He said he and his campaign coworkers plan to try to track down those voters to see if they can return later in the day.
“This is not acceptable,” Lemar declared at the scene. He said officials knew turnout would be high and should have planned for it.
Paul Bass Photo
Chuck Swirsky of Rosa DeLauro’s Congressional campaign (pictured outside Democrats’ Whalley Avenue headquarters mid-morning) arrived on the scene shortly after 9 after hearing about the problem from Lemar and East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker. Swirsky contacted the state Democratic Party’s voter protection team, which filed a formal complaint, he said.
Democratic campaigners have worked hard to pull the vote in New Haven this year. And East Rock is one of the city’s heaviest voting districts.
Two other factors added to the chaos: Officials had to combine the Ward 9 and Ward 10 polling places at Cross this year, because Ward 9’s usual polling site, East Rock Global Magnet School, is closed for renovations. And a special election for an open aldermanic seat in Ward 9 has drawn intense campaigning from groups throughout the city.
But it was the Ward 10 lines that poll workers had trouble keeping up with Tuesday morning. Part of the problem: That was the first line voters saw coming in the door. Some Ward 9 voters didn’t know there was a separate spot down the corridor for their district. So they waited on the wrong line.
By 11 the voting registrars had set up a second table for Ward 10 voters. One table served voters from streets starting with A through L, the other M‑Z. But that produced a lopsided result. (Turns out Lawrence Street has a lot of voters.) So the breakdown was changed to A through K and L through Z.
By shortly after noon, 590 people had voted in Ward 9, 505 in Ward 10.
Meanwhile, voting was also heavy at Edgewood School in Westville’s Ward 25, another traditionally high-turnout district. Poll workers said 500 people had voted by 10 a.m., on a pace with a presidential year.