Officer Fuentes Rescues The Vote

A New Haven cop waded into an East Rock polling spot Tuesday afternoon to the sound of applause — because he had boxes of ballots with him so that waiting citizens could finally vote.

Officer Vic Fuentes made the delivery to Ward 10 Moderator Ryan Munden shortly before 2 p.m. at Wilbur Cross High School.

Wilbur Cross was one of many spots around town where the turnout far exceeded expectations — and thus led to long waits — for Tuesday’s presidential election. Statewide, officials said turnout was unexpectedly heavy. Tuesday afternoon, polling stations in Wooster Square and in Morris Cove were also running low on ballots.

At 1:15 p.m. Officer Fuentes was in a side room in the basement of the Hall of Records where election workers were tallying absentee ballots. The Republican registrar of voters, Delores Knight, had summoned him there because she had heard from Ward 10 that ballots were running low.

Then Knight received another call: All the Ward 10 ballots were gone. People were stuck in line waiting to vote. Knight searched the room and located stacks of extra ballots, handed them to Fuentes, and he was on his way.

Voters were glad to see him when he subsequently delivered the package.

Munden (pictured with the delivery), who has moderated the East Rock polls for about a decade, said he had never seen turnout as high as Tuesday’s. This is the first time he’d ever seen the station at Wilbur Cross run out of ballots.

Fortunately, he said, that occurred at a relatively quiet time of the day. Some people waited as long as two hours to vote Tuesday morning at Wilbur Cross. Thanks to Knight’s and Fuentes’ quick work, they ended up waiting only 15 or 20 minutes to vote mid-afternoon, even with the ballot problem.

After the delivery, Munden learned that it turned out he could have used Ward 9 ballots while waiting for the delivery; the ballot was the same for both wards. (Both wards vote at Wilbur Cross.)

“This is the second time I was here today,” said Chris Coffin (pictured), a production manager at Yale Press. She showed up at 8 a.m. and saw hudnreds of people waiting to vote, so she decided to return at a quieter time. Only to find the polling spot out of ballots.

“It’s OK now,” she said, though ​“I thought that was pretty poor planning.”

Atticus Bookstore Cafe appeared to be planning better for the rush. As part of an annual election routine, the outlet was distributing free loaves of Chabaso bread to everyone who showed up with an ​“I Voted” sticker. Vivianna Bermudez (pictured above) still had plenty of loaves to hand out at 2 p.m.

The planning proved most problematic when the polls opened at 6 a.m. at the Hall of Records at 200 Orange St. Tuesday morning and Ward 7 voters were already lined up to cast their ballots.

Caught Unprepared At The Hall Of Records

After two hours and 20 minutes waiting in line outside the Hall of Records, Myles Alderman finally got a chance around 10 a.m. to say his name and then cast a vote for the next president of the United States.

Alderman (pictured above) began the morning outside the downtown building, around the corner from Orange Street …

… down to the Webster Bank branch on Elm Street.

Lines formed early at polls throughout town, with voters waiting up to an hour, mirroring a heavy reported turnout statewide, according to Democratic Town Chair Vincent Mauro Jr.

But at Ward 7 in the Hall of Records, it was bedlam.

A call went out to the secretary of the state’s office not long after the polling place opened — which happened right at 6 a.m. for the commencement of voting rather than earlier, as is the custom, because the moderator had not yet shown up.

By 9 a.m., the mayor’s office had sent legislative liaison Rick Melita, the registrar of voters had sent a second moderator, Maritza Gant (pictured above at right), and enough other extra bodies arrived that moderator George Carter (above, at left) was able to divide the swarm inside the building …

… into two lines.

Myles Alderman took the wait in stride.

“I would have preferred” a shorter wait, he said. ​“But so many people have give up so much more” to earn the right to vote.

Veronica Galvin, a Yale graduate student right behind him in line, was in equally strong spirits after the long wait. ​“I want to participate in what happens over the next four to years in this country,” she said.

With only five voting booths, the polling place remained bottlenecked all day even with more checkers.

The secretary of the state’s office and the New Haven mayor’s office had already anticipated problems on Election Day, but with Election Day Registration. Reinforcements had already been sent in to try to avoid a repeat of the fiasco in 2014, where 100 people never got to register and vote because of understaffing. (Read about that here and here.) Reached for comment Tuesday morning, Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans said she was too busy to comment.

Secretary of the State spokesman Patrick Gallahue said that early reports have lines longer at some New Haven polling places than elsewhere in Connecticut.

“There were issues with lines. The Secretary of the State’s office has provided advice on how to structure the line in order to expedite the process and to add more staff,” he said.

By the time U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro came to cast her vote around 2 p.m., the line had shrunken considerably to about a half hour wait. DeLauro came with her 102-year-old mother, Luisa, a former city alderwoman who always makes a point of voting for her daughter.

Long-Awaited Relief

Over at Ward 25 in Westville, the line of voters extended outside Edgewood School to Yale Avenue. But waits didn’t exceed an hour.

As usual, Edgewood School parents and students, like seventh-grader Ayo Engel-Halfkenny and sixth-grader Kalilah Akbar (pictured), fed the crowd fresh baked treats and soups to raise money for the PTO.

Julie Robbins of Westville Massage pitched in the fundraising quest, offering massages for voters finally arriving at the final stop of this long grueling campaign.