Paul Bass Photo
Ferrucci & Tramantano: Consolidate precincts.
Under state law, New Haven must spend over $24,000 for next month’s Republican presidential primary to hire 128 people to work for 16 hours at 32 polling places — including places where only one lonely Republican has cast a ballot in the past.
Rae Tramantano wants the state to let New Haven avoid all that expense by consolidating polling places.
And she’s a Republican.
Tramantano (at right in above photo) is not just any Republican. She’s New Haven’s Republican registrar of voters. She has dedicated her adult life to encouraging people to vote.
But she and her Democratic counterpart, Sharon Ferrucci (at left in photo), have concluded that so few Republicans vote in New Haven, that it makes no sense for the taxpayers to spend more than $750 to operate each of 32 different polling places for the a GOP presidential primary next month. They know that in some places hours will go by without a single person arriving to fill out a ballot. So they’re preparing a request to the Secretary of the State’s office for a waiver to allow the city to consolidate voting to perhaps a dozen or so districts for the April 24 Republican presidential primary.
In the last Republican presidential primary, in 2008, exactly one Republican voted all day at West Hills’ polling place. At polling stations in the Hill, Fair Haven, Newhallville and West River, between one and five Republicans voted. A total of 898 Republicans voted citywide. The polls were open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The Democrats had a presidential primary in 2008, too. So the staffers at the polls still had work to do.
But this year, the Democrats do not. Only the Republicans do. Under state law, Ferrucci and Tramantano must still hire a moderator ($350), an official checker ($140), a ballot handler ($135), and a machine tabulator ($130) to work from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. at each polling place.
Those people would spend almost of that time cooling their heels at many of the sites this year.
Citywide New Haven has only 2,458 registered Republicans, according to figures compiled Thursday. (It has 45,549 registered Democrats, 64,302 voters overall.)
“I don’t know if I’m going to win on this one,” Tramantano said Thursday. “I’m going to give it my best.”
Ferrucci suggested consolidating polling places within state assembly districts. Tramantano would like to see Ward 11 have just one polling place, Bella Vista, since few voters cast ballots at the ward’s other spot, Ross-Woodward School. She also noted that East Rock’s Wards 9 and 10 vote at the same spot, Wilbur Cross High School, during construction at East Rock Global Magnet. Why have two separate platoons of ward poll workers at the same spot? she asked. In the 2008 presidential primary, 58 Republicans voted in Ward 9, a grand total of 36 in Ward 10. (Those were among the highest totals in the city.)
Secretary of the State Denise Merrill and her legislative and elections staff attorney Ted Bromley said they sympathize with the local registrars’ request—but see no way they can fulfill it. At least this year.
State law clearly requires municipalities to have the same polling places for primaries that they have for general elections, they said.
A current bill drawn up by the legislature’s General Administration & Elections Committee might change that for future years. It would allow communities to consolidate districts for expected low-turnout primaries if none of the candidates objects. GA&E approved the bill March 12. It now must pass both houses of the legislature.
Even with permission, consolidating districts might prove trickier than it seems. For instance, New Haven’s Ward 30 has two polling places. One person voted at one of them, the Clarence Rogers School, in the 2008 GOP primary. Five at the old West Hills School, the other spot.
But as Ward 30 Democratic Co-Chair Honda Smith noted, a huge barrier—West Rock—stands between those two polling places. And a lot of people in that ward don’t have cars. So shutting down one station might actually prevent some people (or someone) from voting.
New Haven GOP Town Chairman Rick Elser offered a solution: Make everyone come downtown to the Hall of Records to vote in a Republican-only primary. And pay for rides for anyone who needs them. That’d probably be a lot cheaper, he noted, than paying all those workers all day in 32 polling places.