Poll Workers Outnumber Voters; 4,700+ Vote Absentee; Some Ballots Never Came

(Updated) Joe Biden and Donald Trump will have to wait at least two days to find out precisely how many votes they won in New Haven Tuesday against candidates who aren’t running against them for president.

Meanwhile, platoons of poll workers spent 16 hours at 40 polling stations in town where they mostly outnumbered the people who entered to vote — when any voters were present at all.

That was the scene across town on a primary day that in New Haven featured no contested local races. Both Republicans and Democrats held primaries for one position: U.S. president. Trump and Biden, their parties’ long-settled nominees, were on the ballot along with previous real or potential opponents no longer in the running.

Biden and Trump were, for the record, proclaimed the victors of their respective statewide primaries minutes after the polls closed.

Still, the city got needed practice conducting elections in a pandemic — keeping people safe from Covid-19 when they show up in person, and enabling thousands of others to cast absentee ballots. Visits to stations across town revealed success in the former quest. Statewide absentee ballots arrived late or not at all, due to delays in sending out ballots to people who requested them; that caused much confusion in the days leading up to the primary as well as on Tuesday.

The number of New Haveners returning absentee ballots was approaching 5,000 after the polls closed, according to election officials. However, because of the statewide delay in mailing out ballots, a deadline has been extended to Thursday for ballots to arrive at the city clerk’s office. That means the official count won’t be completed before then.

Election officials plan to release preliminary unofficial citywide results by midnight Tuesday or some time Wednesday morning, according to Moderator Kevin Arnold, then updating those numbers when the last absentee ballots are counted on Thursday.

In the contested 2016 Democratic presidential primary, 16,935 New Haven voters cast votes for either Hilary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

Given that Tuesday’s primary was a ​“foregone conclusion,” the fact that roughly half or up to 60 percent as many Democrats still appeared to have bothered to vote offered a ​“nice barometer of excitement” in the party for the Nov. 3 general election, remarked Democratic Town Chair Vin Mauro Jr.

Most of New Haven’s polling stations saw no more than 100 to 200 voters in person all day, according to Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans.

An exception was Westville. In Ward 25, 472 people showed up to the polls. Of those, 335 voted for Biden in the Democratic primary, 100 for Bernie Sanders, 6 for Tulsi Gabbard, and 9 uncommitted. Upper Westville’s Ward 26 also saw 434 people come to the polls, casting 365 votes for Biden, 45 for Sanders, 2 for Gabbard, 10 for Trump, 2 for LaFuente, and 10 for ​“uncommitted” combined in the two parties’ primaries.

Only 22 people showed up all day in Ward 25 to vote in the Republican primary — 18 for Trump, 2 for Rocky LaFuente, 2 uncommitted.

Oliver Augustine, who staffed the Ward 25 Republican check-in table with Kanesha Crenshaw, brought along a book, Revolution Q, to help pass the long idle hours.

Registrar Evans reported that more poll workers than usual dropped out at the last moment, not surprising given the Covid-‘19 pandemic. Her crew scrambled to cover the work.

Visits to polls across town revealed how they kept voters safe — and how thousands of dollars were spent funding 16-hour shifts with in some cases long stretches of no work to do.

The Truman Show

Sixteen polls workers spent the first five hours of primary election day helping a grand total of 24 people vote at Truman School in the Hill — participating in an exercise that was as much about how the big general election will work as it was about the candidates on the ballot.

Amid the relative quiet, an army of poll workers Tuesday at least got practice handling socially distant, PPE-equipped voting in advance of the main event, the Nov. 3 general election.

They had a lot of time to kill, though. Thanks to strict state laws that require separate teams of Republican and Democratic poll workers, those workers most of the day outnumbered the people who actually showed up to vote.

That was especially true in spots like Truman School, where thanks to gerrymandering a total of four teams of poll workers had to be hired to handle the occasional walk-in voter.

That’s because Truman School is the spot for a city voting district — Ward 4 — that is carved up into two different state representative districts. Most of it is in the 95th District, which runs across New Haven. But a sliver is in West Haven’s 116th. Neither disrtrict had a primary Tuesday, but all the different ​“separate district” party teams had to be paid and present for the 16-hour shift.

So two moderators, one assistant registrar, five official checkers, four ballot clerks, four machine tabulators, and one greeter sat in the large, air-conditioned gymnasium for hours waiting for voters to trickle in.

“It’s been slow,” noted Diane Sherman, a ballot checker working for the 116th District. As of 9:30 a.m., she still had not needed to distribute a ballot to anyone. 

“Some people show up to vote because they have a real civic duty to vote,” said moderator Carmen Padilla-DeChalus said. ​“I think it’s still everyone’s civic responsibility to vote. I think they’ll show up.”

Biden voter Tonya Spell arrived at the polling station in her scrubs, having come straight from the group home where she works with senior citizens. ​“It’s important to get the other guy out, so I got to make sure I got my vote in,” she said.

Everyone who revealed their vote said they were Biden supporters except for Lilian Descenti, who said she is a registered Democrat but plans to vote for Trump.

Tuesday morning, she said, she listed her preference as ​“noncommittal” on the ballot. ​“I think it’s important to vote. Our voice counts,” she said. ​“I think Trump has done a lot for this country. I think he’s 100 percent American, for the people. That he’s prejudiced — I don’t believe that in any way, shape or form. I don’t think he’s biased toward anyone.”

College student Raven Bacote was polling station greeter. Her job was to sit by the door, direct people to the official checkers, and wipe down polling booths with disinfecting wipes after each use.

Some of the safety measures implemented to reduce transmission of the virus include giving each voter their own pen, offering hand sanitizer provided by the city, and giving each voter a blank sheet of paper to cover their ballot for privacy rather than the usual system of distributing envelopes, which are then reused. 

“The city has provided us with enough cleaning and PPE gear, so people see that it is pretty clean,” said Padilla-DeChalus. Everyone who had come in by 11 a.m. arrived wearing a mask, she said.

About five people who are unaffiliated showed up to vote. Poll workers had to explain to them that they cannot vote in a primary unless they are a registered Democrat or Republican.

Working the polls was a family affair for Donna Ellis, a 67-year-old with blonde dreadlocks who has served elections stints for the past eight years. Her granddaughter, Franaja Payne-Smith, was also at the Truman School. ​“It’s been slow, just a lot of waiting,” she said. Ellis’ other granddaughter was working at the Hillhouse polling station; her daughter, in Fair Haven Heights.

Ellis enjoys the work since she has been retired for 27 years. ​“You get to see people you haven’t seen in a long time,” she said. Tuesday morning, after voting, her friend Junie Johnson stayed to chat to the ballot clerks for 20 minutes. A grand total of two people arrived during the time to cast votes.

Absentee Mess Sends Some To Polls After All

Jerry Anne Dickel wasn’t planning on voting on Tuesday. She had applied for an absentee ballot weeks ago, and had hoped to cast her pandemic-era primary vote in advance by mail.

But her ballot never came. So Dickel donned her light blue face mask, put on a baseball cap to shield her eyes from the sun, and walked to her polling place at East Rock School on Nash Street.

Dickel was one of 38 voters to cast their ballots in person at the Ward 9 polling place as of 9:30 a.m.

Keeping a six-foot distance from this reporter while being interviewed in the magnet school’s parking lot, Dickel said she would have preferred to vote remotely.

“I didn’t get my absentee,” she said — a fate that many registered voters throughout the state experienced in the runup to Tuesday’s primary.

Dickel said she wound up feeling quite comfortable voting in person at East Rock School. She was the only person inside the school’s gymnasium at the time besides the poll workers, she said. Everyone kept a six foot distance, everyone wore a mask, and she got a fresh pen to use to fill out her ballot.

“I thought they did a very good job,” she said about the safety and cleanliness of the voting setup.

Dickel said she voted for Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden.

She said she threw her support behind the former vice president and former longtime Delaware senator not because she’s particularly enthusiastic about his candidacy — but because she’s desperate to bolster any candidate who might have a good chance of defeating Republican incumbent President Donald Trump.

Her rationale mirrored that of many local voters who hit the midterm polls in 2018 to propel Democrats to majority control of the House of Representatives as a rebuke to Trump’s first two years in office.

“I’m excited for anybody who can beat Trump,” she said. ​“The bottom line is we’ve got to vote him out.”

Michael Moore, another Ward 9 voter who cast his ballot in person at East Rock School Tuesday morning, declined to say whom he voted for — but hinted that his motivations may be similar to Dickel’s. ​“There’s a candidate I’m trying to get excited about,” he said when asked if he is enthusiastic about anyone listed on the primary ballot.

Moore said that he too applied for an absentee ballot weeks ago — and then never received one.

“I’m more worried about the broader implications for November,” he said about not being able to vote remotely this August. If so many people who applied for a ballot didn’t get one during a relatively inconsequential primary — considering that Biden and Trump have already all-but-locked up their respective nominations — what will happen if voting doesn’t go smoothly when it really matters during the general election?

Reflecting on the heavy humidity and heat of Tuesday morning, Moore had an apolitical response to the question of what spurred him to go to the polls in person when his absentee ballot never arrived. ​“I’ll take any opportunity I can get to get out of the house,” he said with a smile.

Outside Ward 7’s downtown polling place at the Hall of Records at 200 Orange St. Tuesday morning, Ryan DiCapua and Mareika Phillips (pictured) stood alongside a nearly 10-foot-tall banner that read, ​“Yale: Respect New Haven.”

The two were standing by the polling place not because they had just voted, or because they were stumping for a particular presidential candidate. Rather, they were promoting a campaign spearheaded by the local labor advocacy group New Haven Rising to pressure Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital to increase their voluntary annual financial contributions to the city.

“I’m a lifelong New Havener,” said DiCapua, who grew up in Morris Cove, is a member of UNITE HERE Local 217, and has been out of his job at the Omni Hotel since March. ​“Yale needs to stop treating us like guests.”

DiCopua said he would like to see Yale step up its voluntary contributions to the city to at least cover the money that the public schools are spending to cover free meals for students during the pandemic.

Phillips referenced a newly launched website that calculates Yale’s annual ​“tax break” — that is, the amount of money it doesn’t have to pay in local property taxes because of its status as a largely tax-exempt nonprofit — at $157,722,490.96.

That site also allows residents to enter their own addresses and calculate how much they are ​“subsidizing” Yale by the university not having to pay property taxes on all of its real estate in the city.

“I would pay about a third less” than she currently does in property taxes, Phillips said, if Yale paid the $157 million-plus each year to the city. (See here and scroll down for Yale and YNHH responses to the call for the two large nonprofit institutions to give more to the city each year.)

Inside the Hall of Records polling location in the building’s ground floor meeting room, Ward 7 polling place Moderator Luz Colville said that 33 people had voted as of around 8:30 a.m. That’s out of a total roughly 2,200 registered Democrat and Republican voters in the ward.

“We have everything we need,” she said about the safety precautions at the polling center. That includes face masks, face shields, hand sanitizer, gowns, and individual pens for each voter.

She pointed to a table bearing two dozen ​“I Voted” stickers. Due to the pandemic, the poll workers aren’t handing these out, she said. Instead, people can pick up a sticker themselves after they cast their ballot.

“It’s really, really slow,” she added about in-person voter turnout Tuesday. That’s likely because many Ward 7 voters cast their ballots absentee, she said.

According to Secretary of State Denise Merrill, more than 300,000 absentee ballots should have been received by Connecticut primary voters as of Monday night. Due to absentee ballot mail delays exacerbated by Tropical Storm Isaias, Gov. Ned Lamont signed an executive order Monday that allows absentee ballots to be counted as late as Thursday so long as they were postmarked Tuesday.

At Career: 4 Hours, 16 Voters, 20 Workers

Latrina Outlaw (pictured) came to work at Ward 3’s polling station inside Career High School’s cafeteria at 5 a.m., wearing bright rainbow socks.

Outlaw has worked at the polls in years past, but none of her previous experiences as a poll worker have been like Tuesday morning’s. With social distancing measures in place and a far slower-than-usual stream of voters, the day has felt quieter than ever, she said.

By 10 a.m., only 16 people had shown up to vote over the course of four hours, according to Moderator Edna Kripps (pictured).

Ward 3 is another gerrymandered spot that required an overkill of poll workers. It contains two separate State Senate Districts, so the cafeteria contained four teams of poll workers: one Democratic and one Republican station for each half of the ward.

Around 20 poll workers were inside, each wearing some combination of gloves, masks, and face shields. Workers were at least six feet apart from one another, with the exception of the checkers, who worked in pairs. There was a single entrance at the front of the cafeteria and a single exit at the back, ensuring that voters could move through the room in a single direction.

“If we were busy, the time would be nothing — but when you’re sitting around, it’s draining,” said Outlaw, who assists with school buses at Worthington Hooker Magnet School.

A coffee break made the day better, she said. She recommended that other poll workers avoid eating a heavy meal on election day to avoid feeling tired over the course of the fourteen-hour day.

Despite the long hours, Outlaw said she loves being a poll worker and meeting others in the neighborhood. ​“We’re like one family in there,” she said.

Around eight voters filed in and out of the polling place between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. They all said they felt comfortable with the polling station’s socially-distanced setup.

A teacher’s assistant who identified herself as Lea I. came with her daughter, Dallas, to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

“It shows that even though he dropped out, he’s still being vocal and influential,” she said. ​“It was pretty easy” to vote, she said of her vote. She said she felt safe voting in person given the social distancing precautions at the polling station.

Margie Diaz, a home care worker, and Feny Taylor, who is self-employed said they voted for Biden.

“It was fast. No waiting,” said Taylor, praising the pandemic-era safety measures inside the station.

Mozel and Roberta White, both retired health care workers, said they were also Biden voters.

“He’s the man to deliver us from all this crap,” said Mozel White.

As voters filed in, New Haven Rising — a union-affiliated organization advocating for Yale University to provide more jobs and resources to New Haven residents — set up a table near the cafeteria’s entrance. Ron Hurt (pictured), the ward’s alder, manned the table with his family.

Hurt handed out flyers with a QR Code that passersby could scan with their phones, linking to the organization’s website about the tax break Yale receives through the state’s charter.

“They need to help our people, give back to the city,” Hurt said of Yale.

His son, Ron Hurt Jr., said the team had a conversation with one woman who lived in New Haven her whole life. ​“She agreed that it wasn’t fair” that Yale had such a large tax break, he said.

“Yale: Respect New Haven” signs dotted the yard outside the school.