Registrar Seeks 34% Budget Boost

More poll workers and better machine maintenance.

Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans argued that those two proposed improvements are key to better run elections in the fiscal year to come, and that they are worth a 34 percent boost to her department’s budget.

Evans made that pitch on Monday night during the Board of Alders Finance Committee’s second public hearing and first department-level workshop on Mayor Toni Harp’s proposed $556.6 million operating budget for Fiscal Year 2019 – 2010 (FY20). Republican Registrar Delores Knight did not attend Monday’s workshop, which brought out around two dozen people, almost all city department heads and staffers, to the Hill Regional Career High School auditorium on Legion Avenue in the Hill.

(Update: This article was updated on Tuesday morning with information from the Secretary of the State’s office and from the president of the company that manufactures and maintains the city’s voting machines. See more below.)

Coming off of last November’s state and Congressional elections, which saw high voter turnout and equally high polling place dysfunction, Evans told alders that a larger budget would allow her to hire more poll workers, pay them more money, and fund better and more frequent repairs for the city’s 100-plus voting machines, also known as tabulators.

Many of those tabulators suffered wet ballot-induced mechanical errors last year, leading to some poll workers and volunteers staying up until the early hours of the following morning to count ballots by hand. Then it took days for officials to produce New Haven’s official count, long after all other Connecticut municipalities had reported results and winners had been declared.

The registrars’ proposed FY20 budget is $1.05 million. That is $270,848, or 34 percent, higher than the department’s alder-approved budget for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.

The largest proposed line-item increases are in Part-Time Payroll, which would jump from $205,000 to $370,000, and Other Contractual Services, which would spike from $150,000 to $275,000.

Evans pointed out that the coming fiscal year includes at least four major elections: the Sept. 10 mayoral primary, the mayoral general election in November, the Democratic Town Committee (DTC) elections next March, and the presidential primary next April.

“One of the biggest issues that we have is that we don’t have a lot of poll workers,” Evans said in defense of the part-time payroll bump, ​“especially for the money that we pay them. So it’s a big increase that we’re doing for poll workers.”

Evans said the money will be used to pay moderators, assistant moderators, ballot clerks, translators, drivers, ​“floaters” who will travel from polling place to polling place to help troubleshoot problems as they arise, and other workers who staff the city’s 33 polling locations. (That number jumps to 40 polling places during statewide, even-year elections).

Evans said part-time payroll increase will also allow her to train and staff between 25 and 30 workers for the Election Day Registration (EDR) operation at City Hall. Last year, she had hired around 15 people to staff EDR, which proved to be way too few to accommodate the influx of primarily Yale students who decided on Election Day that they wanted to register to vote in New Haven. Some prospective voters had to wait up to four hours to register and cast a ballot. Twenty-five people were turned away and were not able to register at all before the polls closed at 8 p.m.

The contractual services increase, Evans said, would go towards improved maintenance for the city’s 100-plus tabulators, which are made and serviced by LHS Associates. Currently, Evans said, the city contracts with LHS through the Connecticut Secretary of the State’s office to repair the city’s machines once per year to the tune of $30,000.

Evans said she would like to either hire five LHS employees to be stationed in New Haven during each upcoming election so that they can respond in person to any problems with the machines. And if that’s not possible, she said, then she would like to pay the company to repair the city’s machines before every election, not just once per year.

Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison, who spent all night and early morning at the Wexler Grant school polling place last November, waiting hours on end for the registrars’ office to provide replacement tabulators, asked Evans if the city should just scrap its current machines entirely and buy new ones that won’t break every time they come into contact with a wet ballot.

“Is it a waste of money to constantly have them serviced,” she asked, ​“versus buying new machine in order not have all these issues?”

Evans said that the city’s machines are indeed old, many dating back to 2007. But, she said, New Haven’s contract with LHS locks the city in to using these machines until 2026. ​“They are the only persons who can service our machines,” she said.

Evans said she has reached out to the Secretary of the State’s office about New Haven bringing LHS employees to town for elections to provide on-the-spot maintenance, but hasn’t yet heard back as to whether or not that would be legally permissible.

East Rock Alder Charles Decker asked Evans how more and better paid poll workers would improve voters’ experiences going to the polls on any given Election Day.

“We believe in order to recruit qualified, committed poll workers we need to increase the pay,” she said. Currently, she said, some poll workers are asked to work up to 15 or 16 hours for no more than $200.

More money for payroll, she said, would mean more money for ​“floaters,” more money for polling place greeters, more money for workers who can check before a voter is even in line to see if he or she is at the right polling location.

“What are we doing as far as training?” West River Alder and board President Tyisha Walker-Myers asked. She said that she heard the problems were not necessarily with the number of workers, but with the quality of the current workers’ work.

Evans said the EDR workers are trained directly in the registrars’ offices, where they can see firsthand the type of registration work they will have to do on Election Day.

As for regular poll workers, Evans said, there is mandatory training. ​“If they can’t seem to grasp a position,” she said, ​“we’ll ask them to change to a different position so they can still be involved. We always do mandatory training. If it takes us to do two, then so be it so that it’s sufficient and so that voters can come out and get the proper attention that they need.”

East Rock Alder Anna Festa asked if the proposed budget includes recommendations made by Jackie James’s Gem Consulting, which the department has contracted with for $50,000 to come up with a plan for how to improve election day processes.

“Some of it, yes,” Evans said. She said James had been hired only a few weeks ago, and that the short time period between when she was hired and when Evans finalized her proposed budget allowed for only a few of James’s recommendations to make it into the final document.

She added that she has already taken to heart one of the recommendations that arose from a recent City Services and Environmental Policy (CSEP) Committee meeting: A plea from students from Yale and Gateway Community College implored the city to work more closely with local student political groups to recruit poll workers, register students early, and help them understand where to vote and what’s on the ballot. Evans said that she will be going to Albertus Magnus College on Tuesday to talk with students about voting, and that she recently had a table at a Gateway student event at which she spoke with young voters about upcoming elections.

“I think the idea of making the Election Day worker positions more attractive but also more responsible has a lot of merit,” said Westville Alder and Finance Committee Vice-Chair Adam Marchand. ​“In general, I’m disposed toward being supportive of additional resources. But it’s a lot of additional resources, and so I think along with the additional money, there also has to be, as you have said, better plans, more training, and better oversight. Because I don’t think it’s th ecase that if we just simply put more money into the operation, it’s automatically going to be better.”

It has always been the opinion of this office that should a machine break down and need repair, the spare must be brought into service. An operating machine with scanned voted ballots cannot be repaired, or touched by LHS employees, or anyone other than a poll worker, on Election Day.

Updates From SOTS & LHS

On Tuesday morning, Gabe Rosenberg, the communications director for the Secretary of the State’s office, said that Evans’s assertion that the SOTS office has failed to respond to her questions is simply not true.

“This has been communicated to our registrars in the past,” he told the Independent by email, ​“and has specifically been communicated to Registrar Evans.

“Should a town desire to hire LHS employees to be on call to give technical advice, without actually conducting a repair, that would be up to the town to do so. For example, if a wet ballot should jam in the machine, the LHS representative could give advice on how to unjam the machine. They could perhaps troubleshoot other issues as well, without touching the machines.

“With regard to the question about servicing the tabulators … this is completely within the town’s purview – if they want to move the servicing closer to Election Day, that is up to them, although we recommend doing it in the summer so there is enough time to complete the lengthy process of servicing the tabulators. …

“I wanted to make clear that our elections team always answers all questions from the registrars, and spoke to Registrar Evans many, many times in the lead-up and follow-up to the 2018 election.”

Jeff Silverstro, the president of LHS Associates, also got back to the Independent by email on Tuesday morning, and said that his company does not offer a service whereby employees provide on-site support on Election Day itself. He also said that the initial numbers that Evans had provided on maintenance costs for the city’s tabulator machines were incorrect. Maintenance costs closer to $20,000, he said, not $30,000.

“First,” he wrote, ​“we do not currently offer a service for employees to work on site in Connecticut towns/cities for Election Day. Reason being, the State Election Division regulations prohibits our technicians from making repairs to voting machines on Election Day. Due to this regulation LHS offers Help Desk Phone support to our customers in CT from one hour prior to polls opening until two hours after polls close. 

“Second, the annual service of the 104 voting machines in New Haven costs $200 per machine or $20,800 per year. The price is included in the State Contract for voting machines and has not increased since 2006. The annual service agreement covers the following items:

• Annual onsite preventive maintenance, inspection and repair of all machines
• Replacement Parts
• Labor (Time and Materials)
• Travel
• Onsite support for Pre-Election testing issues
• Toll Free Help Desk Support

“Lastly, if a customer wanted to purchase an additional service visit beyond the one included in the annual service agreement, it would cost $125 per hour including travel time portal to portal.

“Unfortunately when the weather is wet, rainy or snowy these types of issues arise. From a technical aspect, there really isn’t anything that we can do to overcome wet ballots tearing and jamming in the machines. The focus should be on educating the voters, at the polling place, to keep their ballots dry when the weather is wet. Ultimately that is the best available remedy in this situation.”