State Sends City $93K For Absentee Ballot Help

The city has landed $93,300 worth of grants from the Secretary of the State’s office to help cover the costs of processing an unprecedented number of absentee ballots during the Nov. 3 general election.

The Board of Alders voted unanimously in support of accepting that state aid Monday night during its regular, bimonthly full board meeting.

The virtual gathering took place online on Zoom and on YouTube Live.

The election-related financial support comes in the form of three separate grants from Secretary of the State Denise Merrill’s office: $50,000 from an Absentee Ballot Support Grant, $40,000 from a Safe Polls Grant, and $2,500 from an Election Day Registration (EDR) Stretch Grant.

City Budget Director and Acting Controller Michael Gormany told the alders in a Sept. 29 letter that the grant money will allow the city/town clerk’s office to have adequate resources to ​“process, mail out, and count a record-breaking number of absentee ballots,” as well as to support ​“safe in person voting” on Nov. 3.

New Haven — like just about everywhere else in the country — is bracing for a flood of absentee ballots this year as voters stay home because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

The state legislature passed a new law this summer allowing for every registered voter in the state to vote absentee this election, no excuse needed. Voters have until Nov. 1 to apply for an absentee ballot by returning an application to the local clerk’s office either by mail or at one of the drop-boxes outside of the municipal office building at 200 Orange St.

City/Town Clerk Michael Smart told the Independent Monday afternoon that he plans to use the grant money to hire up to 15 new temporary staff to help process and count absentee ballots. He said he would like to have his staff working in two shifts on and after Election Day.

“That will keep the flow going just continuously,” he said — not just on Tuesday, Nov. 3, but through the weekend if necessary.

Smart said he also plans to use the money to buy equipment like masks, gloves, pens, hand sanitizer, stamps, postage, and time stamp machines.

“We are going to spend it on everything that’s related to absentees,” he said.

The state financial support comes just under a month day before the general election.

While the national contest between President Donald Trump and former Vice-President Joe Biden will top the ballot, New Haveners will also be able to cast their votes in contested races for U.S. representative, state senator, state representative, and local registrar of voters. New Haveners will also get to weigh in on whether or not they support transferring federal funds from the military budget to support ​“human needs, jobs, and an environmentally sustainable economy.”

Click here to review the city’s sample ballots.

The state aid also comes a week after the state legislature passed and the governor signed a new law that allows registrars of voters and town clerks the option to open the outer envelope of absentee ballots four days before Election Day.

That will enable registrars and clerks to determine the total number of absentee ballots received in advance of Election Day, and also to reject those ballots that do not have the appropriate signature and date. The new law does not permits registrars and clerks to start tallying absentee ballots before Election Day.

Click here to read a story by the New Haven Register’s Mary O’Leary about a recent City Services and Environmental Policy (CSEP) committee hearing at which alders expressed concerns about gaps in communication between the clerk’s and registrar’s offices, the local legislature, and the general public during the runup to the election.

One such concern expressed at that meeting was about the placement of the city’s four absentee ballot drop-boxes.

Two of those boxes are placed side by side, one facing the curb and one facing the sidewalk, outside of the entrance to 200 Orange St. A third is place a few dozen feet away towards the southern end of 200 Orange St. And a fourth is placed less than half a block away outside of the back entrance to City Hall in the walkway between City Hall and 200 Orange St.

Smart said he chose to place all four boxes in around 200 Orange St. so as not to ​“favor one neighborhood over another.” He also said that the boxes had to be placed in near surveillance cameras. That requirement ruled out putting one in front of City Hall on Church Street facing the Green.

The three placed on Orange Street, meanwhile, allow for easy pedestrian access from the sidewalk, car access from the street, and handicap access, he said.

“Voters are utilizing all of the ballot boxes” so far, Smart said, including the one placed in the cut-through between City Hall and 200 Orange St.

He said that the city has processed around 5,000 requests for absentee ballots so far. By last week, the city has received around 11,000 such requests. Smart has estimated that the city this year will receive around double the 14,000 absentee ballot applications it received for the 2016 presidential general election.

According to a spreadsheet provided by the Secretary of the State’s office explaining how it determined how much each municipality would receive in election-related aid, New Haven has a total of 57,576 registered voters.

Click here to download an absentee ballot application form, and here to learn more about the absentee ballot process.

The election law passed by the state legislature this summer also allows municipalities to set up more than one EDR same-day registration site for Election Day if they so choose. New Haven’s EDR site is at City Hall at 165 Church St.

According to Secretary of the State spokesperson Gabe Rosenberg, New Haven’s registrar of voters has not asked the state for permission to set up a second EDR site.

During a September CSEP committee hearing, Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans told the alders that the city could not technologically set up a working, state-sanctioned EDR site outside of City Hall.