Voters Seek Election Day Solutions

Communicate better. Divide up some polling places. Boost staffing.

Concerned citizens made those suggestions in the wake of screw-ups at the polls on Nov. 8.

The city’s Democratic registrar of voters, Shannel Evans, attended the meeting with members of the New Haven Votes Coalition as well as the Downtown/Wooster Square Management Team, which has called for a public hearing into the long lines, missing ballots, general confusion (especially at the Election Day Registration, or EDR, station) and a week-long day in vote-counting on Election Day.

More than 40 people attended the meeting this past Thursday night in the city’s Hall of Records at 200 Orange St., which was the polling place for Ward 7 and the site of several Election Day snafus, including lines that kept voters waiting as long as three hours.

Aaron Goode, one of the organizers, said the meeting was not about assigning blame or finger pointing, but about looking for solutions to make sure that what happened this year doesn’t happen again.

“Having three-hour voting times to cast a ballot is not acceptable,” he said. ​“It is a form of unintended voter suppression, and we should not have a casual or fatalistic attitude about the failure that caused these problems to occur.”

Attendees at the meeting got to share their Election Day stories and offer some suggestions about how the city could improve their voter experience. They also got to hear from Evans, who offered some remedy of her own for a smoother next election.

Evans said her office did manage to register nearly 12,000 new voters this year and handled about 8,200 changes of address. On the other hand, the office’s disarray also prompted a last-minute visit from the Secretary of the State and emergency help from the mayor’s office to prepare for the expected rush of people registering to vote on Election Day. (New Haven’s registrars failed to participate in three trainings held by the state.) Even with the emergency help, people waited in line for hours, and 50 potential voters were turned away.

Elaine Piraino-Holevoet and and her husband Don Holevoet, who have been voting at 200 Orange St. for more than 20 years, said they’d never seen such chaos and confusion at their polling place.

“We didn’t know why it was like that,” Piraino-Holevoet said. ​“I was cold and I was frustrated, but we were also upbeat saying, ​‘If all these people are turning out to vote, this is really great.’”

Don Holevoet said no one at the polling place was telling them why the lines — which wrapped part of the block — were so long, or why Yale students seemed to be voting in different lines. So, he said, he wasn’t sure if it was something political, or something else.

“It just seemed like it could have been better,” he said. ​“They didn’t have all the voting booths available.”

“There were only five voting booths for all of this ward to cast your vote,” Piraino-Holevoet added. ​“All we kept thinking is, ​‘If this had been like California with referendums [on the ballot], how long would it have been?’”

Kate Nyhan also voted at 200 Orange St.. She said she got in a line that was around the corner at 7:35 a.m. and didn’t get to vote until 9:55 a.m.

“Yes,” she said, ​“I counted.”

She said she saw several people leaving the line, one of whom had a job interview and could wait no longer.

“I can call my boss and say, ​‘I’m going to be late,’ but you can’t do that with a job interview,” she said. ​“I hope he came back.”

She said when she asked someone in the polling place whom she could lodge a complaint with about her experience, she was directed not to the registrar’s office, which is responsible for administering and overseeing local elections, but to Secretary of the State Denise Merrill’s office. Nyhan did contact that office, and said she got a response back, which impressed her.

But, she said, ​“Apparently this is not always how it is in New Haven, but I was not impressed. Anyone can have a problem, but the communication about that problem? There was no communication about the problem.”

Not All Bad, Not Great

Evans acknowledged the challenges that people faced at the polls this year, but also pointed out some of the success. In addition to the 11,800 new voters added to the rolls in New Haven, 973 people were able to use Election Day Registration, or EDR, to get registered and vote. That was a significant increase from the 616 who were able to do so in 2014, when the law that instituted EDR took effect. Ultimately, about 50 people who were standing in line for EDR when the polls closed at 8 p.m. were turned away, she said.

Evans said one of the steps for an improved elections process going forward will start with her and her staff. She said she will participate in a new registrar’s training session that she couldn’t take this year because it is offered only in odd years. Evans took office at the start of 2016.

She said her office also is looking to recruit and train more moderators and poll workers, while also improving the training for current moderators. She said the challenge with recruiting poll workers is that it’s a long day, running from about 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. She said that Merrill’s office also is helping her tap into resources and connecting her with other registrars to exchange ideas and best practices. In addition, the office is working on its traditional grid reporting to make it more accurate and reduce delays.

“That’s just a few of the steps that we would like to take,” she said. ​“And we know that you have ideas, so we’re here with an open heart, open mind, and open ears to hear these ideas and take them into consideration so that we can do what we need to do to make sure elections run smooth.”

Ideas Abound

She heard both short-term and long-term suggestions in response. They included encouraging employers to be flexible about work schedules on Election Day, another upcoming attempt at amending the state constitution to allow early voting, and the long-shot hope of Connecticut taking a page from Puerto Rico and declaring Election Day a state holiday, where, advocates said, voter turnout is 90 percent.

Aaron Goode of New Haven Votes told the crowd that State Rep. Roland Lemar, who was unable to attend the forum, was planning to try again to pass an early voting bill. Early voting is now available in 34 states and the District of Columbia, but restrictions in Connecticut’s constitution prevent it.

Merrill’s office supports early voting. Evans’ office does too. Goode pointed out that when a constitutional amendment question for early voting was put on the ballot two years ago, it failed narrowly statewide, but New Haven voters supported it overwhelmingly.

A local and more immediate fix might come in the form of splitting up where Ward 9 and Ward 10 voters cast their ballots. Right now, both wards head to Wilbur Cross High School for presidential elections, but not for other election years for statewide offices.

Dave Coon said for presidential elections the same number of poll workers for Ward 10 were handling Ward 9, which appears to attract fewer voters. He suggested not only moving Ward 9 voters to East Rock Magnet School, but also rightsizing the number of poll workers in Ward 10 to match the number of people voting there.

Anstress Farwell of Wooster Square also suggested that the registrars office be prepared to take on volunteers. She works downtown. She said after seeing the lines at 200 Orange St. she went to the city corporation counsel’s office and offered to volunteer. But when she was walked over to the registrars office, no one could find anything for her to do, though there was an atrium filled with people who needed help.

Former Downtown Alder Abigail Roth said that there also seemed to be some confusion about whether it was sufficient for a Yale students to simply name their college residences to register, or if they needed to know their actual street address. Another suggestion: staff the polls in at least two shifts. Evans said she’s open to the idea, but it would require more poll workers.

Rachel Heerema, a New Haven Votes Coalition volunteer who worked EDR at City Hall from 12:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., said there was some delay in the process for Yale students trying to register and vote on the same day because they needed to have not only an address for their college, but also a form of proof for that address, like a piece of mail. She noted that lots of people with varying circumstances took advantage of EDR without getting too upset for having to stand in long lines, and were even apologetic for having waited so late to register.

“I think my biggest suggestion for ways to manage Election Day voter registration is to have a lot more line management,” she said. ​“As we kind of know how the day has flowed, how many per half hour we’re able to register, at about 7:30 we estimate whether at a certain point people will be able to register.”

She said people in the room, who had stayed thinking they could register if they were still in line at 8 p.m., were upset when they were told that they couldn’t. There also appeared to be room for some basic voter education about how and for what reasons one could vote by absentee ballot, under what circumstances a police officer could deliver your absentee ballot, and when you can vote in person at the Town Clerk’s office.

The next opportunity to talk about voting likely will be when a Board of Alders committee holds a public hearing to investigate the most recent election. Morris Cover Sal DeCola, who heads the committee holding the hearing, said it will probably take place in January.