Voting in quarantine — Jess Ruderman

Connecticut struggles to adopt no-contact voting system in a pandemic

A collection of the view from people’s windows featured throughout this piece.

Super Tuesday typically marks the true beginning to election season, but this year it seemed to mark the end of traditional voting as Americans know it. With the fast spread of the coronavirus, COVID-19, enforcing a pandemic lockdown across the country, citizens in all states watched as primaries and caucuses were postponed, canceled, reinstated and reimagined as the country attempted - and still attempts - to adopt a no-contact voting system.

At the end of 2019, 33 states officially became ‘no-excuse absentee voting’ in which any voter may apply for an absentee ballot without justification. Now, the other 17 that still require an excuse are struggling to find a way to provide their voters a safe and efficient means of exercising their right to vote.

Connecticut is one of these states.

“In each different conference call, the game plan keeps changing. The floor keeps moving because of COVID. It’s like shifting plates in the world,” Hamden Town Clerk Vera Morrison said. “The decision was made that they were going to focus in on a mail-in ballot and we are not a mail-in state.”

Connecticut follows standard absentee policies requiring that when a voter requests a ballot, they supply a valid excuse as to why they are unable to attend the polls to vote in-person on the day of an election. Excuses that are deemed eligible involve being a member of the armed forces, out of town, religious beliefs, physical disability, prior election duty responsibility or an illness. While a person who tests positive for COVID-19 would be covered by the ‘illness’ excuse, state politicians are conflicted if the threat of contracting the disease is enough to issue an absentee ballot.

Secretary of State Denise Merill announced she is considering sending – via mail – an absentee ballot application to every registered voter in the state within one of the two major political parties for the Aug. 11 primary as a preliminary step towards contact-less voting.

Currently, absentee applications are available online on the Secretary of State official website as well as in-person at any Town Clerk office across the state.

“I think it's really important - really important - to get the terminology exact in terms of when the Secretary of State says she's going to be mailing out absentee ballot applications,” VP of Public Issues for League of Women Voters Conn. Judy Lhamon said. “They’re not ballots and that’s a really important distinction.”

While Merill’s initiative would put the means of applying for an absentee ballot into every Connecticut registered voter’s hands, it does not guarantee their reasoning for voting absentee will be accepted when it arrives at the town clerk’s office. This could also cause confusion for people who have already submitted their applications as well as permanent absentee ballot voters – of which Hamden alone has approximately 400 of.

“The governor under the executive order could not expand the reasons for voting by absentee because the state constitution takes precedence,” Morrison said. “Their game plan seems to be, they’re going to target every registered voter, they’re going to send them an application - which to me means a lot of town clerks are going to get duplicate applications if they’re already received them - and then we enter them into the system, verify they’re a voter and then they claim that a mail house is going to mail out the ballots.

“As a town clerk that guards all these numbered envelopes, I have a concern that an outside agency is actually processing our absentees. I don’t think there’s a way we could do all of it.”

Morrison expressed great concern in the shift towards a no-excuse, mail-in voting option for the state. While the current condition of the country calls for a different approach to traditional voting, Connecticut isn’t equipped with the manpower needed to efficiently complete the manual labor the process would require.

“In my mind as a town clerk, and in all the other town clerk’s minds, is if somebody has a legitimate reason to vote by absentee, that’s fine. But if everybody decides, ‘I’m not going to the polls because I’ll have possible exposure to COVID’ that is going to put an overwhelming burden on every single town clerk's office who have all these other additional legal responsibilities,” Morrison said. “Elections are like a sideline to us because we do them once, twice a year, but we’re constant with all the other duties that we do.”

With a population of 3.565 million, 169 towns and only 269 town clerks, the state doesn’t possess the same kind of resources county government states such as Oregon and Washington have in a third level of government beyond the local and state level. Despite the lack of budget, precautions are still a priority for those working to ensure voting can commence come August.

“Creating the opportunity for people to be safe, both pollers and election workers, is a paramount concern and I know that the Secretary of State and the Registrar of Voters are talking about that in great detail and that gives me great hope,” Lhamon said. “We don’t want to eliminate completely the opportunity for people to vote in-person. Understand that the opportunities won’t be as widespread as they are now in the polling places, but still make it possible for more people to vote in-person.”

As the state gears up to address voter concerns both in-person and via mail, voters have begun to process what these next steps could mean for them. Quinnipiac student and Massachusetts resident Kristina Duran voted via absentee in the 2016 general election while she was away at school. Now returning home, she is prepared to vote by any means.

“Even though absentee is a process to send and fill out, I would still prefer the absentee ballot over going in-person to vote since it would be the safer option,” Duran said. “However, I would still go in-person to vote even if the absentee ballot was not an option because I am proud to be an American and I want my voice to be heard and I will always exercise my right to vote no matter the circumstances.”

Although people like Duran are determined to vote under any conditions, others are more cautious about what they could be risking attending the polls. First time voter and student at Drexel University, Madison Milanovich, is no stranger to absentee voting, but is still disappointed she might not be able to show up in-person to her first general election.

“I was very much looking forward to voting in-person in a presidential election, but as this progresses it looks like that won’t happen,” Milanovich said. “I have voted absentee in all local elections since I turned 18. I am definitely worried that voter turnout will be down. No one should have to weigh their safety in order to fulfill their right to vote.”

Decisions on the steps Connecticut will be taking either towards or against mail-in options are still up in the air. Though the country seems to be flattening the curve, 24 states have yet to vote in their primaries and the circumstances come voting time are still uncertain. In the meantime, residents and organizations, such as The League of Women Voters, are taking action to make clear the need for a shift, urging Gov. Lamont to support special policies during this time and preparing for an election in quarantine.

“It’s definitely a labor intensive process. I think messaging about the absentee ballot process is going to be extremely important and getting people the correct information every time with appropriate graphics and prompts that many of us have become used to in our online experience I think is going to become key,” Lhamon said. “Misinformation whether it's deliberate or accidental is totally unhelpful.”

While adjusting to the current state of the country will be critical for the Aug. 11 primary and again in November for the general election, it’s on voters as well as state officials to carry out their duty as citizens to respect their privileged right to vote, especially in a pandemic.

“There’s a sense of responsibility for being a registered voter,” Morrison said. “It’s such a privilege when you look at what’s going on in the world and people are fighting for their right to vote. This is something that you say, ‘Oh ok I’ll just fill this out and mail it in’ or you actually take the responsibility and go out and vote.”