Rosario Urges State To Provide Additional Drop Boxes For Voters

State Rep. Chris Rosario

State Rep. Chris Rosario is calling on Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill to authorize additional drop boxes in the city for absentee ballot voters in advance of the Nov. 3 general election.

“I believe that everyone should have the right to vote,” writes Rosario in a letter to Merrill. “In America’s democracy, we value our ability to choose who is in office, especially through these difficult times. I want to offer Bridgeport’s residents curbside voting to make it safer and easier for people who are disabled or at risk of serious illness from COVID-19.”

Rosario is also calling for additional funds for the Bridgeport Town Clerk’s Office that processes the ballots. The office will be handling thousands of additional requests for ballots, a much larger volume of documents with higher costs than in a typical election cycle, as a result of an option to vote absentee instead of in-person voting because of the health emergency.

For the August 11 primary, the state facilitated the mailing of absentee ballots to all eligible voters, a task now returned to local town clerks, as is traditional, for the general election.

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16 comments

  1. Chris
    Why don’t you wait and see what happens and what can go wrong with the AB process before spending more money on this.
    I personally would rather see voting on the first weekend of November, Saturday and Sunday, from 6:00 AM to 8:00 PM and some other changes.
    But if you are going to have no excuse AB’s then you need to tighten up the procedure, you cannot make it public information as to who sent in the application and when the ballot was mailed out, etc., to make it easier to cheat.

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  2. I agree totally with him more drop boxes are needed makes no sense to have to drive on the other side of town for the drop box. I trust the drop box more than mailing it through the usps at this point. My parents dropped there ballots to the Dropbox downtown and on the state website they will tell you if it was received which i think is great. Im all for more drop boxes

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  3. Rosario is right. They need more drop boxes coupled other better curbside accessibility. Dropbox at Morton Center was 80 feet from the curb. These issues can be finessed during next session.

    Senator Moore was certainly the beneficiary of the new AB process.

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  4. Grin and I finally agree on something.
    If there was not a new AB process then Moore would have lost because the machine would have won with the rigged AB process that was in place.

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  5. Moore won because of the new AB process out in place by Gov Lamont and SOTS Merrill.
    It sure is nice having such a powerful Senator like that up in Hartford; right Grin?

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    1. Actually- People that voted by absentee voted long before Brown’s message got out there as an unknown. The day of the election told a different story, At the POLL’s Marcus Brown, the unknown won at most North end precincts at Central Blackham and Winthrop etc, He won at the Polls in Trumbull and lost by 1 vote in Monroe. For a relative newcomer he did an amazing job. But better luck next time. His message finally resonated — BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME. Congrats to all of the winning candidates.

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      1. First of all Steve, I have always supported Bport and continue to do although I must say a little less frequently since COVID 19.
        I am nearly 70 so I do need tone careful.
        Secondly, there is more to the city than DT. Get around a bit would you.
        And lastly, you are obviously satisfied with the cities response to the outside dining. Why don’t you try to be proactive rather than reactive. Walk around town and drive around. And when something isn’t open go knock on the door and ask if there is something that you can help them with rather than saying they didn’t fill out a form. That’s the easy way out.

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      2. @SteveA
        So sure and SO WRONG………………………………
        “People that voted by absentee voted long before Brown’s message got out there as an unknown. ”
        Pure nonsense. Absentee ballots arrived very close to Election Day. Brown was the party nominee, If he didn’t get his message out with $100,000 in state election funds, he did a pisspoor job of campaigning.

        Two candidates with the same budget.
        We received 8 mailers from Moore, and 6 phone calls and emails.
        We received 2 mailers from Brown, both in the last 4 days before the election, no emails and no phone calls.
        His mailer stunk, it bragged about everything he won for us…NOT one thing was for Trumbull. Trumbull voters could care less about what he claims he got for his district in Bridgeport. As a property owner in that district, familiar with his representation, I found the claims laughable.
        What wasn’t laughable was his using his CC stipend for $450 hotel rooms on the taxpayer dime.

        Three times the Ganim/Testa machine has put up males to defeat Marilyn Moore, three times they have failed.

        Now you want to blame voting before the endorsed party candidate got his message out? Quit drinking the Kool-Aid.

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  6. I think a broader point is being missing than drop boxes. Trump can and is mostly going to win. I know it’s hard to fathom in this racial climate, but that was the theme in 2016, and no one expected Trump to win the nomination never mind the presidency, even those who supported him thought he was going to lose to Hilary. I mean a babbling moron in the White House. Well, they showed us. 🙂

    So to expect he can’t win is a mistake. Joe is not an exciting candidate. He has baggage on race. His VP pick (who he hates and hates him) has baggage of her own. She even laid him out on not wanting busing cozy up to a segregationist, but people (Democrats) look past that. You know who looked past that Kamala. 🙂

    She doesn’t bring much to the table as to votes, just the black and women vote. Black votes are not going anywhere for the time being, and Hilary was a woman. JS

    Tulsi would have made a better choice. She had the Bernie progressive, and the military background to swing those on the fence with Trump. My assumption she would have been Bernie’s VP pick to give him cover. Joe should have done the same.

    This current Black Live Matter movement might not play out as hope. You have Whites in Portland still Protesting (rioting) who don’t care about how blacks are being treated by racist white in the system. They have their agenda mindset, and it’s Anti-America. They are using Floyd’s death as a means. That vote is going anywhere and is not much. Joe knows this, that is why his DNC speech was a Pro American with American Flags all over the place.

    Black Lives Matter supporters like some on OIB love to add brown people yet will make a statement like blacks will never vote for Brown (Puerto Rican) Well, he’s not right, and he’s not wrong. A black will more likely vote for a Puerto Rican over a White person, but will more likely not vote for a Puerto Rican over a black person. just like if a black and Puerto Rican got in a fight the black would want to see the black win, and the Puerto Rican would want to see the PR win. (all things being equal) So while BLM raises awareness of black treatment by the police. Latino is secondary and (I believe) statistically are more likely living in poverty and abused by police more the blacks. Yet no PR (Latino lives matter) That Goya boycott didn’t go as it hoped just because the CEO of Goya went to a Trump White House praised this country.

    Don’t buy that take a poll of the regular residents in the Port to see who would the vote for Ernie (black) and (Latino) Chris R run against each other who would they vote for? That right, the Blacks will say Ernie and the Latinos would say, Chris. But I guess the enemy (white) of my enemy is my friend. So we will see how this BLACK LIVES MATTER effect on the election will go. As of knowing the de-fund and abolish the police have increased in crime and mostly Democrat-run cities.

    Knowing this, the worst stock crash, economic depression in this country’s history bounced back in 4 months. Obama’s depression crash of 2008 took all of his 8 years in office to gain back what it lost before the crash. So If you wake up as you did after Trump’s victory over Hilary, don’t be to surprise. 🙂 JS

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=SHG0ezLiVGc&feature=emb_logo

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  7. I was reading on the CT Post what a terrible job Bport is doing with helping Mettric stay open. Come on Joe, give the guy a break. You would think that the city would be proactive assisting these businesses but I quest they’re not going out of their. Even Steve Auerbach was bad mouthing the city. It’s a real shame when one of their own starts going after them.

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    1. The good news about your post Bob is now people are flocking to buy the CT Post to see what I had to say. Bob, I did not have any comment about the City. I do know Pierre and did state I was sad and I had dined there frequently as a huge supporter of all things Bridgeport. You will never have “One of their own” bad mouthing the city I love. Maybe with all of the shit you print you could support some of the Bridgeport establishments. I have ever seen you at any venue in downtown Bridgeport since you moved to Branford. In fact I have never seen you at any of Bridgeport’s assets even when you lived here.

      Back to the Metric— My mother, 92, whom I am a caretaker has been to the Metric a number of times with her friends that still drive- pre covid- (frightening I know) I was concerned and called Pierre because I was concerned 5 seniors would not find Parking. I called Metric and Pierre stated he would Park their car and just pull up in front. Well, The ladies went and Parked on their own and I was grateful that Pierre offered.

      Back to Chris Rosario- I agree with Chris!

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  8. I was also reading where Fairfield Police have started a system of curbside DUI arrests.
    See some cities deal with these problems in an ingenious way while other cities feel it’s not worth the effort.

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