With one week left to primary day, thousands of absentee ballots across the state are, well, absent. City political operatives lay blame on the mail house hired by the state, something validated by Windsor Town Clerk Anna Posniak, association president on behalf of town clerks.
Traditionally, the dissemination of absentee ballots is handled by local municipal town clerks. As a result of the public health pandemic and an executive order by Governor Ned Lamont, all eligible Connecticut primary day voters may vote by absentee. Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill’s office facilitated both the mailing of applications and ballots to state electors via a mail house. Tens of thousands of those went out late or won’t be going out at all as a result of a snafu by the mail house.
Some local town clerks are scrambling to accommodate electors who want to vote absentee, rather than going to the polls. This late in the process plenty of absentee ballots will likely show up to municipal offices after primary day and not counted.
By way of Kevin Rennie’s Daily Ructions here’s Posniak’s warning to town clerks:
Elections–Update 08/03/2020
I must alert all Town Clerks that immediate action is needed.
It was brought to my attention this afternoon that Secretary of the State’s office did not send absentee ballot exports for last week to mail house. In my conversation with Ted (Bromley) at 2:45 p.m. today, he stated that it was clear that SOTS needed to end ties with the mail house as they were not able process the absentee ballots in timely manner.
Late this afternoon, Ted provided us with an Excel spreadsheet that indicates the exact ballots that were not sent to mail house. The Excel spreadsheet contains over 20,000 ballots statewide that were not sent out by SOTS. You will need to isolate the voters from your town. You MUST resend each voter on the Excel spreadsheet an absentee ballot immediately.
To process the applications for a second time, you will look up each voter in the “Absentee Ballot” screen.
You will click on the select button to select the record that was not processed by mail house. You will change the following:
SERIAL NO.–update to the serial number with the serial from the ED-8 envelope
DATE ISSUED–-enter reissuing dateClick “UPDATE” and then generate labels for the ED-8 envelope that you will use to mail the ballot to the voter.
ISSUE TYPE: can remain “MAIL” as SOTS is no longer using the services of the mail house to process the ballots.
The Secretary has created a major problem that Town Clerks are now left to fix with the primary only one week away. Additionally, I am extremely irate that Secretary Merrill, Deputy Secretary Bates and Elections Division Director Ted Bromley, did not mention this during our 10 a.m. conference call today. In a phone call last Thursday, Ted had mentioned this was a possibility. However, Ted assured me that he would get back to me if they decided to send the data back to the Town Clerks for reprocessing. Had this information been given to us on Friday, I know that 169 Town Clerks would have worked over the weekend to get those ballots to their voters. I am extremely concerned for the voters in our large cities as this neglect by SOTS may disenfranchise their vote next Tuesday. If you unable to reprocess all of last week’s volume of applications in addition to this week’s requests, please reach out to me and we will try to get you some assistance from others towns with lower volumes to ensure that voters are not disenfranchised.
Additionally, I have been informed that the sides of some inner envelopes have not been properly glued shut by the manufacturer; as a result, the voter’s ballot could slip out of the inner envelope while the town clerk is processing the returns into CVRS. This issue is not related to the voter accidentally slicing open the envelope. It is due to poor quality control at the mail house. Please be on the lookout for envelopes that are not sealed on the side. Please tape the defective inner envelopes shut.
Stay healthy. Stay CTCA strong.
Anna Posniak
CTCA President
If we mailed out applications to get absentee ballot last week will we get them this week???? Also I heard if the absentee ballot is not received by 8pm on election night it wont count even if post mark before elecyion day!!!! Most states as long as its post mark by election day its counted!!! My parents sent there request for absentee ballots last week and have not received theres as yet. They never voted by mail but they really don’t want to go to the polling place.
If they are able to get the ballot on time and feel comfortable with it, they should use one of the outdoor ballot drop boxes.
Lennie were any of he 20,000 missed AB requests automatically sent out by the “mailing house” headed for Bridgeport. Won’t computer assigned numbers show that to us today? Alert the towns where special attention needs to be turned and cut down on the fear and mistrust factor, Maybe?
I got an automatic offer originally and returned it as a Bridgeport voter. Same with my spouse. We completed them by filling in the Presidential and State Senator circles as requested and then signed where indicated also placing a containing envelope with no postage required within a large envelope with postage supplied, and if inserted properly by name as voter showing through a glassine panel. Let the better candidate win in each of the “primary” categories!! Let’s revert to becoming informed, being ready to vote in a timely manner and doing so safely. Time will tell.
*** Just a tiny taste of worst things to come on election’s day across America, no? ***
Ballots rec’d in yesterday’s afternoon mail.
Marked, sealed, signed….dropped off in box outside Trumbull Town Hall 7 am today.
I’m one of the lucky ones.
My ballot was not mailed out!
I could have gone without or voted in person but just to make a point I went down to the Town Clerk’s office and got one. Don’t ask me why. Just a sense of obligation.
Hey Lennie,
Do you have any info on how many ballots were returned?
Small amount so far.
That could be trouble. If it were an avalanche then they would have more problems cheating.