Election night is dead. Long live election week.
Connecticut’s primaries Tuesday delivered few political upsets, favoring legislative incumbents and indicating overwhelming support for former Vice President Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary and President Donald Trump in the GOP primary.
But the primary — rolled out amid the coronavirus pandemic — was also unprecedented, with historic numbers of absentee ballots that deluged towns and delayed the vote count. Large, celebratory in-person election night watch parties were nonexistent due to COVID-19, and few races were officially called even as the end of the week neared.
The general election will likely see similar issues, making the primary a consequential dry run for November. A substantially larger voter turnout is expected for the general election, ballots will take even longer to count and votes will be cast amid a pandemic that could surge in the colder months.
“We needed a test run. We had to do a little bit of scrambling,” Gov. Ned Lamont said Wednesday of the primary.
Tuesday’s primary involved roughly 300,000 absentee ballots, by far the greatest number in state history. The 2018 primaries — a gubernatorial race, not presidential — saw only about 20,000 absentee ballots, according to Gabe Rosenberg, chief spokesperson for Secretary of the State Denise Merrill.
Access to absentee ballots expanded dramatically for Tuesday’s primary, following an emergency order signed by Lamont that enabled widespread use of absentee ballots due to COVID-19 concerns. The state then mailed absentee ballot applications to all registered Republicans and Democrats.
But there were some delays in mailing out all the absentee ballots, partly due to Tropical Storm Isaias, which made landfall a week before the elections. Lamont signed an executive order that allowed municipalities to accept any absentee ballots postmarked by Aug. 11 and arriving by Thursday, Aug. 13. Because of the two-day extension, town registrars could tally absentee votes through the end of the week.
Democratic state officials acknowledged that the mass rollout of absentee ballots had some hitches, which they assured would be resolved in time for the general election Nov. 3.
“For November, we’ve got to plan much more ahead of time than we did this last time around,” Lamont said. “I’ve got to get those absentee ballot applications out earlier. I’ve got to get the ballots out to people earlier and give people more time to get it in so there’s no delay and we can count all the ballots on election night. I don’t want any excuse for not being able to count the ballots on election night in November.”
A pandemic primary
In-person voting in the primary was “remarkably smooth” across the state, despite the fact that some polling places did not have power the day before voters arrived due to storm-related outages, Merrill said Wednesday.
Merrill added that she had heard of no long lines for polling places and that sites had successfully implemented COVID-19 safety measures, from mask-wearing to Plexiglas shields.
Amy Shaw, a registered Democrat, voted in person at her Willimantic polling location. She said the line was short and that election officials seemed to be in control. Shaw felt the general election in November would run just as smoothly — at least in Willimantic.
“I personally felt confident, but it’s very much dependent on the region that people live in,” Shaw said. “Anytime you have a large crowd of people, obviously in these times, it’s hard to control what could happen, and it’s hard to enforce all of those precautions that we take with social distancing and mask-wearing.”
The pandemic also vanquished the ritual of an election night watch party to a relic of the past.
After polls closed Tuesday, Kate Farrar, a West Hartford Democrat who won the primary in the 20th House District, hosted a Zoom meeting for her supporters. More than 100 people tuned in.
“There’s still such a value that comes from feeling like you’re a part of that community activity, even if it’s not in that large group format that you need to be a part of,” Farrar said.
‘Some glitches that need to be ironed out’
Merrill acknowledged that not all primary voters received their absentee ballots in time to mail them in and that changes will need to be made in preparation for the general election.
The state mailed 267,000 absentee ballots, and towns were expected to mail the remaining absentee ballots to local voters in the lead-up to the primary. In early August, town clerks sounded the alarm that 20,000 voters who requested absentee ballots had still not received them due to a mix-up by the state.
Merrill said that while most ballots should have been received a week before the election, Tropical Storm Isaias delayed the U.S. Postal Service, compounding earlier delays in mailing. Overall, she said, 98% of voters who requested absentee ballots received them. And in the end, many voters dropped off last-minute ballots in designated boxes outside town halls.
“The best thing we did was have those ballot boxes available for people to drop their ballots in. They were extremely popular,” she said. “A lot of people just felt uneasy about putting ballots in the mail, but they still didn’t want to go into a polling place.”
Senate Republican leader Len Fasano of North Haven called on Attorney General William Tong on Wednesday to investigate issues with the state’s expanded use of absentee ballot voting and the private vendor contracted by the state to mail out the ballots.
Fasano wrote to Tong that he was concerned about the mail house’s compliance with state statutes and the executive order governing applications and absentee ballots, including “whether timelines for mailings were met, whether the proper labeling and security features were followed, and whether clerks received appropriate notice of who in their towns were receiving which applications.”
Gary Rose, a political science professor and chairman of the Sacred Heart University Department of Government, Politics and Global Studies, said that the use of absentee ballots in the primary helped ensure that voters were not forced to stand in line at the polls during a pandemic. But those 20,000 delayed ballots were a “red flag” for Connecticut’s ability to manage an even larger election, he said.
“We’re not done really assessing some of the glitches that occurred. We do know some people may not have received their ballots in time or gotten them in on time,” he said. “I’m curious to see if all of these ballots that were mailed were in fact postmarked correctly, filled out correctly and tabulated.”
Merrill said she’s confident that Connecticut will roll out the November election smoothly, even as towns prepare to handle far greater numbers of in-person voters and mail-in ballots. The state will likely make adjustments to how it mails out absentee ballots, including by using multiple mail houses and having backups lined up in case issues arise, she said.
“As long as we have those ballot boxes as a fail-safe, I think we’re going to be fine, because those can be processed as they come in,” she said. “If we don’t have the storm delay, if we don’t have all the problems with getting things mailed out in a timely way, I think it will be fine.”
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal warned Wednesday that the “biggest threat to mail-in voting is the United States Postal Service,” which he said is raising rates on states to mail ballots, as well as slashing staff.
“There are some glitches that need to be ironed out, but the U.S. Postal Service is going to be a much greater threat than anything happening in the registrars’ offices,” he said.
‘People are going to be up in arms’
As Connecticut towns continued to tally ballots days after the primary, voters and candidates worried about how a delay in vote-counting could impact the November election.
Republican Mary Fay of West Hartford, who declared victory Wednesday in the GOP primary for the 1st Congressional District and will face race longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. John Larson of East Hartford in the November election, said voters won’t respond well to a three- or four-day delay in reporting results caused by increased absentee voting.
“It’s a presidential year, are you kidding me?” Fay said. “People are going to be up in arms. … It’s going to be tough for the candidates. It’s going to be tough for people who support them, people who work for them, and voters. I think it’s going to take a few cycles for people to get used to that.”
Rose, the Sacred Heart professor, warned that one result of increased use of mail-in voting — as important it is as an option during a pandemic — is that it could lead to a rise in “divisiveness and mistrust” about election outcomes.
“If Donald Trump wins the election, certain Democrats are going to claim there has been voter suppression, and if Joe Biden wins the election, I’m sure Donald Trump will claim fraud,” he said. “And that’s not good for democracy.”
Shaw, the voter from Willimantic, said that a full week — or more — of not knowing the outcome of a presidential election in November would likely “add to people’s sense of uncertainty, and maybe lack of confidence in the process,” similar to how voters felt when the results of the 2000 election were delayed for months.
“We’re so used to having those immediate results and sitting there on election night and watching all of the state’s votes come in,” Shaw said. “I think the more time that elapses, the more time people have to challenge what’s going on.”
Shaw’s husband, Simone Puleo, agreed that a prolonged wait for election results in November would be troubling.
“Safety first, of course, but when results are trickling out slowly, there’s opportunity for … not necessarily tampering, but more misinformation,” Puleo said. “There’s more room to spread seeds of doubt over that period while people are waiting for the results.”
Convenient or disenfranchising?
Connecticut political candidates remain divided on the state’s expansion of absentee ballot voting, largely along party lines.
Farrar, the West Hartford Democrat who won her primary, said Connecticut’s handling of primary day gave her confidence the state could handle the general election.
“Everything I’ve heard and seen as a candidate gives me faith in the process in November,” she said. “I do think we will have an even higher and more open adoption of absentee ballots. I hope in Connecticut to not just have it in November, but really having these options longer term, too.”
In West Hartford, roughly 10,500 applications for absentee ballots were requested before the primary, according to Democratic Registrar of Voters Patrice Peterson.
Farrar said that number shows a willingness on the part of voters to test out the absentee ballot process and demonstrates a desire to have their voices heard.
“I talked to several voters in the last couple weeks who were pretty clear that they requested an absentee ballot and wanted to see how the process works,” Farrar said. “What I’ve seen in my town is just going above and beyond to make sure that people know how the process is working, but also that they have options.”
Fay, the Republican congressional candidate, expressed concern that the increase in absentee ballots would disenfranchise voters.
“There’s so many things that they’re feeling overwhelmed with already: not really knowing the candidates, not really knowing what’s going on, because we’re not doing the physical face-to-face things that we used to do, even mailings,” Fay said. “People are afraid to open the mail. It’s a very, very different kind of thing.”
In her role on the West Hartford Town Council, Fay voted against a resolution put forward by Democrats to expand absentee voting. She was the only “no” vote.
“I had a great concerns about it, and I think it did play out that way [in the primary],” Fay said. “The ballots went out, and I think that people were very confused about how to get them back.”
Courant staff writer Alex Putterman contributed to this report.
Eliza Fawcett can be reached at elfawcett@courant.com.
