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November 6, 2024

Party officials miss deadline to bring lawsuit in N. Stonington mixup

Jessika Harkay / CT Mirror Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas provided updated voter turnout numbers as of 11 a.m. Election Day.
By Dave Altimari, CT Mirror

An 11th-hour attempt to fix a mistake that affected more than 1,000 North Stonington voters who cast early ballots failed on Tuesday, as polls closed before an anticipated lawsuit could be filed.

Sources told The Connecticut Mirror that state Republican and Democratic party officials had worked all day to put together a lawsuit. Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas said she would have welcomed it, as it could have clarified the legal situation facing the ballots.

North Stonington’s registrars of voters admitted on Saturday that more than 1,000 residents had been incorrectly instructed not to sign the envelopes containing their ballots when they voted early between Oct. 21-31. 

While the majority of these voters returned to their local polling station before Election Day to correct their ballots, the town was still trying to locate about 200 voters when polls opened on Tuesday. Election officials said that if those voters could not be located in time to address the mistake with their ballots, their votes would be discounted.

Indications that a lawsuit would be filed Tuesday were strengthened by comments from Thomas, who said she’d “heard there may be a lawsuit.”

“I don’t want voters to be disenfranchised because of a glitch at the registrar’s office,” Thomas said at her late afternoon press conference to discuss Election Day turnout. “I would welcome that lawsuit.”

The four candidates potentially impacted by the mistake were the two incumbents, state Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, and Rep. Greg Howard, R-Stonington, and their Democratic opponents, Andrew Parrella and Ty Lamb.

Thomas said Tuesday that any voters who aren’t found in time to redo their ballots won’t have their votes counted. 

“Whenever humans are involved, human error is possible,” Thomas said. “It’s really unfortunate that, despite — I can’t even tell you how many hours of training and handbooks and office hours and an emergency hotline — that that error ever was made, but it was. I do appreciate all of our partners coming together very quickly to try to solve that issue.”

About 900 of the 1,100 invalid ballots were “accounted for,” she said. “Either they already came back, or they had scheduled that they would be back today,” Thomas said. 

As for the remaining 200, “their votes will not be counted” if election officials can’t find them before polls close, Thomas said.

Thomas voiced support for a ballot curing process, which would enable voters to fix their early in-person ballots, “if we do it this way again.” She said part of the reason the state opted to use envelopes for early voting was “because our tabulators were not as reliable as they could be — we didn’t want to risk all of the extra movements.”

“Some towns wouldn’t have had enough backup tabulators, and if one or two fail, there wouldn’t have been enough to run early voting and election day,” Thomas said. “Now that we will have new equipment for 2025, I think the legislature can definitely look at whether, like most places, we can get rid of the envelope all together and use the tabulator for early voting.”

ACLU of Connecticut officials said Tuesday they are monitoring the North Stonington election issue and have talked to state officials about remedying the problem.

“We expect the state of Connecticut to count every vote. Voting rights and the will of the people are top priorities for the ACLU of Connecticut. The state should provide workable remedies, including a robust ballot curing process,” ACLU of Connecticut Executive Director David McGuire said in a press release.

The ACLU was critical of Thomas’ comment that the votes will not be counted if the people can’t be found in time, calling it “unacceptable.”

“The Secretary of the State could have fixed this days ago, instead of declaring today that about 200 votes ‘will not be counted’,” said ACLU of Connecticut Legal Director Dan Barrett.

Barrett said state law empowers the Secretary of the State to ‘issue an order’ to ‘any registrar of voters or moderator to correct any irregularity or impropriety.’

“The Secretary of the State is not a purely administerial position. There is an on-the-books method of recourse that does not require letters from legislators or a lawsuit,” Barrett added.

Last weekend both North Stonington Registrars of Voters realized they had instructed early voters between Oct. 21-31 not to sign their names on the ballot envelopes, a step that is required under the new in-person voting law passed by the state legislature last session. They issued a press release asking residents to come back to vote again.

“Through October 31, voters were inadvertently misinformed about the need to sign their early voting ballot envelope,” the release said. “As a result, it is believed that ballot envelopes submitted during this period went unsigned by voters, which is required by law.”

Somers, who represents the 18th Senate district that includes North Stonington, said people who voted in good faith early should have their votes counted since it was not their mistake that caused the issue.

Somers and her staff spent part of the weekend trying to locate voters as well to get them to come back but because they knew they wouldn’t be here.”

The mistake is the second to potentially disenfranchise voters in the 43rd House District of North Stonington and portions of Stonington and Ledyard.

“It’s frustrating,” said Howard, who is seeking reelection from the 43rd.

Roughly 519 ballots were previously sequestered in Stonington after officials learned that some voters had received the wrong ballot on Oct. 22, the second day of early voting. Stonington spans the 41st and 43rd House Districts.

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