Connecticut is entering a new era with the first early in-person voting in a general election and a nearly invisible and overdue technological change — the first, if limited, use of new tabulators that will count votes.
Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas and Gov. Ned Lamont held a press conference Thursday to identify the nine cities and towns that will use the new tabulators in a pilot program before they become standard next year.
The voters’ experience will be unchanged and might have gone without notice in another time. But Donald J. Trump’s repeated and debunked claims of a stolen presidential election raise the profile of even the mechanics of voting
“Here we are in a day and age where people are casting shade on elections, the integrity of elections,” Lamont said.
The foundations of the system are unchanged: Voters will make their choices on paper ballots, then place them in machines that scan and tabulate the votes. As always has been the case, the tabulators are not on line.
“You can double check — you’ve got a paper backup,” Lamont said. “You can actually count at the end of the day by hand, if you want to.”
The results will be printed out, recorded by local officials and then reported to the secretary of the state’s office, a system largely unchanged over the decades. The difference is the new tabulators are faster and more reliable, Thomas said.
“These machines will absolutely help bring our election infrastructure into the 21st century and allow us to continue to provide Connecticut voters with elections that they can trust,” said Chris Prue of Vernon, president of the Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut.
Until 2006, voters in Connecticut used mechanical machines. They walked into a booth, pulled a handle that closed a curtain and made choices by depressing levers under candidates’ names. The choices were mechanically recorded once the voter yanked the lever back, opening the booth.
The state moved that year to a system of paper ballots and optical scanners.
“To underscore how long it’s been since we’ve had our equipment updated, the iPhone wasn’t invented” until a year later, Thomas said.
Lamont signed off a year ago on $25 million in borrowing to purchase 2,700 new tabulators in response to lobbying by Thomas, her predecessor, Denise Merrill, and a coalition of advocacy groups, including the League of Women Voters, the ACLU and AARP.
“The threat of malfunction became a real crisis during the 2021 primary, when a distressing 50 machines suffered breakdowns and rendered themselves inoperable,” the groups wrote. “To efficiently, effectively, and securely run elections in the 2024 national election, we need reliable tabulators.”
Thomas issued a request for proposals at the same time. The new polling place scanners and tabulators are made by Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb.
“ES&S is a well-known entity in the election space,” Thomas said. “Their systems are in more than 1,500 jurisdictions around the country, and many millions of voters use their machines to cast their ballot each year.”
Thomas said that local elections officials had been reduced to scouring eBay for replacement parts on machines that were no longer manufactured or supported.
Thomas, Lamont, Prue and others spoke Thursday at the town hall in South Windsor, one of the nine communities that will use the new machines. The other eight are Glastonbury, Hamden, New Britain, New Haven, Rocky Hill, Southington, Waterbury and Windsor.
The rollout coincides with Connecticut’s first experience in early voting in a general election. Fourteen days of early voting begins Oct. 21 and runs through Nov. 3. Hours of early voting most days are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with extended hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Oct. 29 and 31.
Voting on election day is unchanged: 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. To find your early voting location, go to MyVote.CT.gov.
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Publish date : 2024-09-12 09:49:00
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