As voters continue to head to the polls for early voting, election workers are figuring out how they’ll count all those ballots on Election Day.
Between Oct. 21 and Tuesday afternoon, 386,285 voters have cast a ballot early. That’s already 21% of the way to the 1.8 million ballots cast in Connecticut in 2020.
“I think everyone was shocked about the high turnout,” Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas said during a news conference Monday.
Early voting continues through Nov. 3, but towns can’t count those ballots until Election Day on Nov. 5.
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That has some, including legislative leaders, worried that towns won’t be able to count all those ballots while also handling Election Day turnout.
Sens. Martin Looney (D - President Pro Tem), and Majority Leader Bob Duff expressed those concerns in a letter Friday to Thomas.
“We believe it is of the utmost importance that your office be prepared to offer any and all assistance and guidance to local registrars in the quick and accurate tallying of early votes,” they said in the letter.
Decision 2024
Thomas said she’d been in contact with 20 towns with the highest turnout and most registrars said they’d be ready.
“This is where registrars who have been doing this forever have been ahead of us,” Thomas said.
South Windsor Democratic Registrar of Voters Sue Larsen agreed, saying a higher early vote count will likely mean a lower turnout on Election Day.
“We're going to probably move some people out of the polling area and move them over,” she said.
Larsen, past president of the Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut, said she’ll have a better idea by the end of the week how she’ll need to allocate her staff.
Thomas said some towns were caught off-guard in 2020, when roughly 700,000 people voted by absentee ballot. Registrars are drawing from that experience this time.
Both absentee and early ballots must remain sealed until Election Day, but election workers can start counting early ballots when polls open at 6 a.m.
State law requires that they wait until 10 a.m. to start counting absentee ballots.
