Meet the people behind the curtain on Election Day

Election workers, from registrars to town clerks, say it’s a year-round job

By Brid­get Brons­don | UConn Jour­nal­ism
Sep­tem­ber 5, 2024

It doesn’t mat­ter if turnout is high – more than 1.8 mil­lion Con­necti­cut res­i­dents in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, or low – around 741,000 vot­ers in munic­i­pal elec­tions last Novem­ber: None of it can hap­pen with­out those who pre­pare behind the scenes for months to ensure the right to vote is safe­guard­ed and prop­er­ly car­ried out. 

Reg­is­trars of vot­ers, town clerks and poll work­ers han­dle a myr­i­ad of elec­tion issues that range from ver­i­fy­ing vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, order­ing bal­lots and prepar­ing vot­ing machines to deal­ing with irri­tat­ed res­i­dents.

Ashford’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Reg­is­trar Lau­ren Olson said most peo­ple don’t rec­og­nize the prepa­ra­tion that begins “weeks in advance.” Staffing the polls, order­ing bal­lots and prepar­ing vot­ing machines all fall under the juris­dic­tion of reg­is­trars of vot­ers. Munic­i­pal­i­ties have two elect­ed reg­is­trars, one Repub­li­can and one Demo­c­rat.  

“We have to order the bal­lots, we have to order the mem­o­ry cards to the tab­u­la­tor [vot­ing machine], we have to wait for them to come in, we have an IVS machine which is for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties – if they have a hear­ing or a sight dis­abil­i­ty they can use that machine so they have inde­pen­dent vot­ing. So we have to order all those and make sure that we get them in on time, and we have to test every­thing that we’re doing,” Olson said. 

Reg­is­trars also ensure polls are staffed, train poll work­ers and pre­pare polling sta­tions. And while some towns strug­gle to find staff, Olson said, Ash­ford hasn’t encoun­tered that prob­lem, as many tem­po­rary poll work­ers return year after year. 

Deal­ing with vot­ing tab­u­la­tors means reg­is­trars must also know the ins and outs of the tech­nol­o­gy. Olson said reg­is­trars run bal­lots through a sys­tem test on the tab­u­la­tor to ensure the mem­o­ry card is func­tion­ing prop­er­ly and ready to go on Elec­tion Day. While essen­tial work, “It’s not any­thing that’s real­ly dif­fi­cult,” she said of the test bal­lots. 

LeRe­ine Framp­ton, Newtown’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic reg­is­trar, said reg­is­trars are par­tic­u­lar­ly busy this year han­dling Connecticut’s recent­ly adopt­ed ear­ly vot­ing peri­od, which for the Nov. 5 elec­tion runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 21 through Nov. 3 – with extend­ed hours from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Oct. 29 and 31. Ear­ly vot­ing is in per­son, usu­al­ly at town hall. 

Framp­ton said reg­is­trars receive a list and record the names of all ear­ly vot­ers and those vot­ing by absen­tee. The list of names is then sent to the polling sta­tions to ensure no vote is cast twice. 

Reg­is­trars also have to ensure on Elec­tion Day that poll work­ers, who often work long hours and can’t leave their sta­tions, are pro­vid­ed with meals. 

Although Framp­ton works along­side her Repub­li­can col­league, Eri­ca Can­field, she said the job is very busy year-round. 

“It’s real­ly an awful lot that we do, and that’s not even all of it. It’s just one thing after anoth­er,” she said. 

West Hart­ford Demo­c­ra­t­ic Reg­is­trar Eliz­a­beth Rousseau is rel­a­tive­ly new to the posi­tion. She became reg­is­trar in Jan­u­ary 2023 and said she was sur­prised by the work that goes into the super­vised absen­tee vot­ing process. 

Res­i­dents in nurs­ing homes or assist­ed liv­ing facil­i­ties can vote via a super­vised ses­sion with the reg­is­trar. Rousseau said it is a lot of work to orga­nize and coor­di­nate with the facil­i­ties, the reg­is­trars’ office and the town clerk. 

This is dif­fer­ent than absen­tee vot­ing, in which vot­ers who can’t make it to the polls and meet spe­cif­ic require­ments can apply for a bal­lot from the town clerk’s office that can be mailed in or put in a drop box. The town clerk must match a ser­i­al num­ber and bar­code to the vot­er, mark the vot­er check­list to show the vot­er returned an absen­tee bal­lot and secure the sealed bal­lot until it’s opened on Elec­tion Day. 

It’s go-time

When the prepa­ra­tion final­ly comes to a head and Elec­tion Day arrives, it’s go-time for the reg­is­trars. 

The reg­is­trars begin their day bright and ear­ly and are ready to go at 6 a.m. Although not every town is the same, Olson said she and her coun­ter­part sit in Ashford’s one polling sta­tion for the entire day. 

“We help open up the tab­u­la­tors in the morn­ing, close the tab­u­la­tors at night, do all the paper­work that has to go tab­u­lat­ing all the num­ber of peo­ple who came in to vote, all the results of the elec­tion. So that’s what we spend most of our day doing,” she said. 

The Ash­ford reg­is­trars also have assis­tants who stay in the office wait­ing to answer phone calls from oth­er towns regard­ing same-day reg­is­tra­tion of vot­ers who may have moved from the munic­i­pal­i­ty. 

Despite efforts to ensure Elec­tion Day runs smooth­ly, sev­er­al poll work­ers have encoun­tered vot­er frus­tra­tion and anger. 

“We have some peo­ple that don’t like the result of a for­mer elec­tion. So they’ll come in and they’ll shout some­thing,” Olson said. 

George Souto, Middletown’s Repub­li­can reg­is­trar, said because pres­i­den­tial elec­tions are much busier, peo­ple will get frus­trat­ed if they are stuck stand­ing in line for a long time. 

While most frus­tra­tions are mild, oth­er inter­ac­tions occa­sion­al­ly require police inter­ven­tion. Leonard Greene, town clerk in Bea­con Falls and vice pres­i­dent of the Con­necti­cut Town Clerks Asso­ci­a­tion New Haven Coun­ty, says “we all have our char­ac­ters.”

He par­tic­u­lar­ly recalls an inter­ac­tion involv­ing a man attempt­ing to take a blank absen­tee bal­lot to his father. 

After being told he could not remove a bal­lot from the build­ing, Greene said, the man “got a lit­tle ver­bal and abu­sive with us and stormed out of here and unfor­tu­nate­ly the police end­ed up com­ing and I think they actu­al­ly arrest­ed him. So that was the only inci­dent we’ve had. We haven’t had any­thing since in the 12-plus years that I’ve been here, so it’s been pret­ty good.” 

Most work­ers said inci­dents of harass­ment are few and far between. 

“I don’t real­ly expe­ri­ence harass­ment so much as I’ll have a vot­er who’s frus­trat­ed or angry about their expe­ri­ence,” Rousseau, the West Hart­ford reg­is­trar, said. 

Apart from elec­tion hus­tle and bus­tle, the reg­is­trars are busy year-round. Rousseau said the reg­is­trars’ office receives between 25–100 vot­er reg­is­tra­tions to process every day. 

Framp­ton said reg­is­trars are also “respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing an accu­rate vot­ing list.” The New­town reg­is­trar said this involves check­ing the death list and prop­er­ty trans­fers list as well as review­ing infor­ma­tion from the post office about res­i­dents who have moved. 

As for the town clerks, their job is equal­ly as impor­tant. Greene said he not only orders all the bal­lots for elec­tions — ear­ly vot­ing, reg­u­lar polls and absen­tee bal­lots — but also must deter­mine how many to order. One that’s done, town clerks pro­vide bal­lots to the reg­is­trars. Greene said the reg­is­trars run the polls, while his job is main­ly admin­is­tra­tive. 

While Greene orders the bal­lots for Bea­con Falls, that duty falls under the juris­dic­tion of both clerks and reg­is­trars. The offi­cial in charge of that oblig­a­tion is deter­mined on a town-by-town basis, Greene said.

Not only do town clerks cre­ate reports and then give elec­tion results to the sec­re­tary of the state’s office, but also main­tain the town’s vital records: birth, death and mar­riage licens­es, Greene said. “There’s just almost noth­ing we don’t do as town clerks,” he added.  

Sur­pris­es still arise. 

Elis­sa Bass, the Ston­ing­ton Demo­c­ra­t­ic reg­is­trar, said she received sev­er­al iden­ti­cal FOI requests after the 2020 elec­tion from peo­ple in and out of Con­necti­cut. 

“They were clear­ly copied and past­ed from some­where and sent to us. And if I remem­ber cor­rect­ly, every­thing that they asked for was not some­thing that we would pro­vide,” she said. 

Under the state Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, town offi­cials must pro­vide cer­tain reports and doc­u­ments to the pub­lic. But “these FOI requests involved things like ques­tions about the vot­ing tab­u­la­tors that we used and ques­tions about the com­put­er soft­ware that we used,” Bass said. Bass was unable to grant any of that infor­ma­tion as the requests were “out­side of the law,” she said. 

Despite the con­cerns or chal­lenges that may arise, the poll work­ers are high­ly qual­i­fied and have been well-trained in their field. 

“The peo­ple that are work­ing to run your elec­tions take it very seri­ous­ly. We take an oath, swear­ing that we are going to uphold the laws of the State of Con­necti­cut or the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and we take it very, very seri­ous­ly. We want the elec­tions to be fair and hon­est,” Olson said. 

This arti­cle is part of U.S. Democ­ra­cy Day, a nation­wide col­lab­o­ra­tive on Sept. 15, the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Democ­ra­cy, in which news orga­ni­za­tions cov­er how democ­ra­cy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, vis­it usdemocracyday.org.

The sto­ry was also pub­lished by CT Com­mu­ni­ty News, a ser­vice of the Con­necti­cut Stu­dent Jour­nal­ism Col­lab­o­ra­tive, an orga­ni­za­tion spon­sored by jour­nal­ism depart­ments at col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es across Con­necti­cut and sup­port­ed by pro­fes­sion­al local news media part­ners.