Fasano Urges Gov. Lamont to Protect Voters, Stop Secretary Merrill from Pushing Absentee Ballot Problems onto Town Clerks

Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano (R-North Haven) wrote to Governor Ned Lamont urging him to stop Secretary of the State Denise Merrill from moving forward with plans to send a mass mailing of absentee ballot applications to voters for the November general election and simultaneously push the responsibility to fulfill those requests onto town clerks.

The Secretary of the State’s mass mailing of absentee ballots in the primary election was marred by mistakes and delayed ballots with some voters not receiving their absentee ballots in time to vote. This week, town clerks raised concerns about Secretary Merrill’s plans to continue with her plan to send unsolicited absentee ballot applications to all voters but to scrap plans for a third-party mail house to send ballots. Instead Secretary Merrill will require town clerks to process all requests.

“I’m asking Governor Lamont not to fall for Secretary Merrill’s false promises that her plan will protect voters,” said Sen. Fasano. “This new plan to shift the responsibility onto town clerks is an admission that the mail house system Secretary Merrill created failed. Now her plan serves to only move the inevitable problem into the hands of the town clerks. With as many as 1 million people potentially voting by absentee ballot in the general election, significantly more than in the primary, it’s a burden that town clerks can’t handle, and which the Connecticut Town Clerks Association has raised concerns about explaining that the sheer volume of applications will be an enormous undertaking for their small offices with little time to prepare. As a result, this new proposal sets up our town clerks for failure, puts voters’ rights at risk yet again, and is a blatant attempt by the Secretary of the State to shift the responsibility and blame away from herself should failures happen again through a flawed system that she created of her own volition.”

According to a Hearst Connecticut Media report, it is estimated that as many as 1 million absentee ballots (an anticipated 60% of ballots) could be cast in Connecticut for the general election. In the Aug. 11 primary, Hearst reported that unofficial records show just 72,000 votes were cast in person, while nearly 227,000 were cast by absentee ballot.

Fasano added, “The primary election system was a failure. By Secretary Merrill’s own estimates that only 98% of voters who requested absentee ballots for the primary received them, and an estimated 300,000 requested ballots, that means an approximate 6,000 voters lost their right to vote absentee or put their health at risk to vote in person when they intentionally requested an absentee ballot for a reason. Talk about disenfranchising voters.”

Fasano emphasized that he supports expanding absentee ballot usage during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is what lawmakers approved in a bipartisan vote in special session.

“Eliminating the Secretary of the State’s mass mailing plans does not in any way eliminate the ability of anyone to vote by absentee ballot,” Fasano wrote to Gov. Lamont. “What it does is put town halls back in charge of handling absentee ballot requests and distribution using the current state system, expanded to allow for anyone to access an absentee ballot because of the pandemic. Without Secretary Merrill’s mass mailing, people can still request a ballot from their town hall or download one online. And thanks to the bipartisan legislation passed in July, anyone can now request an absentee ballot due to the pandemic, an expansion of reasons allowed to vote absentee. Our state should not be spending funds on a mass mailing, but rather these funds could be better used on education so people know how to access absentee ballots and so town halls have all the tools, training and resources to process every single request and ballot and count all votes.”

Click here to read Fasano’s letter to Gov. Lamont detailing issues with the primary election and proposed general election plan.