by LAURA GLESBY, THOMAS BREEN and ALLAN APPEL The new haven independent
(Updated) Shamar Sheppard peered up at Jazmine Williamson, a clipboard and pencil in hand. “Did you vote today?” he asked. “Who did you vote for?”
Sheppard was one of five young pollsters outside Lincoln-Bassett School at noon on Tuesday, surveying voters in Newhallville’s Ward 20 about how they cast their ballots in the contested mayoral and alder races.
He was joined by second and third-grade classmates of the Harris and Tucker after-school program, who each took turns approaching voters and gathering data on the ward’s results. Principal Kim Harris stood right beside them, encouraging them to push through shyness and hear directly from their neighbors.
Ward 20 is one of six wards in the city to have a contested Democratic primary for alder on Tuesday. Citywide, Democrats are heading to the polls to pick between two candidates for mayor: two-term incumbent Justin Elicker and former federal prosecutor and legal aid attorney Liam Brennan. See below for more stories from the polls on Tuesday, including in Fair Haven’s Ward 15, Morris Cove’s Ward 18, and the Hill’s Ward 6.
Jazmine Williamson tells Shamar Sheppard (and Principal Kim Harris) how she voted.
At Sheppard’s question, Williamson smiled. “I voted for Mr. Elicker,” she said.
Sheppard drew a swooping check mark under the name “Justin Elicker” on his worksheet.
At Harris’ prompting, Sheppard looked up at Williamson again. “Did you vote for alder?” he asked.
“Yes I did,” replied Williamson. “I voted for Brittiany.”
Under the name “Brittiany Mabery-Niblack,” Sheppard drew another check.
“I love that you’re doing this,” Wiliamson told Harris. “This just warms my heart.“
After speaking with Williamson, Sheppard officially had two data points for each race; the other voter he’d spoken with had voted for Liam Brennan (Elicker’s mayoral opponent) and Addie Kimbrough (Mabery-Niblack’s alder opponent), putting the results of his survey so far at 50 – 50.
As the two alder candidates rushed to introduce themselves to the voters who trickled by, Harris gathered the kids together.
“They are asking people for their votes,” she explained. “They’re saying, ‘Go Line A, go Line B!’ ”
Harris routinely takes kids who have election day off from school to the Ward 20 polling place, showing them how she fills out her ballot and introducing them to the candidates present. For the last several election days, she’s taught them how to survey voters, an introduction to data collection about their neighborhood.
“The goal is to get them acclimated young to voting,” she said. “I want them to get used to their community.”
By around noon, just over a hundred people had voted at the polling place.
The kids encountered a number of neighbors who didn’t want to say whom they voted for.
“Remember, we talked about this, how some people may want their vote to be private,” Harris advised them. She added a makeshift “private” column to Sheppard’s survey.
When one 81-year-old Newhallville resident walked into the polling place where she’s voted for decades, she heard some unexpected news: her name wasn’t on the list of registered Democrats.
Mayoral candidate Liam Brennan introduced himself to the team of young data-collectors and comforted one child who was new to the program: “I remember what it was like when my kids started school. You’re lucky to be with Ms. Kim, she’s the nicest person.”
May, who asked to be identified only by her first name, said she votes every year as a Democrat at Lincoln-Bassett School. She takes pride in being a familiar face at her local polling place. She’s owned her Newhallville home since 1985. She raised her kids and grandkids in the neighborhood. “I’ve been a Democrat all my life,” she said.
May believes that when she renewed her driver’s license at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in September 2022, the DMV must have re-registered her as an unaffiliated voter.
According to Democratic Ward 20 Co-Chair Barbara Vereen, May was the fifth person that morning to have discovered at Lincoln-Bassett they were no longer registered Democrats after having recently gone to the DMV — an unusually high number, Vereen said.
“This is interfering with my right,” said May. “Why didn’t they tell me, ‘Did I want to be a Democrat?’ ” The DMV did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article.