by Jamil Ragland
Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas told reporters on a video call Tuesday morning that just over 8,700 votes were cast during the early voting period, which began Aug. 5 and ran for four days prior to Tuesday’s primary election day across Connecticut.
Thomas said Hamden led the way among municipalities, casting over 1,300 early ballots in the southern Connecticut town, and added that Hamden made a concerted effort to inform voters about early voting.
She said the town mailed postcards to all eligible voters to inform them about early voting. The Secretary of the State’s office made a request during the legislative session earlier this year for additional funding for a get-out-the-vote campaign, but that request was rejected.
Thomas said decisions like that have a profound impact on early voter turnout, and as such the state reportedly saw an early voting turnout percentage of about 1%.
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Democratic Party primaries were being held in 28 towns while the Republican Party, which has a primary underway today to select its candidate for US Senate in November, had primaries in all 169 Connecticut towns.
But Hamden accounted for 15% of all the early votes cast.
“What we’ve seen from the data collected around the country, is there is a direct correlation to the amount of advertising and the amount of early voters,” Thomas said. “So [low turnout numbers] come as no surprise, absent a coordinated statewide campaign. A lot of people just anecdotally, when I travel around speaking with audiences, don’t know that early voting exists in Connecticut. And the ones who do know it exists, many of them don’t know any of the details. They don’t know what the hours are, that voting is available on the weekend. So towns like Hamden – I think it’s no accident.”
After Hamden, the next largest early voting turnout by town had 300 ballots.
Republican registrars of voters in Stamford and Greenwich reportedly said this week that turnout in Connecticut’s first two opportunities for early voting – it had debuted in the presidential preference primary earlier this year – has been far too low to justify its cost. They urged state leaders to consider legislating reforms and cost reductions.
“This is an issue. Now that we have had two cycles of [early voting], the legislators need to contact the large cities to realize things need to change. This is a large amount of money spent on too few voters,” Stamford Republican Registrar Lucy Corelli told CTExaminer.
Another factor that may have depressed early voting turnout is that Connecticut is a closed primary state, where only voters registered in each party may vote in their party’s election. According to the Independent Voter Project, as of November 2023 unaffiliated voters are the largest group of voters in the state, meaning that 42% of the state’s registered voters were unable to vote in the primary election.
Thomas said that her office expected low turnout for the primary election, and that the election offered another opportunity for officials to test the early voting system before the presidential election in November, where turnout is expected to be much higher.
During the news conference, Thomas was asked whether the low turnout for early voting had caused her any frustration.
“I think [the low turnout] is no surprise to anyone on this call,” she said. “I think we may have too many days of early voting. And I think like most legislation, sometimes you learn some things after it passes. We certainly learned some things in the presidential preference primary and the legislature was in session so we were able to make some adjustments to the law for this election. I think this August and in November, we’ll learn some more things that we can bring into the next legislative session. I just encourage people to do what I’ve said all along. Those closest to problems or challenges have the most information so I would encourage anyone to reach out to their legislative delegation with their input with data, because they have that information.”
Thomas urged voters to participate in the legislative process so that concerns can be corrected before they become problems.
‘I’ll also remind the public how few people showed up to testify when the early voting law was being debated,” Thomas said. “Those public hearings are open to every single person in Connecticut. And I think we had input from fewer than a couple of hundred. So I just encourage everyone to get involved in the legislative process. That’s what it’s there for. It does less good to voice concerns outside of that process, because we need those voices when the law is being made.”
Voters can learn more about early voting and what to expect for the presidential election this November by visiting the Secretary of the State’s webpage about early voting.