Gov. Ned Lamont plans to cast his vote for president and down-ballot races on the first day of early voting on Monday, one of the efforts to publicize the late arrival of convenience voting to Connecticut.
“I’ll just say we’re doing everything we can to make it easier and more convenient for you to be able to vote,” Lamont said Wednesday. “That’s what early voting is all about.”
Connecticut is the 47th state to offer early voting, which was authorized in a constitutional amendment passed by referendum in 2022. The holdouts are Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire.
Early in-person voting is available in at least one place in every Connecticut community from Monday, Oct. 21 through Sunday, Nov. 3. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., except for extended hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Oct. 29 and 31.
“Election Day is still happening as it always has, Tuesday, Nov. 5, at your regular polling place, but early voting provides voters with an additional 14 days to cast their ballot prior to the election,” Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas said.
Early voting in most communities is at the local town or city hall. State law gives communities with populations of 20,000 or more the option of multiple locations.
Mansfield, the home of the University of Connecticut, was the only community to notify Thomas’ office by Wednesday of two early voting places: The council chamber in town hall, and the UConn bookstore on Hillside Road.
More than two dozen communities have yet to notify the secretary of the state’s office of their early voting place. The locations can be viewed online on a list that is maintained by the secretary of the state and is regularly updated.
The list and information about how to register to vote or obtain an absentee ballot can be found at MyVote.CT.gov/voterguide.
Ballots cast early will be handled much like absentee ballots: Placed by the voter in a signed and sealed envelope, which will be secured and opened on Election Day.
Every vote in Connecticut will be cast by a paper ballot, as will be the case throughout most of the United States, with the exception of Louisiana and a few counties in Texas where the transition from electronic to paper voting is incomplete.
“Some states had moved away from the paper ballots in recent years, but they are all coming back,” Thomas said.
Overall, 98% of the votes in the U.S. will be cast on paper, up from 93% four years ago, according to the Election Assistance Commission and the Brennan Center for Justice.
“That’s why people should feel very secure about the way we vote, because there’s a piece of paper as evidence of every person’s ballot,” said Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, the former secretary of the state.
Bysiewicz was secretary of the state when Connecticut discontinued the use of mechanical lever machines and adopted a system of paper ballots counted locally by optical scanners.
In response to the chaotic presidential election of 2000, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, pushing states from lever machines and punch card ballots, such as the ones used in parts of Florida.
There were punch-card ballots where the voters’ attempt to make their choice had only succeeded in detaching a portion of the perforated paper, resulting in the infamous “hanging chads,” or merely denting and not removing the punch out.
These factors produced a protracted recount ultimately won by George W. Bush after it was ended on an order of the U.S. Supreme Court. Bush won Florida, the decisive state in Bush’s electoral college victory, by 537 votes of nearly 6 million cast.
