Budget Outlook Clouds Connecticut's First Year of Early Voting

This election season marks Connecticut’s first year of early voting, but registrars statewide are voicing concerns that their budgets won’t be enough to cover the costs of the fall election.

Although each town received an additional $10,500 from the state to manage the change, registrars are responsible for covering any expenses associated with an extra 14 days of voting before the Nov. 5 presidential election. Towns may also have to fund an additional seven days of early voting in August if a primary election for a state or district seat occurs.

As a result, registrars in several highly populated municipalities told CT Examiner, the ongoing budget season has felt unorthodox. Cities like Manchester, Danbury and Waterbury are considering healthy budget bumps to fund additional staff, printed ballots and locations needed for early voting, but many registrars said it’s still not enough. 

Meanwhile, registrars in Fairfield are facing a budget cut ahead of an unfamiliar election season. 

“The concern is we’re headed for disaster and the public should be aware of it so there’s no questions afterwards,” Fairfield’s Republican registrar Cathy Politi said.

Democratic First Selectman Bill Gerber’s proposed budget allocated an additional $27,000 to finance early voting staffing and ballots and $8,848 for temporary staff, but it also removed a longstanding secretary position from the office, reducing its current budget by 22%. The Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance have since voted to increase seasonal payroll by $42,000, lessening the decrease to about 8%.

Regardless of the part-time and seasonal budgets, Politi said, office operations will be “crippled” without a full-time employee.

During a Representative Town Meeting on Monday, however, Gerber said he’s not too worried about the personnel cut. 

“The administration does not think that this change will have any impact on the service provided,” he said.

According to Gerber and Interim Chief Financial Officer David Becker, the secretary was underutilized in the registrar’s office and will instead be moved to the Engineering Department. But if the registrars express that they need more help, Gerber said, the town can add more part-time staffing for them.

Democratic registrar Matthew Waggner also expressed concerns about the cut, telling CT Examiner in a statement on Wednesday that the registrars would be responsible for more administrative work.

“I think between the budget reduction and the introduction of early voting, I’d say that the types of communication, voter education, and outreach efforts we might deploy in a Presidential election year … would be constrained, as the Registrars will be more directly engaged in conducting routine administrative functions and individual service requests,” Waggner wrote.

Educated guesses

Meanwhile, Danbury officials have backed an unprecedented increase to the registrar budget, with Mayor Roberto Alves adding a requested $73,779 bump to his proposal.  Election worker salaries accounted for $41,518 of the increase. 

Republican Registrar ​​Mary Ann Doran said on Thursday that the hike is almost entirely driven by early voting, but added that she’s not entirely confident in the budget plan. 

Early voter turnout for the presidential primary election was low last month, but Doran said there’s no way to predict the turnout for early voting in the general election. 

“We did put in a significant request to increase our budget for personnel for the early voting, but we’re not even sure if we put in enough,” she said.

Although she appreciated the mayor’s proposal, Doran said it is unfortunate that the unknown costs of early voting will primarily come from taxpayers.  

On Thursday, West Hartford Democratic registrar Elizabeth Rousseau expressed support for her estimated early voting costs. Her confidence, however, came with a considerable caveat.

The budget for the West Hartford registrar’s office proposes a 16.5% increase to cover staffing expenses for the extra voting days. Rousseau, noting that all personnel in the town’s Office of the Registrar of Voters, including herself, are part-time workers, emphasized their dependence on poll workers for early voting. Wages and salaries for election workers went up 23.6%, but Rousseau said the two registrars and two deputy registrars haven’t received pay bumps in over a decade.

In 2015, registrars reportedly earned about $30,000 per year, while the deputy registrars earned about $15,500, totalling approximately $91,000. Under the latest budget request, the town has proposed a total budget of $91,350 for the four officials.

West Hartford’s town code stipulates that annual compensation for officials like registrars of voters, deputy registrars of voters and the town clerk are set by the Town Council, not through department budget requests. 

“I don’t think that those salaries are sustainable in the long term,” Rousseau said. “I don’t know if they’re sustainable this year given the changes in the responsibilities of our office. Especially with early voting, we have a huge amount of work.”

Waterbury’s Democratic registrar Teresa Begnal similarly expressed confidence with her proposed budget, as long as the election season goes as planned. 

With election worker compensation making up 66% of the $75,480 request, Begnal explained that she padded her budget with extra staff as she remains uncertain about the demands come November.

In March, Waterbury designated its City Hall as the sole location for the four days of early voting. But according to Begnal, the Board of Aldermen is considering opening additional locations, which she estimates could cost $20,000 each, for the general election.

“If we have to, then I definitely feel like we’ll have a shortfall in our budget,” she said.

Elsewhere in the state, two New Britain registrars said they feel reasonably confident in their proposed budget hike requests — Democrat Lucian Pawlak requested a 15.9%, or $45,108, increase, while Republican Peter Gostin asked for a 3.2%, or $9,791, bump. And Timothy Becker, the Republican registrar of Manchester, said he and his Democratic counterpart are pleased with their 9.2% proposed budget increase.