New London — City Hall hosted a steady stream of people on Saturday, part of a proactive initiative to ensure that every city voter who wants to fill out and hand in an absentee ballot will have the opportunity to do so.

Two by two, registered voters filed into the vestibule at City Hall to fill out absentee ballots, the favored method of voting for hundreds of thousands of state residents this year during the COVID-19 pandemic. Absentee ballots, many of which were placed in a drop box outside City Hall, will be counted on Election Day, which is Tuesday.

Staff members from the city clerk’s office were expected to be on hand for three hours Saturday and another three hours Sunday, from 1 to 4 p.m.

City Clerk Jonathan Ayala said it made sense to provide another window of opportunity for community members to vote, especially considering the short window of time left to get in absentee ballots. The city also is experiencing a spike in COVID-19 cases and City Hall has been closed to the public since shortly after the pandemic began. All business is being conducted by phone and City Hall is opened to visitors by appointment only.

This year, unlike in the past, all voters in the state are eligible to vote by absentee ballot due to the pandemic. Some of the people who lined up outside City Hall on Saturday said COVID-19 was the reason they planned to stay away from the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 3. For others, there was an additional concern of long lines.

New London resident Shirley Merrill said in a normal year, she’d have no problem waiting in line at the polls. “This is just easier for me,” she said.

New London Resident Ed Worth waited curbside in a handicap spot with his wife outside City Hall while staff from the clerk’s office provided him with the necessary paperwork.

His decision to vote by absentee had less to do with the pandemic than it did with his wife’s medical condition. He said he was no more concerned about mingling with a crowd than he would be going to the store.

But standing in line with his wife at the polls would not be an option this year. “I usually go to the polls on Election Day,” he said. “But I anticipate quite a line on Tuesday.”

“They’ve been very accommodating,” Worth said of city staff.

The state will see record numbers of absentee ballots this year. The Secretary of the State’s Office reported Thursday that city clerks already had taken in 567,000 absentee ballots.

New London Democratic Registrar of Voters Bill Giesing and Republican Registrar Rob Pero said on Friday they had expected more absentee ballots would have been submitted by now. More than 2,600 ballots had been handed in by Friday afternoon. They had expected 4,000 to 5,000 by Election Day.

“I’m seeing the absentee ballot count is higher than normal but not as high as I thought it would be,” Giesing said. “It’s got me baffled.”

Pero said there seems to be a lot of interest in this year’s election, based on the number of phone calls being fielded by the registrars' office. Many of the questions come from people seeking assurances that their absentee vote would indeed be counted.

“We’ve done absentee balloting forever,” Pero said, “but people who haven’t used it before aren’t used to it and asking questions. I think there is some voter anxiety.”

The City Hall lobby already has been set up with tables and chairs to welcome in Election Day registrations. While the pre-election voter registration cutoff deadline is seven days before Election Day, Connecticut allows anyone to register and vote in person on Election Day if he or she meets the eligibility requirements for voting in the state and is not already registered, or has registered in one town but moved to another.

g.smith@theday.com