The state’s first foray into early voting this year led to shorter lines on Election Day in the region, but longer-than-usual waits for results in some towns as poll workers spent hours on Tuesday tabulating thousands of early cast votes, while dealing with an unexpectedly high number of same-day registration ballots.

Approximately 740,000, or 29.24%, of the state’s 2.5 million registered voters took advantage of the first two-week early voting period leading up to Election Day, with some communities, like Lyme, seeing a nearly 50% turnout of early voters.

And while polling sites were noticeably less crowded on Tuesday, several municipalities were still tallying vote counts well into Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.

In New London, election workers submitted their final vote numbers to the Secretary of the State’s office around midnight Tuesday, Democratic Registrar Rich Martin said. The city finished processing roughly 3,300 early votes by Tuesday afternoon but had to wait until the polls closed at 8 p.m. to sort through last-minute absentee and same-day registration ballots.

“Early voting did relieve some of the pressure on polling places, but we had an unexpectedly high number of same-day registrations on Tuesday, about 429,” Martin said, noting voters had access to same-day registration during the 14-day early voting period.

“I thought it would have been a lot quieter, but we had people right at 6 a.m. and through 8 p.m. on Tuesday. We did not expect that and did not prepare for those numbers,” he said.

In addition to same-day registration ballots, approximately 500 absentee ballots had to be unsealed, checked, segregated and fed into a counting machine.

Despite early access to voting, New London’s voter turnout figures hovered around 50%, about the same as 2020.

“Worst election day”

Norwich election workers did not finish counting and categorizing early voting and same-day registration ballot results until 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, head moderator and incoming Democratic Registrar JoAnn Merolla-Martin said Wednesday.

After 5,634 voters cast ballots during the 14 days of early voting, Norwich election officials were surprised to see another 515 people come to City Hall on Tuesday for same-day registration and voting.

Lines snaked around the third-floor hallway throughout the day, prompting a visit by the Norwich fire marshal at one point to ensure exits were not blocked. Registrars scrambled to add staff and more computers to ease the long lines and same-day voting continued until almost 9 p.m.

Merolla-Martin and Republican Registrar Dianne Slopak said the same-day voting consumed staff time and delayed tallying early voting results.

Early voting ballots were run through the machine by 2 p.m. Tuesday, but votes could not be printed out until after 8 p.m. Another delay occurred when results on the receipt tapes combined totals from the city’s six precincts.

Election workers spent long hours transcribing by hand the vote totals as required by the Secretary of the State’s office.

“It was the worst election day I ever spent,” Merolla-Martin said. “There were not big problems, but constant little problems like that. And I don’t think anybody expected same-day registration to be as crazy as it was. We need to figure out a better, quicker process.”

Like drinking through a fire hose

East Lyme Democratic Registrar Wendi Sims said her staff processed just more than 6,200 early voting and same-day registration votes on Tuesday and submitted those results to the state by midnight Tuesday.

Like New London, registrars were inundated with same-day registrations on Tuesday, many more than were expected.

“Over the 14 days of early voting, we had at least 120,” Sims said. “And on Election Day alone we had 135. And it takes time to handle those, and we ended up pre-screening people in a separate room. It was very hectic at times, like drinking through a fire hose.”

In addition, the state requires vote tallies to be submitted in a specific – and time-consuming – way, Sims said, that includes breaking down the votes by type and by district.

“That’s a big reason why it took so long getting those final numbers in,” she said. “All things considered, East Lyme did fairly well.”

Other towns ran into errors of their own making.

In North Stonington, more than 1,000 early ballots were deemed invalid because the envelopes containing them hadn’t been signed. Hundreds of voters were forced to return to the polls to recast their votes.

On the second day of early voting in nearby Stonington, a number of voters in the 43rd District were mistakenly given ballots for the 41st District. Registrars gave those voters a chance to submit correct ones.

A push for resources

Martin said having the state’s first real foray into early voting coincide with a presidential race, in which turnout is invariably high, led to a “trial by a tsunami fire” for election workers who only had a relatively short time to prepare for the process.

“It was, though, a great surprise to see such a robust turnout for early voting,” he said.

While pleased with the early vote turnout, Martin said he expects to fine tune some aspects of the process moving forward, such as moving early voting out of City Hall to a more accessible location. Those changes will require state help and more funding, he said.

“The biggest issue is awareness,” Martin said. “After an initial rush of early voters, it got quiet. We need to start reminding voters of the early voting options weeks and months before. And towns need more funding to pay for more workers, advertising and updated equipment – all those things mandated by law but are largely unfunded mandates for municipalities.”

Sims said she hopes the promise of new tabulator machines next year will make the counting process smoother, but said the state legislature needs to better fund those new initiatives, like early voting, that towns are ultimately tasked with overseeing.

“I love early voting and lived in states that have had it,” Sims said. “We had enough people working, so really, the biggest shock was the number of same-day registrations.”

Slopak and Merolla-Martin, both veteran election staffers, said Norwich hired 24 election workers Tuesday, but many were inexperienced and needed more training, one of the lessons learned from Tuesday’s experience.

Slopak said the state needs to better advertise early voting to reduce the same-day registration lines on Election Day.

“I think there needs to be more awareness of how it works,” Slopak said, “Because I think we had about twice as many same-day registrations as we had early voters. Why? Early voting went very well, and in the 14 days of same-day registration, we were getting about 20 people a day. How could we have 515 yesterday?”

j.penney@theday.com

Staff writer Claire Bessette contributed to this story