Connecticut's secretary of the state said the recent election should be a distant memory when it comes to election returns – that the days of faxes, hand delivering results, and checking them one-by-one should disappear, thanks to new technology.
"It's archaic," Denise Merrill said during an interview in her office Wednesday.
Merrill said Connecticut residents will no longer have to wait a day to find out who won statewide elections.
The state spent about $350,000 on a new reporting system that will take results from the more than 700 precincts and send them digitally to the secretary of the state's office.
Gov. Dan Malloy was not the projected the winner in the race for governor against Republican Tom Foley until midday Wednesday, more than 36 hours after the polls closed in a race that held everyone's attention until the very end.
“I think that this has become an issue because we had two very close gubernatorial elections and that has generated a lot of interest in getting fast results," Merrill said. "But we do also have to look at the way it’s happening and it will not any longer be the way it has been.”
Merrill also advocated for a discussion about the potential elimination of party-affiliated registrars.
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She said that with so many municipalities that handle different official jobs in different ways, there won't be an easy solution to the issue.
