The Hartford City Council voted 8-1 on Wednesday to create a committee that will investigate the problems that caused delays at Hartford polls and sent voters home on Nov. 4.
"This is about getting to the facts and getting to them quickly," said Hartford City Council President Shawn Wooden.
Both the city council and the secretary of the state have announced their intentions to investigate what went wrong on Election Day.
The late delivery of voter registration forms caused major delays at a number of polling places around the city and sent some voters home. A judge extended voting hours at two Hartford precincts to compensate.
Now a five-member panel will probe the issue. Members of this Committee of Inquiry will hail from the city council and will take a hard look at Hartford's Registrar of Voters.
"This was a colossal failure, make no mistake about it, and now I'm hopeful... that us in City Hall and those at the Capital are ready to act now," Wooden said.
The council also approved a resolution aimed at restructuring the Registrar of Voters.
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Registrar Urania Petit said in an exclusive interview with NBC Connecticut that she took responsibility for the issue and would welcome an investigation.
“I welcome the investigation," Petit said. "I think that they ought to have an investigation because I think that some good will come out of it, because this investigation is going to teach us what all was broken and how we fix it.”
