absentee ballots

From Town Hall to Tabulator: Journey of an Absentee Ballot

On Election Day, absentee ballots will have their inner envelopes opened starting at 6:00 a.m. and will then run through the tabulator.

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Under lock and key stands a record number of absentee ballots in Windsor town clerk’s vault, now just days away from being counted.

“In the town of Windsor we issued over 7,000 absentee ballots and we received over 6,200 back from the voters,” Anna Posniak, president of Connecticut’s Town Clerk's Association said.

As of Thursday night, the Connecticut Secretary of State’s Office said 567,252 absentee ballots have been returned. So what happens to them next?

The first step your absentee ballot goes through once it reaches the Town Clerk’s office is it brought to the Registrar of Voters. From there, the ballots are checked against the official poll list.

Each voter then gets an ‘A’ next to their name on the poll list which will prevent them from going to the polls and getting a second ballot.

“After that, we then index all of the ballots in order by district and then street order and then house order and then the voter order,” Posniak said.

From there, the absentee ballots typically go back to the Town Clerk’s vault until Election Day but this year, starting Friday night, there’s another step to the process that 40 Connecticut towns will begin.

A look at the plan to address absentee ballots during a special session this week.

At 5:00 p.m., those towns’ Registrars of Voters can start the process of opening the outer absentee ballot envelop. The ballots will eventually make their way back to the Town Clerk under lock and key once again.

“It’ll definitely make a difference for those towns that saw a high volume up absentee ballot issued,” Posniak said.

“I gave it to the right hands just now, I feel comfortable,” voter Marie Clemente said.

On Election Day, absentee ballots that belong to voters like Clemente will have their inner envelopes opened starting at 6:00 a.m. and will then run through the tabulator.

The results will eventually be entered into the election night management system which finally ends up with the Secretary of State’s Office.

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