Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller, who had been inadvertently voting in the wrong district: “Why is it that we don’t have answers to the questions that you have now had from me since the middle of May?” City Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans told alders on Thursday that she doesn’ t know how hundreds of voters were assigned to vote in the wrong state House of Representatives district within the last four years. Still, she said, she is confident that everything has now been corrected. That answer wasn’t enough to satisfy members of the aldermanic City Services and Environmental Policy (CSEP) Committee. “I don’t feel confident based on the responses that this will not happen again,” said East Rock/Fair Haven Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith. Evans spoke to committee alders at City Hall on Thursday as part of a workshop to discuss upcoming August primary elections and the recent discovery that hundreds of eligible voters in the 2022 and 2024 elections were impacted by redistricting errors, as first reported by the Independent’s Laura Glesby. An analysis from the Secretary of the State’s office identified at least 432 addresses thar were assigned to vote in the wrong state House district and that at least 744 registered voters lived at those impacted addresses as of May. Nineteen improper votes, for example, were cast in the 2024 state House Democratic primary in the 94th District that saw Steve Winter beat Tarolyn Moore and Abdul Osmanu. A total of 150 voters were inaccurately registered to vote in the 94th District despite residing in other districts. (Those 19 votes were not enough to impact the results of the election, as Winter won the primary with 350 more votes than Osmanu, the runner-up candidate.) Some of the impacted residents across the city were assigned to vote in districts that became outdated after 2021, when the state adopted new General Assembly district lines following the latest Census. Others, like those 19 voters, were assigned to vote in districts that had not included their address since 2001. Evans was joined on Thursday by city Deputy Corporation Counsel Roderick Williams and outside counsel Proloy Das, a Hartford-based attorney with employment law firm FordHarrison, as well as by city Republican Registrar of Voters Lisa Milone. Thursday’s hearing marked the first time that Evans has publicly addressed the recently discovered district-error matter. Marlene Napolitano, the former Republican registrar of voters who oversaw the last two elections alongside Evans, was not in attendance at Thursday’s workshop. Evans, who was elected to her position in 2016, said she wasn’t sure how the mistake had happened, largely because the voter system that the state uses, the Connecticut Voter Registration System (CVRS), doesn’t have the ability to go back and track changes. Redistricting is conducted by parcel, not address, Evans said. A company then deciphers those new maps for registrars, who then manually enter all the granular street information into the CVRS. The error might have come from the company, whose name Evans couldn’t remember, or it might have occurred during the registrars’ manual implementation process. “We’re trying to make sure, moving forward, for the election that is coming up, that everyone is in the right places,” Evans said. Evans, Williams, and Das said that they wouldn’t be able to identify everyone who had voted in the wrong districts. The priority is now identifying the addresses that might have been affected and reaching out to let residents know. “Wait, that hasn’t been done yet?” asked East Rock Alder Anna Festa, who chairs the CSEP Committee. East Rock Alders Caroline Tanbee Smith and Anna Festa. “The CVRS system that we operate is updated,” said Milone, who took office as Republican registrar in 2025. Matthew Clyburn, a spokesperson for the Secretary of the State’s office, confirmed for the Independent that the statewide voter registration system had been updated by the registrars to accurately reflect voter districts some time between November 2025 and May 5, 2026. “There’s a lot of confidence right now that every currently registered voter is assigned to the correct polling location, and we have that confidence with the Secretary [of the State]’s office, as well as the UConn Voter Center,” Das said. Morris Cove Alder Leland Moore, who is running to represent the 97th General Assembly District against city Fair Rent Commission Executive Director Wildaliz Bermudez, asked whether Evans’ office would be manually cross-checking that data ahead of the elections in the fall. Evans said that her office has gone through each street individually to ensure the system is updated. Still, registrars said they had not independently identified exactly who or how many people had actually been assigned to vote in the wrong district, or who had actually cast an improper vote. Evans said she didn’t know where the numbers reported by the Independent from the Secretary of the State’s office — that at least 432 addresses were assigned to vote in the wrong state House district and that at least 744 registered voters lived at those addresses as of May — came from. Now, the registrars are working with the city’s IT department to overlay the previous district maps with the current district maps and identify every address in the city that would have changed districts post-2021 redistricting. Those voters will then receive postcards notifying them that they might have previously voted in the wrong district race. Alders were skeptical about this process. Das said it had begun in the last week. Williams, after the meeting, said he wasn’t sure how long it would go on for. Tanbee Smith asked why it was such a complicated process to identify those addresses. “You could ostensibly count the number of households and the number of addresses in fairly short order,” she said. The maps before and after redistricting already exist — she could probably Google them right now, Tanbee Smith said. “So we don’t need to wait for a map, in other words, because we have the map.” Evans said she wasn’t sure how IT was conducting the process. “I don’t know how IT works, I’m not tech savvy with IT.” Upper Westville Alder Amy Marx pointed to cross-off lists, which keep track of who voted in which election. She asked Evans whether the city keeps those records. Evans said that those lists remain with the City/Town Clerk’s Office. “To go by each name and address would take months,” she said. Evans and Milone noted that in the future, the Secretary of the State will be switching its voter system to Total Vote, a platform that registrars said is expected to be more automated and minimize the risk of human error. Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller’s own address on Clinton Avenue was impacted by these errors: Miller’s home had previously been located in the 97th District, and in 2021, the state adopted newly drawn maps that placed her block in the 95th District. But Miller never received any notice; instead, for the 2022 and 2024 elections, she continued to be told to vote in the 97th District. Miller realized herself in May that she had been voting in the wrong district, after looking at a map. “Ms. Evans, do you recall receiving messages from me on May 17 and May 24 on this matter?” Miller asked. Evans said she remembered Miller reaching out. Miller asked why she received no response to her messages. “I don’t agree with that,” Evans said. She had responded during a phone call. Miller said she had asked for a response in writing. Das told her that he had advised Evans not to respond, given that the hearing would provide an opportunity to answer questions. “I just want to be crystal clear about what happened,” Miller said. “Do you agree voters were disenfranchised, who did not vote in their correct addresses?” “Do I agree that people were in the wrong district? Yes,” Evans said. “I looked at the map, I looked at the cross-off sheets from my own ward, because my ward was impacted, my address was impacted,” Miller said, “and it was pretty easy to figure out, if you just look at those documents, where the problem is.” While Miller acknowledged that it would be a bigger task to examine the whole city, she was frustrated that it still wasn’t clear how many people from each House district were impacted by the error, which alders still didn’t know the origin of. “It seems like something that somebody could figure out in a day,” Miller said. “So I’m just going to ask again, why is it that we don’t have answers to the questions that you have now had from me since the middle of May about how many people in each district didn’t vote for the right person?” “Maybe after this you can tell us how you referenced, because it seems like you have a better idea,” Evans responded. “If you look at the map, the cross-off sheet, that’s all the information,” Miller said. “I don’t know what other information you would actually need.” “We are sure that in this upcoming election, people are voting in their right election,” Evans said. Déjà Vu Political consultant Christine Bartlett-Josie: All of what we’ve done in the last two election cycles on the state level could be null and void. During the public testimony portion of Thursday meeting, Alyson Heimer, who is the administrator of the New Haven Democracy Fund, called for restoring public confidence in the registrars’ office. In order to do so, Heimer presented a six-point plan to improve the office, which included boosting transparency and accountability, engaging free tools to measure data disparities before engaging outside consultants, and reforming the redistricting verification process. Another point was to conduct a full, independent audit. “The city should conduct a comprehensive foot canvas, door to door, to figure out who lives here and who should vote here,” Heimer said. She said that was historically a part of the reason why Republican and Democratic Town Committees existed. Not only would a full audit improve the accuracy of the voter rolls, Heimer argued, but it would also identify eligible but disengaged residents in the electoral process. Aaron Goode, who was speaking as a member of the New Haven Votes Coalition, recalled that a similar error had occurred in 2023, when 28 Crown Street residents were told to vote in a different alder race due to a clerical error by the registrars’ office. That was shortly after the 2021 redistricting. The error was caught relatively quickly, Goode said. But he pointed to a statement that registrars Evans and Napolitano had provided to the Independent at the time: “… the Registrar’s office will be conducting a previously planned review of our voter registration rolls to ensure that every voter is assigned to the correct municipal and legislative districts in advance of the upcoming 2024 elections.” Now, errors with the 2024 elections have been discovered. CSEP held a meeting that year, like this one, Goode said. “I’m a little baffled at what I’ve heard tonight,” Goode said. “We all have a lot more work to do.” Christine Bartlett-Josie, a political consultant, said that she had realized the districting error when she heard that State Sen. Martin Looney was not running for reelection and that current 97th District State Rep. Al Paolillo, Jr. would run to fill his seat. Bartlett-Josie said she began to think of who lived in Paolillo’s ward and might run to replace him. She thought of Sarah Miller. She said she pulled up the map, and in ten minutes, she saw that Miller was not actually in Paolillo’s district. “Who nominated people in that district before? Who nominated Al Paolillo two years ago? Were these people actually in his district? Who’s on the town committee?” she said. “If we look back, all of what we’ve done in the last two election cycles on the state level could be null and void.” This Year’s Primary Republican registrar Lisa Milone, outside counsel Proloy Das, Evans, and Williams. Evans and City Clerk Michael Smart also presented details for this year’s primary race. The primary date for this year’s election is Aug. 11, from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Early voting is available at City Hall and Southern Connecticut State University from Aug. 3 to Aug. 9. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. except on Aug. 4 and Aug. 6, when voting is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The general election is scheduled for Nov. 3, with early voting dates planned for October. No-excuse absentee ballots are also now in effect, meaning voters don’t need a reason to vote absentee but will still need to request one unless they are considered permanent absentee voters. Applications can be filled out online or at the City Clerk’s office at 200 Orange St. Absentee ballots will be available for pickup starting July 21. The post Alders Press Registrars For Voter-Error Answers appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less