By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT–When voters go to the polls in Westport next week – or to any town in Connecticut – they will have a different experience submitting their ballots. Voters will fill out their paper ballots as usual with a special pen, but when they insert their ballot into a new electronic tabulator, the machine will thank them for voting, and will let them know if they have  marked their ballot correctly or incorrectly.

“It will be interactive with you,” promised Deborah Greenberg, Westport’s registrar of voters. If a voter marks too many ovals on their ballot, choosing too many candidates for a particular office, for instance, they will find that out when they insert their ballot into the tabulator. “It will ‘talk’ to you and let you know the exact nature of what the problem is,” she said. And the machine won’t register the ballot until it is corrected or the voter decides not to submit it.  

The new equipment will speed up the vote-counting process, Greenberg added, and cut back on problems with the machines at the polls that have been used in Westport for as long as 30 years. “They’re antiques,” she said. Voting this year “should be a seamless experience.”

From the start of the voting process this year, the voter will encounter new equipment as they are checked in on laptop computers by poll workers, as well as with the paper lists everyone is accustomed to see when they enter a poll. The paper check-in list is still required by law, Greenberg said.

She wants everyone to understand, however, that the new electronic devices are completely secure and all votes are safe. None of the voting machines are connected to the internet, she said. “They are stand-alone machines.” And all devices are locked up using very clear and strict regulations. As she demonstrated the new equipment on Tuesday, she was required to undo several seals and use more than one key to open a tabulator. 

One even larger machine, called a central counter, is located in a vault in the Town Clerk’s office, also accessible only with several keys.  It will be used to count absentee ballots and early voting ballots, which still must be registered on paper ballots and submitted in envelopes supplied at the polls.

The 22 new tabulators were paid for with state grants, according to Greenberg, and Westport received a $17,000 grant for the new tabulators. “We need a lot of equipment,” she said, because Westport has a larger number of voting districts – nine – which is more than many other towns in Connecticut. In Wilton, for example, there is only one district with two polling places, she said.

The registrar said she hopes that Westport would reduce the number of voting districts someday by modifying the town charter. Operating polls in so many voting districts requires more staff at the polls, and more vote counting, she said, because each district has separate vote tallies.

The nine districts (map here) and their polling locations are:  

• RTM Districts 1 and 2 – Saugatuck Elementary School gym
• RTM Districts 3 and 8 – Coleytown Middle School gym
• RTM Districts 6 and 7 – Long Lots Elementary School gym
• RTM District 4 and 5 – Greens Farms Elementary School gym and auditorium
• RTM District 9 – Westport Library 

All polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 4.

Early voting is also available in the Town Hall auditorium through Nov. 2. 

Voting hours for early voting vary but are posted on the town website, along with additional information about voting in Westport.

Gretchen Webster

^{_{Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, has reported for the daily Greenwich Time and Norwalk Hour, the weekly Westport News, Fairfield Citizen and Weston Forum. She was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman for ten years. She has won numerous journalism awards over the years, and taught journalism at New York University and Southern Connecticut State University.}}