By Anne W. Semmes
With a month to go before we vote for the next President of the United States, it was reassuring to learn just how well prepared our town is to make sure that every vote cast is lawful, and every vote counted, with the leadership of our two elected Greenwich Registrars of Voters, Republican Fred De Caro III and Democrat Mary Hegarty. “It’s really important to let the folks listening know that Fred and Mary are two of the best election officials I’ve had the privilege of working with and do just an excellent, amazing job in running their office,” said Jennifer Morrell, CEO & co-founder of The Elections Group, a non-partisan organization of election experts supporting election officials.
Morrell was guest speaker on a League of Women Voters “Election Integrity” zoom talk this last Monday featuring De Caro and Hegarty. Stating that as her job is to “travel all across the country and meet with election officials everywhere,” she wished to see “more offices with the type of collaboration and desire to continually improve and innovate that I see in the Greenwich office.”
With De Caro having been elected as Registrar in 2008, and Hegarty in 2018, their Registrar of Voters office was recognized in 2022 as a Center for Election excellence by the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence. And earlier this year the League of Women Voters of Greenwich honored the two with its Community Impact Award “for their commitment to ensuring that all citizens become informed and participate actively in the democratic process.”
“We are a bipartisan office,” described De Caro. “There are the two of us…We are the only two people in Town Hall who have our parties next to our names on our name plates when you walk into the office.” He continued, “We provide legislative testimony jointly on items we agree on, and we have a mutual agreement that we do not testify if we cannot both agree on something. We each also hire half of the poll workers.” He then showed a slide of “Hiring Practices,” with poll worker names (in red or blue ink). “This is actually for the 2024 presidential election,” he told, “So, even though we have just about 35, 36 days left, we are doing a great job in making sure all those positions are filled.”
De Caro shared that this election year would be the first that the two would participate in early voting. “We will be taking the remaining early voting ballots and bring them to the polls on election day.” He also wished to point out, “Because in Connecticut elections are operated at the municipal level, we find that we have a great deal of confidence when we talk to voters about what is going on here.”
“That’s the thing I love so much about the process that you all have, Fred and Mary – you’re both in the same office and you’re both communicating all the time,” said Morrell, adding, “The level of state involvement really varies state to state where you have some states that actually do most of the administration of the election process, purchasing the machines, testing the machines, creating forms and procedures and training material.”
Testing accuracy
Hegarty joined with a “thank you to the Greenwich League of Women Voters for this event.” And “It’s an honor to be here with Jennifer Morrell, who is a superstar of election administration and my counterpart registrar Fred De Caro, who shares my passion for all things election related.” She addressed the important issues of accuracy testing in the election process, “the details that serve to maintain trust in our elections…the testing that occurs before elections of all of the election equipment in Connecticut.”
“You are invited to see this testing process for the upcoming election on November 5,” said Hegarty. “’The Logic and Accuracy’ testing will take place in the Town Hall meeting room on Thursday, October 17, starting at nine in the morning. And, given the size of this ballot, which isn’t a huge ballot, it’ll probably wrap up in the middle of the afternoon.”
Hegarty described that testing as including “all of the tabulators, a pack of test ballots and all of the memory cards that are to be used on election day.” And “Observers can also see the packing and sealing of election equipment into Greenwich’s large blue metal containers you may have seen at the polling places. Greenwich will be testing 42 tabulators, one for each of Greenwich’s 18 voting districts…We also will be processing 72 memory cards. These have been pre-programmed for the election.”
Morrell interjected, “Mary did a great job explaining how that [testing] works. It’s done in every jurisdiction in every state in the country. That’s so important for people to know. It is a requirement in every single election office…That logic testing is ensuring that a vote cast for a particular candidate or option is recorded correctly and tallied for that candidate. In other words, if a voter selects candidate one, it’s tabulated as a vote for candidate one. Accuracy is looking to see the math part of it, how it counts votes, making sure that when it aggregates all of those votes together, that we come up with the right winner.”
Auditing post-election
So, after the election is over, there are the post-election audits. Hegarty explained. “So, what is the purpose of post-election audits? First, they are not a recount of an election…The purpose of a post-election audit is to confirm that the election equipment that was tested before the election in the logic and accuracy pre-election testing functioned correctly during the election. So, in Connecticut, five percent of Connecticut’s voting districts are randomly selected by the Connecticut Secretary of the State to perform post-election audits… Every step of the audit process is performed by election officials from the Democratic and the Republican parties.”
For those wanting those audits to be fully spelled out Hagerty recommended their Election Academy to be offered again in 2025. “We had a very successful and enjoyable Election Academy in 2023, and you can see information about that on our website: www.greenwichct.gov/582/Voter-Registration
But next Wednesday Hegarty and De Caro will be offering their “Open House” on Wednesday, October 9. “At that,” told Hegarty, “we have a whole series of educational posters that we put together on different aspects of the voting process. You can hands-on the kind of accessible voting equipment we have. You can see the seals and the chain of custody materials. We also can show you how we maintain the voter rolls. You can stay for as long or as little as you like and get all of your questions answered. Many of those questions can also be answered online at greenwichct.gov/election academy.”
Of the few questions called in one was on mail-in ballots. “How do you assure that mail-in ballots go to qualified voters, U.S. citizens, actual town residents? And then how do you assure those returned mail-in ballots were filled out and returned by the actual qualified voter who sent it in?”
“We do not automatically send out ballots in this state,” answered De Caro. “You have to apply for an absentee ballot, which means you have to give us all your correct information. The ballot is then sent out and then returned to us with your signature on the outer envelope certifying that you swear you are the person signing under penalties of perjury.” But he added, “There may be an expansion…There is a tension in the election world between access and security, and anything we do to create additional access, we should also be focusing on what the corresponding additional security is.”
