The town of Wallingford will conduct a “discrepancy recount” on Friday following potential ballot mishandling.
Joan Ives-Parisi, Wallingford’s Republican registrar of voters, told Connecticut Public on Wednesday that the town ran out of ballots on Election Day.
“We just had a record turnout for the gubernatorial, which we were happy to see because we want people to vote, but it did cause a shortage of ballots,” Ives-Parisi said.
Per state contingency procedures, election officials then printed new ballots, which the secretary of the state’s office advised to be segregated and counted by hand. Instead, Ives-Parisi said, 100 of them went through a tabulator.
Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas said a town running out of ballots was not too unusual.
“It’s fairly common, but these were mistakenly run through the tabulator,” Thomas told Connecticut Public’s The Wheelhouse on Wednesday morning. “This is why I’m always like, it’s great we have paper ballots, so the only delay is they now have to hand count.”
Ives-Parisi said she agreed when the secretary of the state’s office recommended a recount.
“We want to put the voters in Wallingford… at ease that their ballots were all counted properly, and their votes went where they should,” Ives-Parisi said.
Ives-Parisi said there would have been a recount anyway due to close margins in the state Senate District 34 race between Republican incumbent Paul Cicarella and Democratic challenger Brandi Mandato. According to reporting in the Connecticut Mirror, the results of that race could determine whether Democrats enjoy an historic state Senate majority of either 32-4 or 33-3.
“We may have a little bit of time to wait, but it’s not like we won’t know the results,” Thomas said.
“This is exactly why Connecticut uses paper ballots. We don’t guess. We check,” Thomas said in a statement about the incident. “We’re committed to ensuring every ballot is counted fairly and accurately.”
