HAMDEN, CT — Hamden Mayor Curt Leng and Town Clerk Vera Morrison said there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the way the town distributes absentee ballots.
Earlier this week, four Hamden residents, including one Republican who is running for the town council filed a lawsuit accusing the town of mishandling its absentee ballot applications.
The lawsuit says “hundreds of absentee ballot applications have been issued by the Town Clerk without compliance with the requirement that they be signed out to an accountable individual. Instead, these absentee ballot applications have been identified as being distributed to non-voting institutions within the Town of Hamden, including, but not limited to, Atria Larson Place, Benchmark Senior Living at Hamden, Congregate Housing, Genesis Healthcare — Arden House, and Hamden Health Care Center.”
Leng and Morrison said the clerk’s office “routinely provides a designated person at Hamden’s nursing homes and senior living facilities with absentee ballot applications. These sequentially numbered absentee ballot applications, not ballots, are then delivered and disseminated to those who may need them.
The designated individual certifies separately to whom the applications were provided, and then returns all applications back to the Town Clerk’s Office, with a distributor’s log, and then prepares the appropriate ballot documentation for administration by the Democratic and Republican Registrars.”
Leng and Morrison said “the Republican candidates and campaign officials who submitted this complaint seem to allege that applications for absentee ballots are being sent to these senior care facilities without accountability. This simply isn’t true. Moreover, had the plaintiffs simply called the Town Clerk’s Office for more information, our taxpayers could have been spared the expense of defending this specious legal action.”
The request for immediate relief in the case was denied, but a hearing has been scheduled for 2 p.m. Nov. 4—one day before the election.
