Eligible Connecticut residents looking to register to vote prior to Election Day have until close of business on Tuesday, Nov. 1, to register online or at their town halls. However, anyone who misses that deadline can register on the day of the election.
While each municipality will provide same-day registration locations on Election Day, often their town or city halls, Secretary of the State Mark Kohler encouraged residents to avoid long lines by registering ahead of time before Nov. 1.
“Connecticut has more than two million registered voters, and we can add to that total in the coming days,” Kohler said in a press release.
To register, aspiring voters can complete the necessary prompts online at myvote.ct.gov/register or visit their local registrar of voters office before 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Voters can also check their registration, party affiliation status, and polling location at myvote.ct.gov/lookup. Residents can also mail in registration forms as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 1.
On Thursday, Sue Larsen, the Democratic registrar of voters in South Windsor who heads the Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut, advised voters to double check their polling locations as they may have been changed as a result of the redistricting process.
Like Kohler, Larsen encouraged residents to register before the Nov. 1 deadline.
“It’s always better to come in ahead of time because then you can go straight to the polls [on Election Day] and just vote right at your polling location,” Larsen said in a phone interview. “If you do [Election Day Registration], you’re coming here to the town hall, you’ve got to fill out your registration card, we’ve got to verify it and then you get to vote but it’s a longer process.”
Larsen said election officials in South Windsor had seen a modest increase in the number of residents coming to the town offices to register or make sure their information was up-to-date.
“I wouldn’t say it’s overwhelming but there are people coming in and registering to vote. Usually the office is pretty quiet during the day. We hardly see anybody and now we’re seeing three or four people coming in to register or change parties or make sure their address is okay,” she said.
Voters around the state have also been requesting absentee ballots ahead of the election. According to statistics provided Friday by the secretary of the state’s office, towns had received absentee ballots from 69,131 Connecticut voters, many of them taking advantage of recent changes to state law which made the mail-in ballots available to anyone unable to get to the polls because they are out of town or fearful of contracting illnesses.
As of Friday, 39,012, or more than half of those ballot ballots, had been returned by Democrats while 16,582 had been returned by unaffiliated voters and 12,805 by Republicans.
