Keystone Kops At The Polls

To the Editor:

This morning at the Newtown polls (at the middle school) was a nightmare of confusion and incompetence reminiscent of the Keystone Kops: at 6 am, I was shuttled from one table to another (the moderator), where I was informed that I had to use a “special” ballot because, living in what The Newtown Bee calls the “small” Dodgingtown area of Newtown, I had been redistricted, but according to the town website checked the week prior, was voting in the same place I’ve always voted in. So they gave me said special ballot and told me to go back to yet another table, where the nice lady officials looked at me blankly with absolutely no understanding as to why I was there. I was sent back to the moderator, who sent me back to the nice officials (again).

Once given the clearance to vote, I realized that there was no opportunity to vote for a State Senator in my new district beyond John McKinney. When I asked why not – the back-biting run-up to the election had succeeded in both exhausting and rendering me complacent to my own local politics – I was given a long song-and-dance about how no one working at the voting site “knew the specifics.”  It’s one thing for a voter to become so exhausted and bombarded with robo-calls that they just look the other way until election day, and that’s admittedly my fault. But to have election officials as apparently clueless as they were is inexcusable.  (A simple “Senator McKinney ran unopposed in your district” would have sufficed.)

Finally, to have two different ballots being used in the same voting place is,  I’d think, a highly questionable practice. The voting process in Newtown was disorganized, confusing, and at best, incompetent. For my part, I’ll pay far closer attention to local politics then I have in the past; everyone needs to, regardless of political affiliation. But likewise, Newtown election officials can, and must, do far better in the future in the interests of transparency and clarity.

Elissa Altman

Webster Place, Newtown                                          November 6, 2012