“Just Chaos”: What Went Wrong at the June 17th Town Meeting

The invalidation of two separate votes taken at the June 17^th Town Meeting is a clear sign that something went seriously wrong with the voting process. What happened? Who was responsible?

1^st Selectman Todd Carusillo has correctly asserted that his sole responsibility at a Town Meeting is to call it to order, following which a moderator is nominated and elected to conduct the meeting. There are then various responsibilities connected to conducting the votes on agenda items.

“The registrars [of voters] are literally only there to check off people on the list,” said Nanci Howard, Democratic Registrar of Voters, in a phone interview with The Goshen News. Then “you have the counters and they count the votes,” she explained, “and they’re supposed to verify that vote.”

Ironically, Howard was not even scheduled to be working the Town Meeting that night, as she was on vacation and heading out of town. But when she passed Town Hall and saw all the cars she decided to stop and help out. In retrospect, considering how things played out that night, “I literally should have kept on driving by,” she said.

Howard described the June 17^th Town Meeting as chaotic. In contrast with elections, for which registrars are responsible for everything from beginning to end, their role at a Town Meeting is much more limited. In an election, she noted, “people get to vote from 6 AM to 8 PM, you don’t have over 300 people coming at ya’…”. “There were people in front, behind, they were everywhere.”

“Dawn [Wilkes, Republican Registrar of Voters] had never been involved, and I had never been involved in anything as large as that,” Howard continued. “It was chaos.”

 Wilkes responding to the Goshen News stated, “ I trust the Town would endeavor to do better at future events given the mistakes and unfortunate outcome of June 17th.”  

Regarding the reasons for invalidating the Board of Education vote, the vote reportedly cast by an unregistered voter, who turned out to just be inactive, was not the sole problem, according to Howard, who announced the disqualification of the vote after the votes had been counted and announced.

“Everybody thinks it was just one vote,” Howard explained, “the one voter, he was on the inactive list, he should have been given a card and reactivated but nobody brought cards…but people were also turned away because they didn’t have identification.” Howard continued, “Somebody said: ‘Well what about all the people who were turned away?’ and I turned my head and said ‘What do you mean people were turned away? You can’t turn anybody away’!”

Reportedly, the response was “But they didn’t have ID.”

Howard told us she then said: “You can’t turn somebody away for lack of ID. They can sign a form but you can’t turn them away if they don’t have ID… You can’t ever turn anybody away in an election in Connecticut. It’s a statute, you can’t do it.”

Regarding the inactive voter issue, Howard explained that he had the same last name as an active voter, and the discrepancy wasn’t noticed until the active voter of the same name later came up to vote. Howard told us she instructed the counters to add the discrepancy to a list and that they would keep track of it. “I literally said ‘It never comes down to one vote, it’ll be OK.”  The final count was 161 to 160.

Regarding the vote on the 190 Sharon Turnpike petition, “people were ripping up their own paper and casting ballots. You can’t rip up your own paper and cast ballots… There was no control of those ballots.”

The town will be conducting re-dos of these votes.  The re-vote for the Board of Education is being held up due to complaints from Goshenites to the SEEC.  The Goshen News could find no active complaints on the iCrisis website of the SEEC, that lists all active complaints. 

 According to the Freedom of Information Commission Sec. 1-225, a special meeting’s notice shall specify the time and place of the special meeting and the business to be transacted.  No other business shall be considered at such meetings by such public agency. 

 The Secretary of State has advised when there is a doubt, the Town Charter should be consulted.  However, Goshen does not have a Town Charter.