Connecticut cities and towns will be getting funds to prepare for unprecedented demand for absentee ballots ahead of Election Day. Grants will also be available for safety and hygiene at polling locations and to help with same-day election registrations.
Denise Merrill is Connecticut Secretary of the State. She said the help totals about $15 million dollars.
“Our goal is every vote gets counted. It gets counted in a timely way and it gets counted in a way that we are doing everything we can to protect their vote and make their vote count,” Merrill said.
Merrill said local officials will decide how to spend the grant money. Some funds come from the state and some from federal coronavirus relief.
“We’ll be able to allocate these in a way that makes it easy for every voter to be able to cast a ballot and I think we all have to remember that’s the reason we’re allocating these funds to the towns,” she said.
She also asks the public to be patient, as election results will take local officials longer to count with the anticipated influx of absentee ballots. She said about 70 percent of primary voters cast their ballot by mail this year, compared with about 6 percent in a typical election.