The Registrar of Voters is encouraging Newtown residents to stay informed and exercise their right to vote ahead of election season later this November.

This year, Newtown residents will vote to seat public officials for First Selectman and local offices such as the Legislative Council, Board of Finance, Board of Education, and more.

Early voting opens Monday, October 20 and continues daily until Sunday, November 2. Hours will be 10 am to 6 pm every day except Tuesday, October 28 and Thursday, October 30, which have extended hours of 8 am to 8 pm.

All early voting is done at the Office of the Registrar in Newtown Municipal Center, 3 Primrose Street.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 4. All Connecticut polling locations will be open 6 am to 8 pm.

People can check if they are registered to vote at portaldir.ct.gov/sots/LookUp.aspx. Anyone not registered to vote can do so at voterregistration.ct.gov/OLVR/welcome.do.

Being A Registrar

In addition to encouraging people to vote, Republican Registrar Erica Canfield and Democratic Registrar LeReine Frampton spoke to The Newtown Bee about working in the Office of the Registrar.

Both have had years of experience in their positions. Canfield started as an assistant/deputy in 2017 and became a registrar in 2019, while Frampton started as an assistant and deputy in 1996 and became a registrar in 2001.

Working for the Registrar of Voters, Frampton said, is not just “a few hours a year job, it’s a commitment.”

“We believe in fair, honest elections,” Canfield added. “The community elected us for a reason. We take our job very seriously because we work for the people.”

Canfield said she, Frampton, and the rest of their team put in a lot of effort every year when it comes to research and making sure everything is as accurate as possible.

During early voting last year, Canfield and Frampton stayed after for about two hours every evening, cross-checking every single envelope to the list of names that came and voted to make sure each one was there.

Canfield said they tightly sealed the envelopes and locked them up, and did not open them until elections.

“There’s so much double-checking and cross-checking here between [Frampton] and I,” Canfield said. “It’s very easy to be on the outside looking in to make assumptions, but our poll workers especially see how we work and make sure everything is perfect.”

One of their many tasks is canvassing voters every year between January and May. Canfield said the process has them go through and send letters to people “if we feel there’s a possibility they don’t live where they’re registered anymore.”

“So say that you moved and you didn’t change your address. We get notified about that,” Canfield continued. “We’re going to reach out to you and ask if you moved, and you have to respond to us so we know.”

If people do not answer the canvass, they get put on the inactive voter list and will have to re-register. These inactive voters can re-register at the polls, but have to fill out a form to do so.

Canfield and Frampton comb through their alphabetical list of residents and look at every household for the canvassing process. While some other towns work on their list around canvassing time, Frampton said they work on their list all year to make sure it is up to date.

Frampton said she has seen a lot of change in the years she has been a registrar. When she started, Connecticut did not have a statewide voting system. Instead, everything was done in town.

Connecticut now uses the Connecticut Voter Registration System (CVRS), which connects towns across the state.

“This way, if you moved from another town, we could take you from that town so you weren’t registered in more than one place,” Frampton explained.

Connecticut is also a member of Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonprofit tool which helps election officials maintain more accurate voter rolls and detect possible illegal voting, according to its website.

ERIC uses securely submitted voter registration, motor vehicle department data, address data from the United States Postal Service, and official death data from the Social Security Administration.

It provides its 22 member states with reports identifying inaccurate or out-of-date voter registration records, deceased voters, individuals who appear to be eligible to vote but are not yet registered, and possible cases of illegal voting.

Processes such as these, Frampton said, help them make locals elections as fair as possible.

The Power Of Local Voting

Canfield said people ideally register to vote when they move into town. That information comes straight to the Office of the Registrar, whether someone registers online, mails in a form, or does it through the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

For the two days the office is open, Tuesdays and Thursdays, Canfield and Frampton register people for the first several hours in the morning. They also spend their mornings taking voters off the list when they move out of town.

Canfield and Frampton said they are eager to help everyone, regardless of who walks through their doors.

“People think because there’s an R or D next to one of our names that that’s specifically what they do, but if a democrat reached out to the republican registrar, she would help that person as much as she would help the republicans,” Canfield explained.

Frampton said they care more that people are registered to vote than how they vote. She emphasized that people need to do more than share their opinions on social media.

“We don’t care how anyone votes, we just want people to vote,” Frampton added. “Facebook votes don’t count.”

Canfield encourages people vote in the annual November elections as well as the town referendums each spring. She said many people’s voting history shows even numbers like 2016 and 2018 for the governor and presidential elections, and fewer entries for local election years.

“The town historically has relatively high turnout for presidential elections, but that is so high up and doesn’t directly affect us as much as the local government does,” Canfield explained.

Frampton stressed local elections are important because these are people that decide on local taxes, local ordinances, and everything else that guides Newtown.

“The most important thing is that voting is a right we all have as American citizens, and I think it’s something people should do more of because of that,” Canfield said.

The Registrar of Voters office is located at Newtown Municipal Center, 3 Primrose Street, and is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays 8 am-1 pm. For more information, visit newtown-ct.gov/registrar-voters, email registrar.of.voters@newtown-ct.gov, call 203-270-4250, or follow its Facebook page @Newtown, CT Registrar of Voters.

Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.