Voter Turnout Currently Outpacing 2021: Greenwich Republican Registrar
GREENWICH, CT — Greenwich residents are heading to the polls today, and so far, the voter turnout is outpacing each hour from 2021.
Additionally, there have been no technology issues reported at the town’s polling places.
“Given the age of our tabulators, there are sometimes equipment failures in which case we move to the backup tabulator and bring an additional spare to the polling place. Everything is currently working fine,” Republican Registrar of Voters Fred DeCaro III told Patch Tuesday afternoon.
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However, voters are seeing long wait times to fill out their ballots due to the unusually lengthy list of candidates running for the Representative Town Meeting.
“Even though we place extra privacy booths, some people are still finding they have to wait for a privacy booth,” DeCaro said.
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The turnout percentage for municipal elections in Greenwich routinely falls between 40 and 45 percent, DeCaro said.
This year’s turnout percentage is currently on pace to outperform the 40.32 percent from 2021, DeCaro said.
As of 1:15 p.m., the Greenwich Registrar of Voters’live voter turnout tracker shows that 11,202 residents have voted Tuesday out of 38,773 eligible voters — good for 28.89 percent.
“Right now, on an hour-by-hour basis, the turnout is greater than each hour in 2021,” DeCaro noted.
As of Monday, there had been 2,200 absentee ballots returned, with a few hundred still outstanding, DeCaro said.
The process to count absentee ballots has slowed since the COVID-19 pandemic began, DeCaro explained.
When ballot drop boxes are checked at 8 p.m., staff has to cross-reference the ballots with the appropriate polling place to make sure voters didn’t vote by absentee and in person.
“So it slows up the process at the polling place and at absentee,” DeCaro said.
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