By Jack Krampitz

In the approach to the Nov. 3 election, the Bristol City Clerk’s office has been processing over five times the amount of absentee ballots that the office usually processes, a record total for the city.

According to City Clerk Therese Pac, as of the morning of Thursday, Oct. 29, her office had mailed out 10,410 absentee ballots that were requested and gotten back 8,733. That is an 84 percent return rate with five days still to go until election day.

The executive order issued by Gov. Ned Lamont made it possible for anyone to request an absentee ballot. The voter only had to check the box labeled Covid 19 as the reason for the request. Because of concern about crowded conditions at the polls during the pandemic, the result has been the overwhelming absentee ballot count.

Pac is unsure what the total of registered voters in Bristol is at this time, because the Registrar of Voters office has been enrolling new voters by the dozens each day. But she estimates the final total will be around 37,000 to 38,000.

In a presidential election year, they expect 75 to 80 percent turnout on Tuesday, including absentees and election day voters. That would mean a total of approximately 28,000 people are expected to vote this year. And of that total, well over one third will be absentees.

“My staff has been fielding thousands of phone calls and thousands of emails. We are just trying to keep our head above water, because we do so many things,” Pac stated.

“In terms of what is going on with the ballots, the staff is doing a phenomenal job. We hired some people, and between all of them, they are doing a really stellar job of getting everything out quickly and getting it to where it needs to go. I think the 84 percent return rate reflects that.”

Bristol has opted to not open the envelopes four days prior to the election, Pac said, keeping the city in line with many other large cities in the state.

There is not a big benefit to opening the ballots early, she said, because they cannot be counted until election day. So the 10,000 or so absentee ballots will be counted on election day by the Registrar’s office at a central location, this year in the Bristol Police Department building.

At the present time, all the ballots are being checked with the voting rolls, and the rolls are marked so no person can vote twice. This has been a cooperative effort between the city clerk’s office and the registrar’s office.

“We only are accepting ballots until 8 p.m. on election day. The ballots have to be in our boxes outside city hall, or in our office by the 8:00 deadline in order to be counted,” Pac stated.

“If a ballot is postmarked before election day, but does not reach the office by 8 p.m., it will not be counted. That is the law in Connecticut.”

Pac stressed that people who still have not sent in their ballot should bring it to the ballot boxes outside city hall to ensure that their vote counts: Do not bring an absentee ballot into City Hall; place the ballot in the marked boxes outside the building. The boxes will be locked at 8 p.m. on election night, and no ballots will be processed after that.

Then it is all over but the counting.