Sure Rep. Don Clemons, D-Bridgeport, has introduced legislation that would require local election officials to have enough ballots for every registered voter. The idea certainly seemed logical, if not practical, in the wake of the ballot scandal in which Bridgeport registrars had thousands fewer ballots on hand than they needed on Election Day, setting off the associated scandal of court orders for longer polling hours; photocopied ballots that couldn’t be read in the optical-scan machines; and the days-long (if not weeks’ long, since a recount sponsored by the Connecticut Post showed massive errors in tabulation) delay in getting a vote total.
Now that the smoke has cleared, Sen. Gayle Slossberg, D-Milford, co-chairwoman of the Government Administration and Elections Committee, told the Blogster this morning that there are several proposals that the panel will take its time reviewing with a look far ahead to its April 4 deadline. “Obviously this is an issue that needs to be resolved,” she said of the Bridgeport meltdown. “We’re trying to draft a reasonable solution to this problem. To require every town to have 100 percent of the ballots is absurd. We’re looking for a reasonable solution, making sure each community has the right amount of ballots.”