A Plainfield polling place shakeup will save thousands of dollars. Where do you vote now?
PLAINFIELD - After four years of discussion – and some last-minute confusion – the town is preparing to conduct its first election vote with two fewer polling places.
Starting with the Aug. 9 primaries and moving forward, residents – including those living in Central Village and Wauregan – will either cast ballots at town hall or the Moosup Fire Station. The consolidating of four polling places to two is expected to save the town several thousands of dollars each election cycle and partly address a dearth of poll workers.
“We spend between $6,000 to $7,000 for each election,” First Selectman Kevin Cunningham said. “I expect this change will cut that figure in half.”
The move was codified into the town charter in 2018 after residents approved an amendment shifting the power to designate polling places from the town’s governing document – which specifically mentions four polling places - to state statutes, which does not set a minimum or maximum number of sites.
The new rules mean the town’s registrars of voters can decide whether to tweak the number of polling places as long as they both agree to the change and forward a letter of their intentions to the town clerk at least 31 days before an election.
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Such a letter was received in May, Town Clerk Dianne Talbot said. The letter, signed by registrars Sonia Chapman and Irene Bessette, shifted voting for District 2 residents from the Central Village Fire Station to town hall where District 1 and 5 residents already vote. The letter also designated the District 3 Moosup Fire Station polling place as the new voting site for Wauregan voters in District 4.
Chapman, the Republican registrar, said she and her Democratic counterpart, Bessette, had been discussing such a move for years. She said a state House of Representatives redistricting plan passed this year that amended the local voting lines for the 44th, 45th and 47th House territories only made the polling place changes more crucial.
“This is going to save us in expenses, since even though the Wauregan and Central Village polling places didn’t get a lot of traffic, we still had to staff them every election,” Chapman said. “And it’s become harder and harder to find people to work those polls.”
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Bessette said the consolidation plan has been approved by the Connecticut Secretary of the State's office and, barring any further directives from registrars, the two-site plan will remain in effect for all future elections.
Despite the 2018 charter change, the current Charter Revision Commission this month began discussing a new amendment question that would have essentially asked voters to re-approve the consolidation question.
The question was pulled from consideration this week for language issues and Cunningham said soon after it was an “oversight” that led to its unneeded introduction in the first place. He said he mistakenly thought only the August primary election would feature the two-site configuration and November voting would be conducted at all four polling places.
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“The 2018 charter change already settled that,” he said. “I don’t expect this to be a problem for (Wauregan and Central Village) voters. At the most, having only the two sites means someone will have to drive three miles round-trip to vote.”
Scaling back or adding polling places isn’t an unusual phenomenon. After Killingly registrars approved shuttering all but one of the town’s four polling places in 2015, a second location was opened less than a year later on Westfield Avenue.
Like in Plainfield, the site changes in Killingly were partially pitched as a cost-saving move.
John Penney can be reached at jpenney@norwichbulletin.com or at (860) 857-6965.
This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Plainfield polling site change expected to result in cost savings
