Preparing to Vote

Well, it looks like the City of Waterbury has finally dug itself out of last weekends freak October snowstorm, and things are slowly returning to normal. Any sense of normalcy will be short-lived however as the three mayoral campaigns gear up for the election on Tuesday, November 8.

In preparation for Tuesday's election, I have prepared a short, non-partisan, primer for those of you that may still have some questions. Some of the questions that focus on how the government of Waterbury operates were covered last month in a post by Raechel Guest. Here in my post I will cover some of the more technical aspects of voting in this years election.

First off, some people may be confused as where they are supposed to go to vote. As is also mentioned on Raechel's page, there are two possible ways to determine this information. You can either go to the Registrar of Voters web page, and see the list of every polling place in the city of Waterbury, or you can go to a web page provided by the Office of the Secretary of State and find your specific voting location. Please remember, though, that the entrance to your polling place may not match the street address of the building. (This is especially true if you vote at Tinker School.)

Secondly, I have often heard some misconceptions about how to use the new ballots. In past elections people have mistakenly believed that you could only vote for one person per column on the ballot. While this is true for the offices of Mayor, Town Clerk, City Clerk, and City Sheriff, this is NOT true for the Board of Aldermen or Board of Education.

As an example, I have two friends that are running for the Board of Aldermen this year. One (Jerry Padula) is a Republican, the other (Ron Napoli Jr.) is a Democrat. This year, both gentlemen wound up in column 12 on the Waterbury ballot. Fortunately, I do not have to choose which of my friends I am going to vote for, I can (and will) vote for both of them.

The only way a ballot will be rejected is if you vote for more then 9 Aldermanic Candidates or more then 3 Board of Education candidates. If you are someone who votes along a party line, then you have nothing to worry about. However, if you are like me and split your ticket, then you just need to make sure that you don't go over the limit.

For those who are interested, the Secretary of State has posted a PDF of the Waterbury ballot online.

Finally, whoever you support in this years election, I encourage everyone to get out and vote. As I mentioned after the 2009 election, the City of Waterbury has shown an alarming drop in voter turnout over the past 10 years. This is a trend that needs to be reversed and soon.

If you still have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I will do my best to answer it.