Ariela Lopez, Contributing Photographer

Over 1,700 New Haveners have already voted in the presidential election, casting their ballots through early voting on the second floor of City Hall.

Cities and towns in Connecticut are offering 14 days of early voting ahead of Tuesday, Nov. 5 — the day that Americans will elect their next president. Early voting in New Haven began on Monday. New Haven residents can also register to vote each day of early voting, as well as on Election Day, in an adjacent room through Connecticut’s same-day registration program. 

On Monday, the first day of early voting, 350 New Haveners cast their ballots, with 29 people participating in same-day registration, according to poll moderator Dominic Tammaro. Early voting turnout increased to 429 individuals on Tuesday, with another 29 people registering through same-day registration. On Wednesday, 436 voted early, and 24 registered, followed by 447 early votes and 25 registered on Thursday, according to Kevin Arnold, the poll moderator for those days.

“I don’t think people understood how many people would come,” Sally Esposito, a former member of the city’s Disability Commission for many years, said.

Esposito did not plan to vote early, but arrived at City Hall on Tuesday morning to check the accessibility of the polling location for her neighbor who hoped to vote early. She explained that her neighbor has mobility difficulties and walks with the help of a cane.

Although early voting for the presidential primary in April was held in the municipal office building on 200 Orange St., which houses the Registrar of Voters’ office, polls are currently running out of City Hall. Tammaro said that the location was chosen because it was “easier” for information technology staff to set up.

The first thing Esposito noticed was that there were “not very many” parking spaces reserved for voters on Church Street, and that the signs designating the spots had not changed since Monday. The city had additionally set aside parking spots for voters on Orange Street, according to Tammaro. Esposito noted that parking information is not on the city’s elections webpage.

Esposito then walked around the block with Gretchen Knauff, the city’s disability services director. Outside 200 Orange St., which is connected to City Hall through an indoor passageway, she saw an elderly woman with mobility difficulties who had come with her grandson, trying to figure out how she could get to the voting room.

Both City Hall and 200 Orange St. have staircases leading to their main entrances. City Hall has a sloped walkway leading to the main doors, but the doors are very heavy, which presents another challenge to accessibility. 200 Orange St. offers an accessible entrance on its lower level, but the voting rooms, being on the second floor of City Hall, would require navigating elevators to reach.

“She was almost in tears when she realized how hard it was going to be to vote,” Esposito said.

Esposito helped the woman to vote, then brought her concerns to city officials, including the registrar and traffic and parking workers. On Thursday, she told the News, she felt that the situation had greatly improved, and that her concerns from two days prior were taken into account.

Esposito did point out that the city could make voting easier by consolidating all voting operations into one location — while early voting and same-day registration are in City Hall, picking up absentee ballots is still based at 200 Orange St.

Kevin Arnold, a head moderator, explained on Thursday that the designated parking spots for voters — about 20 in total — are all on Church Street. He said that earlier in the week, spots on Orange Street were mistakenly reserved in preparation for Election Day, where some voters are assigned to the building as a regular polling location.

New Haven’s early voting trends

In the 2020 presidential election, which was held in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, 42,257 individuals — 66.3 percent of New Haven’s registered voters — voted in person or sent in absentee ballots.

The current general election marks New Haven’s third implementation of early voting, after rolling out the program for the April presidential primary and August local primary elections. Early voting ran for five days in April and seven days in August, making the ongoing stretch of 14 days of early voting the longest yet.

In New Haven’s only competitive Democratic primary in August, a race between Hamden Town Councilor Abdul Osmanu and former New Haven Alder Steve Winter for state representative, 54 out of 661 Democratic voters in New Haven voted early — around 8.2 percent.

During the presidential primaries in April, where Connecticut Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly voted for President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to be the parties’ nominees, only 246 people voted early in New Haven — 239 Democrats and seven Republicans. 

In total, only 6.5 percent of all New Haven’s primary voters voted early.

Prospective voters can vote early from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Sunday, Nov. 3. On Oct. 29 and Oct. 31, they can vote from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Correction, Oct. 25: The article has been updated to accurately reflect the voting times on Oct. 29 and Oct. 31.