In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Fred DeCaro III, one of the two elected Registrars of Voters in Greenwich, Connecticut.
They spoke about the unique nature of Connecticut’s election administration, some of the challenges of being a part-time local election administrator, and about what all election administrators could do to rebuild citizen’s trust in the electoral system.
High Turnout, Wide Margins Credits:
Managing Editor: Rebecca Smith
Managing Producer: Aaron Hay
Transcription of the episode is as follows:
Fred DeCaro III: The more we go, and we recognize that, you know, there's a lot of experts in the field, but there's a lot of common processes, and the differences are really on the fringes, we should be able to express confidence in our system as a nation and just not as a municipality or as a state.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Introduction]
Eric Fey: All right. Welcome, everybody to another exciting episode of High Turnout Wide Margins. I'm Eric Fey, Director of Elections in St. Louis County, Missouri. With me is my co-host –
Brianna Lennon: Brianna Lennon, County Clerk from Boone County, Missouri.
Eric Fey: And today, our guest is, and please go ahead and introduce yourself –
Fred DeCaro III: So, I'm Fred DeCaro. I'm the Registrar of Voters, one of two, in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Eric Fey: And this is exciting because this is our first Connecticut guest on the show, and, as you know, the way we like to start off our episodes are asking the guests how they got into election. So, Fred, share with us what your backstory is.
Fred DeCaro III: Yeah, so it's interesting. So, first of all, so in Connecticut, administrators are elected, and they are partisan, but we have a bipartisan system – where each party basically nominates a registrar, and we work together as co-equals and co-department heads. Something else that's unique in Connecticut, almost every election official election administrator is part-time. So, this is not my day job. It may be my passion, but it's not my day job.
But my starting story started off actually in the year 2000, and I was not super politically involved or involved in elections, and I was asked by a local friend of mine who was running for office in a primary turns out, if I would go and I would work as a ballot counter in the absentee ballot processing. And, of course, back then, these weren't even, you know, sort of scannable, you basically had a group of people who would, you know, one person would read the ballot, the other person would mark a tally sheet, and then you'd reverse it, and hopefully, you all matched. So, I was sitting there, this is my first election, I've sort of always been sort of a goody goody about this kind of stuff, and I had a great partner, but there were these two dudes behind me, and they had a really big pile of ballots, and so, they had finished counting the ballots on one sheet, and I heard the one guy turn to the other one and say, “We really have to count this a second time?” And the second guy says, “No, no, just copy off my sheet.” So I, you know, it bothered me so much. So, you know, I go up to the moderator. I say “Look, I’m not here to make trouble or whatever, but, you know, they're not really doing stuff right,” and so, this little brouhaha, you know, started amongst some of the administrators, and finally, the head person in the ballot counting process came over, and he sort of kneels down next to my table, and he says, “You know, you're not making any friends in this room,” and I said, “I didn't think I was here to make friends, I thought I was here to ensure an accurate count,” and that kind of just, you know, sort of made me like, really think about the whole process, think about the rejection of ballots. I was concerned about the, you know, I didn't think we've gotten enough training, and at one point, I rejected some ballots, and at lunchtime, I'm reading through the manual for the first time, and I'm like, “Boy, people are fighting and dying out there, and we rejected a ballot, and I'm really not sure we should have,” right? You know, and it just made me sort of think more about the process and, over a period of time, grow to understand it until I challenged for the position – the person currently in office at that time, and, you know, here I am now serving in my 15th year.
Eric Fey: This concept of co-equal elected election officials is interesting to me. So, I mean, I know there are several places – and I'm one of them, where I'm the Democrat, I have a Republican counterpart, and, you know, we administer the elections together – but we're not elected. So, I'm very interested in your thoughts on how that works in your case and throughout Connecticut?
Fred DeCaro III: Well, I love it and I've had three – so, I'm the Republican registrar. I've had three different Democratic counterparts in my time, you know, we've all gotten along pretty well, because, you know, once we walk through the door, we really don't, you know – certainly we talk on the phone about it sometimes – but we don't in the office sort of talk about politics. And because we're also a closed primary state, right? It also helps sometimes because, you know, if there's a Republican primary and someone comes in, right? And they're, you know, concerned, you know, “Why am I not on the list?” or whatever the case is, it's nice for them to be able to talk to somebody in their own party – right or wrong – whether or not they should be there, at least they get that sort of comfort level.
I think it also creates a comfort level in the public because since we have announced our parties, and I'm the only person in my town hall that literally has my party name in my title on the door next to it right? As does my Democratic counterpart. Since people know that we have, you know, come from differing philosophies, but we are coming together, I think it does two things. First of all, I think gives people comfort in the way elections are administered, right? Because they do know that there's two sets of eyes looking at things. But I think that the other thing that it does is I think it serves as an example, that you can, in fact, cooperate with someone from the other party, which is not done as often as one would expect anymore, and so, we'd like to set ourselves up as an example. Now, that's not to say that there aren't communities where the folks have not gotten along, including an alleged choking incident where the police were brought in, but that didn't happen in my town. So, you know, there are certain cases, you know, where they, you know, they don't get along, but some of that has to do more with just personality than it does political philosophy.
But, you know, we actually ran into a situation back in – I think it was 2014, we had a new Secretary of State who came in, and she had come from the state legislature, and one of her first orders of business was getting rid of the Registrars of Voters, and she wanted them to be appointed by the chief, sort of chief elected office or your CEO – whether a mayor or we have what are called First Selectman in many communities, you know, appointing the election administrator, and, you know, we thought that was a terrible idea, you know, in a blue community, they were always going to be appointed by the blue, you know, and in a red community, they're going to be red, and if they were purple, they're going to be changed every two years. It didn't seem to make a lot of sense. So, one of the great things is because we are nominated by our parties, we do know a lot of the folks in the state legislature, and we were able to organize a pretty massive response to this and beat this back, and really, you know, educate not just the legislature, but the public related to the way in which we work, and the bipartisan nature of it and all of the safeguards associated with it. So, I've only seen, personally, I've only seen positives from it.
Brianna Lennon: I want to go back briefly just to talk about structure in Connecticut because we've had conversations before with a clerk from Massachusetts to talk about the unique situation they have there. I think a lot of the New England area has a different way of running elections that is a lot more localized. So, Connecticut runs it at the town level, not at the county level. How does all of that work together within the municipal government?
Fred DeCaro III: Well, we think it works well – in the current structure. At the moment, Connecticut elections are still polling place based. We have a limited use of absentee ballots; it requires an excuse, and we do not have early voting. So, having standard polling places, and people primarily coming on election day, works pretty well.
Now, in 2024, we'll be implementing early voting, and so, for part-time election administrators, there is a concern related to that because now suddenly you have 14 days of elections in addition to election day, and then it is likely, based upon actions in the legislature and an upcoming referendum, that we will have no excuse absentee balloting. So, that will you know, adjust the processing and items related to that, as well. But to sort of fill in some of the gaps there. First of all, there is a town clerk in every town. They do lots of other things besides elections, you know, from dog licenses to recording real estate transactions, to, you know, births and deaths and all that kind of good stuff. But, you know, they do play a key role, and I believe that part of it is just because historically, they have been, you know, in many of the smaller towns, they just have longer hours. So because of their accessibility, they have been in charge of absentee ballots, which means that they have access to the same systems we do, they issue the ballots, they collect the ballots back, and then they turn them over to us for processing. And, of course, during COVID, that was, you know, an enormous task for them and for us because we still had to count them all on the same day, we didn't really have very many adjustments to our processes.
But despite the bifurcated nature of the system, I do think it works well. So, the legislature did, this year, call for a task force to study the regionalization of some of these processes. Now, we don't have county government in Connecticut, it was abolished in 1960. So, you know, it's not going to go to a county clerk or something like that, but we do have sort of, you know, there's this sort of secondary level there – it's not it's not official government, but they're called “Councils of Governments” and they’re regional associations of towns. So, some of the discussion is, “Well, what could they do involved in that?” So, they're 17 members of the task force. I was just told I'm going to be the sort of election representative to it from the Registrar of Voters Association, and then there's folks from all other sorts of walks of life, and it has to have a report, you know, issued by January [2024]. So, I'm certainly going in with an open mind, and I'm going in with the benefit of seeing what good folks like yourself are doing in other states, but, you know, at this point, you know, Connecticut's nickname is the “Land of Steady Habits,” and I don't know that we're going to see a significant, quick movement towards moving it out of localities. People have a lot of comfort – like any place – where they understand, you know, who it is that's running their elections. But you know, for those, you know, who come from other places and have vote centers and, you know, go to any place to vote, etc. I think if people are kind of introduced to some of those things, they may be like, “Hey, you know, there's a lot of convenience associated with this also.”
[High Turnout Wide Margins Mid-break]
Brianna Lennon: I think that might be a good segue into talking about some of your own development as an elections administrator and what you've done to bring some of those best practices to Connecticut, and I'm curious, too, how it ends up being received by your colleagues? You've got over 100 other electric administrators?
Fred DeCaro III: So, there's 169 towns, and since there's two of us in every town, at least two, that means there's 328 of us, and we're pretty much everybody's a dues paying member of our association. So, I mentioned that there's a minimum of two because we are, in fact, on the ballot and elected, it is possible if a third-party sort of ran a candidate and they outpolled either the Republican or Democrat, they would be awarded a Registrar. So, we've had situations where – either because somebody forgot to file papers or because of a strong party, for instance, in Hartford for about six years, they had a strong candidate from the Working Families Party, and she consistently outpolled The Republican, so they have three Registrar's of Voters. So, you know, there's opportunity. So, I guess you can have up to four. I’ve never seen more than three and it's usually just the two of us.
But related to the association, you know, we do have two conferences a year, and we've always done a good job sort of teaching among ourselves, but I do think that – between myself and we also have a great registrar in the town of Waterbury who represents us at the EAC – and so, you know, we've been able to sort of, you know, meet people on a more national basis and bring those in.
So, telling you a little bit more about sort of my background on it, you know, my first few years was focused – like anyone – on studying the position process improvements, etc., and sometimes, you know, you would do things and you would kind of, you know, bring them into the office and you know, you think you're doing something novel, and then you go and you realize, “They’ve already thought of this and 10 other states, right?” And so, then you say to yourself, “Okay, well, what other good ideas are out there,” and, you know, you start going and to, you know, like anybody – sign up for the free webinars, right? You go and understand. And, you know, I come from a town that does invest in elections and in its folks, and I was able to take the certificate of administration and elections program at the University of Minnesota, and that really opened up my eyes because there were a lot of great folks from around the country. There were both, you know, younger students getting into the field, but there were a lot of us that were seasoned that were in the field, and so, that was my first experience with really, you know, sort of exchanging ideas on a national level. Then I also ended up getting a little more involved in attending conferences and things from Election Center. Also a great organization. And then most recently, the Alliance for Election Excellence. So, with each of those, of course, you have stuff that, you know, you learn, and it could be as simple as recognition of poll workers and what people do, or it could be, you know, better ideas related to chain of custody.
And so, I've always tried to, you know, bring that back into our association either through – because we do peer to peer teaching – either through teaching a course at the Association or trying to bring in a speaker.
But I think the story that is closest to my heart is something that happened this last May. So, I was at a conference here locally in Connecticut, and someone said, you know, “The registrar from Bloomfield, Connecticut wants to meet you,” and I didn't know the person. Bloomfield – it’s on the other side of the state. Not a big state again, but, you know, still there's 300 of us. So, I'm like, “What? I have no idea what this person wants,” right? So, I go over there, she comes up and she has this this flyer, and she's like, um, “I am basically copying and modeling a program after something you're doing in town.” We created something called the Election Academy, and it is, you know, a program to – we invite citizens to come in and it's a lot, you know, we have over 30 hours of classes and in-person experience going over everything from how we, you know, test our equipment to how we register voters to going through some of the training classes, etc. And she had taken my flyer and she had mocked it up and done her own version of it, and, at that moment in time, you know, I took a picture of it and I sent it back to the staff who weren’t with me at the conference, and I'm like, “Sometimes you get a lot of guff for, you know, for leaving town and going to these things or, you know, who is it you're associating with, etcetera,” but when I saw that and I saw how bringing back those ideas was also locally motivating and inspiring someone else to do something and, you know, reach out to their community to help make sure people understand the security and integrity of elections. It really inspired me.
But sort of the punchline to that is – I didn't invent that program. I stole it from two other counties in, you know, some other places that I saw it in North Carolina, right? So, thanks to Brunswick and thanks to Forsyth County and thanks to Contra Costa County in California because I stole their stuff and put it together, right? So, you know – but, to me, it was so inspiring to be able to carry that back and to see other people doing it. And I look forward after we've gone through a full year of the Election Academy –we just launched it and had our first classes in April – to go to our spring conference next year and do a full course on it and show everyone the full curriculum that we've created and all the handouts and stuff because you know, we're building as we go right now. But to have a replicable program that helps people understand elections and strengthen, you know, their perception of the integrity of it, you know, I’m excited to be part of that, and I couldn't have done it without seeing what's being done in other places.
Eric Fey: So, this Election Academy you've done – what tips and tricks would you have for other folks out there in the election world that might want to start doing something like that?
Fred DeCaro III: Well, I mean, I think the first thing is, you know, once you've outlined like five or six sort of topics or things that could be in sessions, just get started, right? Like, we set up a bunch of dates, we hadn't created the curriculum yet, but you know, we had enough experience to know what it was we, you know, wanted to talk about, and then – we have 20 folks – we sent them all basically an empty notebook with 20 tabs and the information for the first class, and then after, you know, prior to each additional class, we send them more tabs worth of stuff and update the thing. So, we're creating it as we go, right? But that's been great because it also helps us understand a little bit related to, you know, what it is the public wants to see. When we first put the application online that was an important part of it – What is it you're interested in? What is it you want to hear about? What are your concerns related to elections? And we wanted to make sure we address those things in the academy.
The other thing I would say is – we got a group of people in who were, as I mentioned, you know, we had people who were just genuinely interested in process, and then we had people who were highly partisan. They're all very polite in class, okay? When you have this nice mixture of group, folks together, and they see how open you are and how excited you are to share this information, you don't get what I might call the “nastiness” that might be associated with, you know, Facebook warriors and that kind of stuff. So, put your foot in the water. Try it. It's not as, you know – no matter what kind of apprehension you may have, it's not as bad as you think, and, you know, again, I'm not 100% sure that heart and mind is going to be changed, but what I am sure is that I'm giving them the only information so that for somebody who might previously have been spouting misinformation, now, you can say, “Well, wait, we told you the truth related to that,” right? And now it's a lot harder for that person to sort of, you know, say the stuff when they've been confronted with actual facts associated with the way something works.
Brianna Lennon: I know, we wanted to touch on kind of how that best practice mentality and bringing those very transparent and honest conversations about how things work, what things can be done better, what things do actually need improvement. I'm very interested – since you don't have very much absentee voting. We also don't have very much absentee voting at the moment – but when you hear people talking about what's happening in other states, one of the things that I hear locally is, “Well, I know how things happen here, but I don't know how they happen over there.” That's something that I think you've been pushing back on – is saying things like,” Well, who knows how they do it in that state over there, but I can tell you, I'm confident about the integrity of our elections” because it doesn't help the whole profession to say things like that.
[Laughter]
Fred DeCaro III: No, no, it doesn't, and it reminds me of kind of like a Country Mouse, City Mouse kind of thing. Like, “I don't know how they do in the big city” or the big city person saying, “I don't know how those yokels do it, etc.,” But, you know, I want to credit two people with sort of changing my mind about that. The first is my counterpart because she heard me say over and over again, “Look, I'm happy” – you know, because we'll jointly speak to groups – and I'll say, you know, it was saying just that, you know, like, “Well, I can speak to Connecticut, but I can't speak to other communities,” and she said, “you know, Fred, I understand that that's accurate, but it leaves this element of doubt in people's minds about what's going on over there,” and so, she said that to me a few times. And then I heard Ben Hovland – he came to one of our state association conferences – and he said almost the exact same thing. He said, “Look, I travel around the country, and I hear this from election administrators. It's the same thing, “I know how we do it here, but I don't know how they do it over and those other parts,” right? And I just said, like, we are not going to improve people's perceptions of elections, when people are able to make easy statements, without any grounding, and tear things down, and we're not able to come back with anything besides, “I know how we do it here,” okay?
And so, I said to myself, “Okay, I have this opportunity. I've met these folks from these different places,” and, you know, like anybody, I go on vacation, or I go to a conference or whatever and I stopped by and see an election office. I was in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, last week on vacation, and I called up Sarah Lavelle, and I said, “Hey, I'm an hour and a half away from Brunswick County, North Carolina, can I come visit you?” And we spent two hours talking shop and taking tours and I took pictures, etc. It helps me understand her process, so I can say, :Hey, you know what? They understand chain of custody down in North Carolina just as well as we do up here in Connecticut,” right? And “Look, they use the same equipment,” right? And “Hey, we lock our stuff in a blue box, and they lock it in a silver cage, but, you know, we both have great security associated with it,” right? And, you know, the more we go and we recognize that, you know, there's a lot of experts in the field, but there's a lot of common processes, and the differences are really on the fringes, we should be able to express confidence in our system as a nation, and just not as a municipality or as a state, and until we're able to convince more and more of our folks to do that, and to sort of confront statements pulled from the air related to this, you know, with saying, you know, “I've seen it, I've been there. It's not as you're saying,” you know, “they're just as – whether they're nonpartisan, whether they're appointed, whether they're elected, whether they're partisan like we are in Connecticut – they're just as dedicated to having a secure and fair election as myself and my counterpart and my buddy in the next town.
Eric Fey: Fred, it's been a pleasure meeting you. I've really enjoyed hearing from you and all your stories. This has been great. I hate to admit this – I knew nothing of Connecticut elections, so I've enjoyed learning about Connecticut elections. This is this has been great.
Fred DeCaro III: I’m curious to see how you cut it down, to be honest.
Brianna Lennon: You've been listening to High Turnout Wide Margins, a podcast that explores local election administration. I'm your host, Brianna Lennon, alongside Eric Fey. A big thanks to KBIA for making this podcast possible. Our Managing Editor is Rebecca Smith. Our Managing Producer is Aaron Hay. This has been High Turnout Wide Margins. Thanks for listening.
