On July 30th, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that two Democratic primary challengers for State Representative be allowed on the ballot, despite “human errors” made by the Office of the Secretary of State (OSS) that, incumbents argued, should have precluded their access. Last Friday, State Secretary Stephanie Thomas and other staff from her office testified before the state’s Government Oversight Committee to explain how those errors occurred and what the office has done to prevent them from occurring in the future.

“I am happy to be here today to talk about how two human errors occurred in our office,” said Thomas. “We are always soliciting input from our end users, looking for ways to improve our operations so that we are constantly refining and making them better, and this is exactly what we did when these two errors were discovered.”

The primary elections in question were in Enfield, between incumbent Rep. John Santanella and his primary challenger, Thomas Tyler, and in Hartford, between incumbent Rep. Julio Concepcion and his primary challenger, Venice Sotomayor.

In the Enfield race, Rep. Santanella sued to remove Tyler from the primary ballot, arguing that because the State Secretary’s Office provided him petition sheets four days earlier than they should have per state election law, the signatures he received in those first four days should be nullified, rendering him short of the number necessary to be placed on the ballot.

In Hartford, Rep. Concepcion sued, alleging that several signatures were gathered in the presence of a circulator other than the one designated at the bottom of the petition sheet. The courts found these allegations to be without merit. Concepcion’s suit also, however, challenged Sotomayor’s placement on the ballot because state law, which requires a signed statement by circulators attesting to the number of signatures on the petition page under the penalties of false statement, did not comport with an edit made to the petition form. While the previous version of the form asked circulators to provide “the number of signatures obtained” and to sign off on them, as state law requires, the form provided to Sotomayor asked for “the number of signatures required.”

The courts ultimately ruled in favor of both primary petitioners, granting them ballot access. Both challengers ultimately lost their primaries; Sotomayor lost on Aug. 11, and Tyler in a special primary called on Sept. 1. Aida Carini, a senior staff attorney at OSS, explained Friday that, because Hartford’s Registrar of Voters had “an experienced clerk” who recognized the new forms’ errors, he ensured the circulator put the number of signatures on each page of the petition.

“The judge in that case found that there was substantial compliance, which is the standard usually applied when errors are made by candidates or election officials,” said Carini. “In the Santanella case, which is the Enfield case, those are newer election officials; I can’t speak to any advice they may or may not have given the circulator, but at the end of the day, the circulator did put the total number of required signatures, and the judge in that case held that that was not substantial compliance.”

Thomas explained that the error in Enfield ultimately boiled down to a misreading of the state’s election calendar and a misinterpretation of state law regarding elections by an election official, while the Hartford case boiled down to an erroneous printing of a revised election form. Kirsten Sullivan, Director of Elections, explained that the revised election form came as a result of the OSS combining two previous forms, ED-619 and ED-619A, into one to “minimize confusion” and “streamline the petition process for registrars.”

“During that revision, the language was inadvertently changed to instruct petition circulators to list the total number of signatures across all petition pages, rather than the number of signatures appearing on each petition page as required by law,” said Sullivan.

In Enfield, Sullivan said the calendar issue arose from Enfield election officials using “a version of our election calendar” that “did not clearly distinguish the date when primary petition forms must be available for single-town state legislative offices from the date that applies to other municipal offices.” Because state law classifies representatives in districts located “entirely within one town as holding a municipal office, the Enfield registrars relied on that broader municipal office language and concluded that petitions could be issued on May 22,” Sullivan explained, instead of the date required by law, May 26.

Sullivan said the petition form has “since been corrected,” and that the state election calendar provided to local officials makes clear the distinction between “single-town state senator and state representative races from other municipal offices and district offices,” and provides the correct petition issuance dates for each.

While Thomas and Sullivan both acknowledged the OSS’s responsibility for the errors, Thomas tried to contextualize the conditions that preceded them. Thomas said the error occurred “against this backdrop of getting an incredible volume of things done exactly right,” and explained that since she took office in 2023, the OSS implemented early voting and universal absentee voting, the Connecticut Voting Rights Act, established the Translation Advisory Committee, strengthened election monitoring, and “implemented numerous changes as required by law.” She said the timelines given to her office to overhaul forms or instructions to comply with changes in state law are often “extremely short.”

“When the governor signed the universal absentee voting bill on May 15, we had to create, get printed, and deliver election forms, plus spell out the process from beginning to end for locals, before the absentee ballots became available for a special election happening in Middlebury on May 23,” said Thomas. “That’s eight days. We then had less than three months to implement the changes statewide, plus ensure that all the local election officials were prepared for the August primaries.”

She said the OSS provides “guidance and support to 507 registrars of voters and town clerks, as well as their department assistants and staff to political party leaders and town committees, to candidates and campaigns, and of course, the general public.” She also claimed that the OSS’s elections division received an average of 1,200 calls and 28,000 emails per month over the past year.

“Our 20-person elections division is managing more than 40 initiatives at a time,” said Thomas. “I recognize that a heavy workload does not change the fact that we made mistakes. Excellence is what we strive for every day, and most days we get there. When we don’t, we work to identify what happened, correct it, figure out why it happened, and change the process so the same mistake doesn’t happen again.”

Thomas and Sullivan said that, in addition to the corrections made to the form and calendar, they have also made a slew of other changes to their procedures to ensure better compliance moving forward. The OSS has expanded its internal review mechanisms to “create a more formal clearance procedure” and has mandated that important documents are double-checked, offered additional staff training, created working groups with local officials on major changes, and implemented new policies to ensure that changes made to documents, as well as changes made to the law, are better tracked.

“These improvements build on processes already in place and reflect our commitment to learning from errors, strengthening our work, and reducing the likelihood that the same errors will occur again,” said Sullivan.

While both Democrats and Republicans on the Committee applauded OSS staff for their work, both for elections and in other capacities, Republican lawmakers in particular grilled OSS officials on the particulars of what went wrong, as well as whether or not the OSS has the statutory authority to reimburse the town of Enfield for the $40,000 in costs incurred from having to run another primary election.

“One of the most uncomfortable parts of this thing is ultimately what happened in the town of Enfield,” said Sen. Rob Sampson (R-Wolcott). “Has any thought been given to how to compensate the people of Enfield?”

Thomas explained that her office has “under $100,000 discretionary, on our ‘other expenses’ line,” saying, “we don’t really have any room in our budget, and no one has actually given us an actual cost.” She also said her office would “need some sort of system,” granted either by the legislature or the Office of Policy and Management to “cut a check to a municipality.”

“We don’t have that authority to do so under current law,” said Thomas. “So there are a lot of practical things that would have to get worked out. I think it’s very unfortunate that extra costs had to be incurred, but some sort of reimbursement or whatever would be required is not a decision that we can just sit here and make.”

Rep. Devin Carney (R-Lyme) said that while he appreciated the OSS “taking accountability,” the office is ultimately “under the most scrutiny of any office in the state of Connecticut” due to its role in overseeing elections. He argued errors can “create a lack of confidence in our system.”

“We already have some public trust issues,” said Carney. “To me, that can’t happen. There’s an expectation in society of not getting anything wrong when it comes to elections, and if we do our due diligence, then I don’t think that would happen.”

In her closing comments, Committee Co-Chair Sen. Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox (D-Trumbull) said she appreciated the opportunity for back-and-forth dialogue between state officials and lawmakers, but disagreed with the notion that errors erode trust.

“I don’t think that erodes public trust if there’s errors,” said Gadkar-Wilcox. “Human error — it’s part of how systems work. I think what builds public trust is responding to that error and then showing the steps that have been take to account for that error, and that builds the trust. I think the errors are part of how systems function, but making sure you’re doing things to improve and strengthen that system is the most important thing.”

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