Sanford City Clerk Sue Cote told the City Council during their meeting last Tuesday that the Nov. 5 election, the first to occur after the city reduced its three polling locations to a single location at a high school gym, was a “smooth operation.”
Cote defended the elections process despite long lines at the singular polling place at some points in the day.
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In August, the Sanford City Council voted to consolidate the city’s three polling locations, making the Sanford High School gymnasium the only place Sanford residents would be able to vote on election day.
Proponents of the change said at the time that the consolidation would make it easier and cheaper to staff and provide police presence at the singular polling place.
Critics of the polling place reduction, including several Sanford and Springvale residents, expressed concerns to the City Council that the consolidation would cause confusion, resulting in long lines and making it harder to vote in-person on election day.
In response to concerns from the public about the consolidation, Sanford’s current warden for Ward No. 1, Ed Cormier, suggested at the August meeting that residents with concerns over long lines at the single polling place should submit absentee ballots.
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City Clerk Sue Cote, who first proposed the polling place reduction in August 2023, gave a presentation to the City Council last Tuesday regarding the 2024 election day operations and voter turnout.
According to Cote, the city received a total of 1,892 requests for absentee ballots between Aug. 5 and Oct. 7, and beginning on Oct. 14 had a “steady flow” of in-person early voting at Sanford City Hall.
In total, there were a total of 5,354 absentee ballots cast in the 2024 election in Sanford — between ballots sent by mail and early in-person votes, which totaled 2,217, Cote said.
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“[City Manager Steven Buck] often joked, if there was a brief moment he’d poke his head in, and think, ‘you’re not going to have anybody left to go vote at the high school November 5th,'” Cote remarked during her presentation.
“That was a very good turnout for the absentee ballots,” Cote said.
Turning to the operation of the single polling place on election day, Cote said “I was excited to be there — it was going to be my first time being able to spend the full day at the voting place.”
“So a little kid inside, I was like in a candy store, all excited waiting for the day to go, and I looked out the door and I could see a line of people almost down to the football field,” she said. “I was like, ‘uh oh.'”
Despite the initial long line at the high school, Cote said that all of the people in line were able to come through and check in within a half an hour or less.
Cote said election workers had to adapt to a new way of checking in voters due to the consolidation, involving the separation of ballots by House district (141, 142 and 143).
“This ensures that each voter got the proper ballots for their legislative district,” Cote said. “That worked out well — we had people in the hallways, people didn’t know where their district or what district they lived in, so we had a street listing.”
“Give me your address, looked them up, boom, here’s your number,” Cote said. “People guided them, they checked in, got their ballots, they voted — five machines to cast their ballots, and it was, I think, a smooth operation.”
The Maine Wire received reports on and after election day that some voters had received incorrect ballots from House districts in which they did not live.
Cote told the Maine Wire on Monday that she knows of only one instance of a voter who received an incorrect ballot, and that the issue was remedied prior to that voter casting the wrong ballot.
“I did have one voter let me know they had received the wrong ballot, notified one of the election workers of the error and issued a correct ballot,” Cote wrote in an email to the Maine Wire.
“This seems to be an irregularity that should have been caught as voters who did not know their Legislative District were assisted by workers prior to checking in to determine the district to assure voters got in the right line,” she wrote.
The City Clerk also indicated that any additional errors related to voters receiving incorrect ballots that were made at the polling place can only be determined after an examination of voter participation history.
“I cannot determine how many errors were made at the voting place until I am able to record the voter participation history and then can only determine a number and not voters by name that could have possibly received the incorrect ballot,” Cote wrote.
Cote admitted in her presentation that there were a few times throughout the day when a line built up at the polling place — when polls opened at 7 a.m., and again at about 4:30 to 5 p.m. during the afternoon on election day.
Additionally, Cote said that a total of 1,018 people were registered at the polling place on election day. Maine is one of 23 states, and Washington, D.C., that allows for same-day voter registration at polling places.
Based on the city’s published unofficial election results, there were 16,602 registered voters in Sanford as of Nov. 3, and the voter turnout for the Nov. 5 election was roughly 86 percent.
Cote told the Maine Wire that an unofficial results sheet sent out to individuals who requested the results on election night did initially “show an inaccurate number of absentee ballots cast due to a reporting error on the hand tally sheet.”
One such sheet of unofficial results from election night obtained by the Maine Wire showed that roughly 5,000 absentee ballots were not reported, but those votes were included on the city’s published results.
“This is why the results sent to anyone requesting on election night are labeled as ‘unofficial’ especially for the reason of human errors that can happen after long days leading up to Election Day and tired eyes reading small print from the tabulating machines,” Cote added.
