CTCA LIAISON COMMITTEE WITH SOTS REPORT April 2013

The focus of the CTCA Liaison Committee this year was to assist clerks in coping with the greatly increased work load created by the Presidential Election. To that end, we issued Lists of Town Clerks duties in conjunction with both the Presidential Primary and the Presidential Election. In September 2012, during the Town Clerk’s Conference , the Liaison Committee met with Ted Bromley at Water’s Edge to discuss the timeline for completion of the proposed enhancements associated with the Town Clerk’s Module of the Centralized Voter Registration System (CVRS). In particular we were very interested in Town Clerks being able to use CVRS to issue Absentees for the November election. We learned that overall progress on all Registrars having the newer version of CVRS was still behind schedule, and that was the priority for all support staff for SOTS at that time. However we were encouraged to use the system as it stood, and clerks who were not on the system were encouraged to contact Steve Mason for assistance. Undaunted, the committee members decided we individually would use CVRS in addition to our existing absentee spreadsheets for issuing absentees for the Presidential election. In December our committee held a post election review meeting at the Southington Town Hall and invited the CTCA President, Vice-President and the Chair and Vice Chair of the Legislation & Elections Committee. A very informative discussion was held about problems arising during the election, and actions that could be taken to avoid such difficulties in the future. I am disappointed that I cannot report significant forward progress on CVRS for Town Clerks. Due to the positive feedback we received about our lists of election related duties in a presidential year, we are compiling a new list of election related duties for the current municipal election year.