City Wins Democracy Cup Award for Largest Voter Turnout

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill presented the Democracy cup award to the city Wednesday in city hall council chambers, recognizing the highest voter turnout on Election Day.

“This cup is to recognize the civic spirit of Middletown and all work of all of the people involved in getting people out to vote and getting the election to run smoothly,” Merrill said.

She characterized the city’s 89.86 percent voter turnout as “astonishing.” That number, Merrill said, proved the city’s registrars work diligently to get registered voters out to the polls.

“This is really to recognize the town citizens as well as all the people like our registrars here, who worked on this election. It takes a lot of work,” she said.

Middletown claims the top numbers in the large town category, comprised of municipalities between 15,000 and 45,000 population. 

Merrill joined Middletown Republican Registrar Janice Gionfriddo, Democratic Registrar Sandra L. Faraci, Mayor Dan Drew, state Reps. Joseph Serra, D-33rd, and Matthew Lesser, D-100th, as well as state Sen. Paul Doyle, D-9th.

Lesser attributed the city’s and state’s voting success to “overhauling and modernizing the voting process, updating our registration system, and it’s my hope that we'll be going up from here.”

In the last Presidential election, Merrill said, the state had a record number of voter turnout, making it seventh in the nation. Traditionally, she said, Connecticut has placed 20th.

“Two-thousand eight was really the high water mark for Connecticut, with 2.1 million voters statewide.” This year, the state replicated that number. “It was not really anticipated,” Merrill said, especially after Hurricane Sandy’s wrath hit many of the state’s 169 municipalities hard, causing sustained and significant damage.

“One week before a major storm, 100 of our 730 polling places were out of commission, so it took a lot of work by a lot of people to get us back online,” Merrill said.

Such success, the secretary said, depends on making the process a pleasant experience, “and citizenship education in the schools. I'm very interested in what motivates people,” Merrill explained, acknowledging that many in the nation felt less inspired to vote than they were in 2008.

Still, she said, “obviously at one point, they felt it was their civic obligation to vote.”

The perpetual award is sponsored by the East Haddam Civic Association and was presented first in 2000 to the town of West Hartford, then to Waterbury in 2001. In 2002 and 2003, West Hartford regained the prize. In 2004, Fairfield claimed it, and then relinquished it to West Hartford from 2005 to 2007. In 2008, Newtown earned it, followed in 2009 by East Haven, then in 2010, Simsbury; and in 2011, Trumbull.  

Earlier in the day, Merrill visited Bridgewater, which also received a Democracy Cup for outstanding voter turnout (94.75 percent) for a small town. Located in Litchfield County, it has a population 1,727 and spans 17.3 square miles, considerably less than Middletown’s 47,648.

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