Ballot-counting work continued into Wednesday (Nov. 6) in Ansonia.
ANSONIA/DERBY – Voters in the 104th state House district cast a total of 9,336 ballots in the November 2024 election, according to unofficial totals from the Secretary of State website.
Incumbent state Rep. Kara Rochelle retained her seat with 54 percent of the vote, beating challenger, Ansonia Mayor David Cassetti, by about nine percentage points.
Rochelle won 5,042 votes, while Cassetti won 4,176. Independent Party candidate Thomas Egan also won 118 votes.
Rochelle is a Democrat. Cassetti is a Republican.
Results released by the Cassetti and Rochelle campaigns on Tuesday night did not include votes submitted by absentee ballots from Derby or Ansonia. Cassetti conceded after he was advised that even if all the absentee votes were for him, it still would not close the gap.
Derby officials uploaded their results Tuesday night.
The Ansonia Registrars uploaded results to the Secretary of State’s website at about 4 p.m. Wednesday.
Ansonia Republican Registrar David Papcin said poll counters in Ansonia worked Tuesday night until the race’s outcome was all but certain, and then returned at 9 a.m. Wednesday to count the remainder of the ballots.
The city’s two registrars, John Feddern and David Papcin, said there were two reasons for the long count: early voting, and a lack of state financial assistance for the extra voting days.
This was the first presidential election in which Connecticut residents could cast early ballots in-person. A bill signed into law in 2023 requires all municipalities to offer 14 days of in-person early voting.
In Ansonia, 2,742 people voted early. That’s about 24 percent of all registered voters in Ansonia. Multiple residents that The Valley Indy spoke with on Election Day expressed support for early voting, saying that it made it easier for elderly relatives to vote at their own convenience.
Feddern and Papcin said the new process also creates more work for election workers. Papcin said registrars aren’t being compensated properly for the extra work.
“While the state did provide us some level of financial assistance on that, they do not consider that many registrars, like us, are part time,” Papcin said. “I have a full-time job outside of here, I’m a nurse. I’ve used so much PTO that I’m not going to get back.”
Each municipality in Connecticut sets its own pay for registrars. In Ansonia, they’re paid $14,997.50 per year.
