Hurricane Sandy Won't Impact Voting in Southington

Town officials in central Connecticut are moving ahead with Election Day preparations as planned, with none of the towns' polling places impacted by power outages.

Registrars of voters in Cheshire, Meriden, Southington and Wallingford all confirmed that every polling location in their town has electricity and that the storm will have no impact on the Nov. 6 election.

While many residents in some of those towns lost power — at the height of the storm 3,390 Meriden customers had no electricity — most of them have been restored since the storm pummeled the region Monday.

Latest CL&P projections show that just 31 customers in all of Southington, Cheshire and Meriden lack electricity, while the Wallingford Electric Division reported that it expected most of its customers to be back online by Wednesday evening.

Other parts of the state, mostly around the coasts, were not as fortunate, with towns like Stonington, East Lyme and Westport still seeing over 80 percent of its residents in the dark. The latest CL&P figures show that over 280,000 customers in the state lack electricity.

After the storm, questions arose as to what impact it would have on elections. So far, the only thing that has changed statewide is the deadline to register to vote in person was extended to today.

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill announced Wednesday that at least 100 of the state’s 738 are still without power due to the hurricane, but as federal law requires Election Day to be on the second Tuesday of November there is now way to push off the election date.

Merrill told reporters she had been in talks with Connecticut Light & Power and said that polling places — most of which are in municipal buildings such as schools and town halls — are a priority for the utility companies. CL&P said it is expecting to start giving out restoration estimates by today.

Below is the list of polling locations in Southington. To find out which one you have to vote at, visit the Secretary of State’s website for a searchable database.

There are 11 voter registration districts, which are broken down by street address on the Southington website, www.southington.org, with polling places established as follows:

• South End School (District 1)
• Kennedy Middle School (District 2)
• Derynoski Elementary School (District 3)
• Hatton Elementary School (District 4)
• Flanders Elementary School (District 5)
• DePaolo Middle School (District 6)
• Kelley Elementary School (District 8)
• Thalberg Elementary (District 9)
• Tabernacle Church (District 10)
• Plantsville Elementary School (District 11)
• Strong Elementary School (District 12)