The legislature’s leftists ache to gut the state constitution’s limits on absentee voting.
The legislature’s leftists ache to gut the state constitution’s limits on absentee voting.
T he decks can never be stacked enough against political foes. Hence, the ever-leftward Democrats who run Connecticut’s legislature are plotting to bring ballot harvesting to the blue Constitution State.
Those who picture the land of Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy as a functioning enterprise of run-of-the-mill ballot chicanery may be surprised to discover that the hijinks potential has its limits: Connecticut’s constitution limits voting by absentee ballot and precludes early voting.
And that, contend Democrats, simply must not stand.
And with the sorry possible aid of some Republican members of the Democrat-overpopulated legislature, it won’t.
Afoot in this legislative session (it adjourns in early June) is action on a bill, House Joint Resolution No. 58, that would launch a process that could make mincemeat of election integrity. It will require a supermajority — 75 percent of the members of both the state House and Senate — to approve the measure, which seeks to amend the state constitution and strip away existing absentee-ballot restrictions.
From the perspective of alarmed Republicans, the gloomy scenario would roll out like this: H.J. Res. 58 achieves its legislative threshold, courtesy of Republican difference-makers; the voters then consider the amendment proposal on the November 2022 ballot, which, if adopted, then empowers Hartford’s reigning leftists to write new laws that make a mockery of election integrity.
Former state senator Joe Markley (the GOP’s lieutenant governor nominee in 2018) says that without the state constitution’s current definition of absentee voting, “a Democrat General Assembly can create any early voting process it wants, with no safeguards at all.”
Can? Will.
Currently, Connecticut’s constitution holds that
the general assembly may provide by law for voting in the choice of any officer to be elected or upon any question to be voted on at an election by qualified voters of the state who are unable to appear at the polling place on the day of election because of absence from the city or town of which they are inhabitants or because of sickness, or physical disability or because the tenets of their religion forbid secular activity.
As introduced this January (with 49 Democrat cosponsors), the original language of H.J. Res. 58 sought to strike that italicized language, replacing it with “intend not to appear at the polling place on the day of election.”
In a March 22 vote before the legislature’s Government Administration and Elections Committee, which holds a 13–6 Democratic advantage, the bill was amended on a party-line vote to replace “intend not to appear” to the simple “will not appear.”
Who needs intentions, after all, when the goal is no excuses needed?
Defeated, also on a party-line vote, was a Republican amendment to contain ballot mischief. Per Markley: “Democrats had the chance to add signature verification and other protections, but voted as a bloc in committee against such reasonable measures.”
Make no mistake, he warns: “Their intent is clear: to harvest as many ballots as easily as possible, regardless of fraud. This amendment is intended to defeat Republicans. Under election laws, we will be challenged even in our safest districts.”
Numerous activist leftist organizations that can bring field troops to bear (MoveOn.org, NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, SEIU, AFL-CIO, AFT, Democrat Socialists of America, and dozens of other usual suspects) strongly back the measure. Markley says this will be a doomsday scenario for Republicans. The thought of the party truly competing would be nonsense:
Republicans will be at an insurmountable disadvantage if no-excuse absentee voting becomes law. Voting would begin in August, shortly after the primaries are over. The massive Democrat army would identify voters who will vote for their candidates, go to their homes, hand them a ballot, and harvest that vote on the spot.
Can this come to pass? Right now, it’s all about the math: To get to the 75 percent threshold required to adopt H.J. Res. 58, three of the dozen Republican senators, and 16 of the 54 House GOP members, have to support the measure.
Residents who recall that it was Republican lawmakers who tipped the balance and brought Connecticut its income tax have every right to fear that a handful of party members will once again come to the aid of Democrats and liberalism and make this election-rigging nightmare a reality.
Former state senator Tom Scott, who led the fight against the income tax, describes no-excuse absentee voting as “the political holy grail for the hard left in Connecticut for many years. It’s not about voter rights, it’s simply Democrats’ best shot at eliminating any semblance of a two-party system in our state.”
And he’s done the math too: It seems that of the House delegation, there are 19 Republicans who either admit to favoring the bill or who refuse to state their opposition (and this is despite the Democrats’ committee efforts to block any Republican efforts to protect voter integrity).
House minority leader Vincent Candelora is concerned. He agrees that if H.J. Res. 58 prevails, “ballot-harvesting will come to Connecticut,” and described absentee-balloting as “the most tamperable aspect of elections.”
Recent antics are still fresh in the memory: The pandemic-excused actions of Connecticut’s secretary of state during the 2020 elections proved “a reckless administration of our electoral process,” in which many ballots “were mailed to inactive voters” or multiple ballots being mailed to the same home.
“This not only created the appearance of fraud,” said Candelora, but was done with “reckless disregard top the voting process.”
That said, GOP House members have yet to caucus and take a formal position on this torpedo aimed at the party’s hull. And there seems to be no coalescing amongst GOP senators either — all of which conflicts with the statewide uproar coming from local Republican “town committees,” whose animated rank-and-file members have been meeting and riot-act reading their party standard-bearers that H.J. Res. 58 will turn Connecticut into a version of neighboring Rhode Island, a no man’s land for the Party of Lincoln.
But then maybe the rank-and-file simply don’t understand that it’s far worse for these elected party members to be unjustly tainted with certain cooties and called mean names. That’s hard-to-abide game-changing stuff for many a self-described “New England Republican.” You know, the party members who’ve typically and proudly cast aversion on the national GOP’s positions on social and cultural issues. That ickyness extends to being branded as conservatives and something far worse — racists.
Which is exactly the tactic Connecticut Democrats and party activists are using in the aftermath of the media/establishment/corporate uproar over the Georgia legislature’s efforts to strengthen voter-integrity laws. In the Nutmeg State, there is a full-court effort to pressure enough GOP lawmakers into pushing H.J. Res. 58 over the finish line.
And before you can say “Jim Crow,” amongst the typical lobbying missives being accumulated by state senator Rob Sampson, a strong conservative and the ranking Republican on the Government Administration and Elections Committee, is this:
Outrageous new Jim Crow style voter suppression laws in Georgia will limit the right to vote and silence citizens by restricting the option to vote by mail, limiting ballot drop-off sites, canceling early voting on Sundays and even making it a misdemeanor to give water or food to people who are waiting in line to vote. These will disproportionately impact Black voters.
Yet here in Connecticut we’ve never even won the freedoms that Georgia voters are seeing restricted. We still cannot cast absentee ballots without an excuse or vote early in person at all, let alone on Sundays.
Unbelievably, CT lawmakers still expect us to vote on a single day, and only in person. It’s high time we get rid of this steady habit.
The time to win this battle in Connecticut is now. You can say no to Jim Crow and yes to voting reform right here in Connecticut, right now.
It’s not hard to picture the weak knees of some Connecticut Republicans buckling after reading that. Or this:
I was surprised to hear that CT has strict voting laws. In this day and age it should be easier to vote; not harder. As a person with a chronic illness, it would be wonderful to be able to vote absentee, and not have to worry about applying for it. I’m not “disabled” officially, but my illness is unpredictable. I would imagine others with chronic illness, seniors, new moms/dads, young people who do everything virtually would love the option to vote absentee or vote by mail all the time. Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington vote by mail almost exclusively. Voting should be a national holiday as well. Again, It should be easier to vote, not harder. Thank you for your support of our democracy!
And amongst the usual suspects, weaving together arguments specious, pigmentary, and contrived on behalf of H.J. Res. 58, is this declaration from the ACLU, one of many similar dime-a-dozen diatribes thundering from the sanctimonious left:
The ACLU of Connecticut strongly supports measures to ensure equal access to the ballot box and we especially support measures that increase voting access for historically disenfranchised groups, particularly Black voters. Improving voting rights and voting access strengthen democracy, since voting is the foundation of democracy itself. For these reasons, we enthusiastically support House Joint Resolutions 58 and 59.
In Connecticut, during non-pandemic times, voters have shockingly few options for casting their ballots. Except for people who can satisfy narrow constitutional conditions to vote absentee, the only option for most people is to vote in person. Archaic language in the Connecticut Constitution also prohibits early voting in our state altogether. These constitutional restrictions have led Connecticut to be one of only six states without some form of early in-person voting and one of only sixteen states lacking no-excuse absentee voting. These limitations combine to make Connecticut, in one voting rights group’s estimation, the fourth worst state in the nation for voting options.
The cited H. J. Res. 59 — 58’s political sibling and a bill also approved by party-line committee vote in March — similarly seeks to amend the Connecticut constitution, here for the purpose of permitting in-person early voting.
Challenged to point to any case in recent years when any Connecticut voter has been denied the right to vote, H.J. Res. 58 supporters have refused to take the bait and answer — because the answer is, there is no case. Indeed, the state laws which implement the constitution’s protection of election integrity are comprehensive and reasonable, allowing for voting by absentee ballot for those in the military, the ill and disabled, voters who will not be in a municipality on Election Day during voting hours, for those who “tenets of their religion forbid secular activity on the day of the primary, election, or referendum,” and for poll workers and other officials whose duties preclude them from voting at their polling place on Election Day.
The fact is, in any town in Connecticut, weeks before an election, assuming ballots are printed and available, a voter may apply (including in person at a municipal clerk’s office) for the ballot, receive it, and vote on the spot.
The author of this article would know, having cast his ballot several times via this means.
Yes, in Connecticut, blue Connecticut, of all places, there is some semblance of election-law sanity, on a par with the views held by a majority of Americans.
The battle to undo that has commenced and may take to the floor of the august legislative chambers in Hartford in the next days or weeks.
Those citizens who are appalled at the prospect of electoral chaos and disenfranchisement that will result from the adoption of the 58 and 59 twins should take heart: Even with the Democrats’ enormous numbers in the legislature, the 75 percent threshold is a supremely high one to reach.
A victory — for election integrity, for common sense, and for conservatives — is quite possible.
But then, maybe these citizens should despair after all, because the same can be said about Republicans’ ability to snatch defeat from Victory’s jaws.