Rep-Am: Early voting supporters in CT need 27 Senate votes. Will enough Republicans sign on?
BY PAUL HUGHES REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
April 27, 2019
HARTFORD – The campaign to allow early voting in Connecticut shifts to the Senate for a make-or-break vote on putting the question to a statewide ballot in 2020.
The outcome will depend on securing needed Republican votes to reach the required three-quarters majority to assure a proposed constitutional amendment goes to the voters in next year’s election.
Democrats have a 22-14 majority, so if every Senate Democrat backs the proposed amendment, the votes of five GOP senators will be required to achieve the supermajority of 27 votes.
This is some tough political math, and it gets tougher if any of the Democrats refuse their support.
“I do think the strong vote coming out of the House is going to help us get those five votes in the Senate,” said Secretary of the State Denise W. Merrill.
The House voted 125-24 last Wednesday to approve the early voting amendment. This was 11 more votes than needed in the 151-member chamber to place the question on the 2020 ballot.
The proposed amendment authorizes the General Assembly to establish in-person, early voting through state statute.
A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT IS NECESSARY because voting rights are spelled out in the state Constitution. It limits voting to the day of the election, and it sets strict conditions for voting by absentee ballot.
Senate President Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, said the overwhelming House vote could have a spillover effect in the Senate’s upcoming vote.
Cheri Quickmire, executive director of Common Cause in Connecticut, who has advocated for early voting, said she hopes that it is true. “I think everybody wants as many opportunities for folks to vote as possible,” said
Not everybody in the Senate does, though. There is Sen. Robert Sampson, R-16th District, the ranking Senate Republican on the Government Administration and Elections Committee.
“I’m opposed to early voting, and I’m also opposed to no-excuse absentee balloting simply because I think we have enough problems in maintaining the integrity of the vote as it is, and you look at all of the things that happened this past November what we ought to be doing is cleaning that up so we make sure people are accommodated when they come to vote on time, and we don’t have any question about the integrity of that vote after, and creating all these mechanisms is just an invitation for more incompetence, potential fraud, other things like that,” Sampson said.
There were reports of long lines and other problems, including with Election Day registration. Republican nominee Bob Stefanowski filed but later withdrew a legal challenge to block ballots from some new voters in New Haven and the University of Connecticut from being counted.
SEN. KEVIN D. WITKOS IS CONSIDERED a potential Republican “yes” vote because he has supported past proposals to put early voting to a statewide vote, but he was making no commitments following the House vote.
“I have to think about it,” the Canton lawmaker said.
He voted to put an early voting amendment on the 2014 ballot that voters rejected.
“I have been supportive of that in the past. I always felt that if we are sending something back to our constituents for direct democracy to see if we should do it that is the best form,” said Witkos, the deputy Senate GOP leader. “I know we did a few years ago, and the citizenry said to us ‘no.’ I don’t know if we should be sending it back to them again.”
After the House vote, he said his mobile phone “blew up” on Thursday morning with Republicans telling him not to support early voting.
SUPPORTERS OF EARLY VOTING said changes negotiated to the original House resolution contributed to the overwhelming bipartisan vote.
One of the biggest eliminated a provision that repealed the current constitutional restrictions on absentee ballots. Looney and Merrill agreed the question of absentee ballots was the biggest sticking point.
“I think everyone was aware of that, and we just had to come up with a bill that would not talk about absentee ballots. I think there was much less agreement about whether we should open up absentee balloting than there was for the early voting.
If adopted, the revised amendment will permit the legislature to determine the period of early voting and other logistics, including the number of polling places.
“We have a lot of models we can look at. We can do three days. We can do one day. We can do five days,” Merrill said. “Texas has 30 days. I don’t think we would go there.”
Connecticut is one of just a dozen states that does not allow in-person early voting.
If a Senate majority falls short of the required 27 votes, the proposed amendment would have a second chance to make a statewide ballot.
It will only take simple majorities in the next legislature that is seated after the 2021 election. If House and Senate majorities approve the identically worded proposal, then the amendment would qualify for the 2022 ballot.
Coming Monday: There’s a movement to restore voting rights to felons on parole. Read who’s behind it, and why.
Against early voting:
“Creating all these mechanisms is just an invitation for more incompetence, potential fraud, other things like that.”
– Sen. Robert Sampson, R-16th District
For early voting
“I think everybody wants as many opportunities for folks to vote as possible.”
– Cheri Quickmire, executive director of Common Cause in Connecticut
2018 turnout
In the 2018 mid-term election, 1,421,953 state voters cast ballots out of an all-time high 2,181,197 registered voters.
Total statewide turnout was 65.1 percent, according to the Secretary of the State’s office.