By Luther Weeks on February 23, 2023
Yesterday I submitted testimony on four bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)
I was pleased to learn that Secretary of the State, Stephanie Thomas generally agreed with me and that she called out my testimony in hers!
It was clear before I spoke that the Committee understood my main points, so I asked them to read the testimony and spent my three minutes discussing additional thoughts:
Posted in Chain of Custody, Costs, CT, CT Law, In-Person Early Voting, Mail/Absentee Voting
By Luther Weeks on January 20, 2023
https://portal.ct.gov/SOTS/Press-Releases/2023-Press-Releases/Secretary-Thomas-Presents-Legislature-with-Recommendations-for-Early-Voting-Program From no ePollbooks currently approved and no early voting in place, this will be a tall order for the two elected registrars in each of our 169 towns. Likely tripling the number of pollworker days in most towns, requiring lots of recruiting and training and loads of novice pollworkers. This will also put a lot of work on the Secretary’s small staff to develop procedures, provide training, and approve all sorts of plans in a short time.
Editorial:..
Posted in CT, CT Law, In-Person Early Voting, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on January 4, 2023
This is the fifth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks>
In this post we will cover the choices for implementing Early Voting facing the General Assembly along with the disappointments associated with each choice.
Disappointments are based on the expectations outlined in our first post. See <Part 1 – Expectations>
Option 1 – Fourteen or So Long Days of Early Voting Places…
Option 2 – Four to Six Days, Six to Seven-Hour Early Voting Days…
Option 3 – In-Person Absentee Voting…
Why follow California and Colorado to massive early in-person early voting for just 5% of voters who could all easily choose to vote by mail or on Election Day? Why not benefit/save from their experience, before they do? Start slow, gain experience, add mail-in voting, and learn from our own experience…
Posted in Costs, CT, CT Law, In-Person Early Voting, Mail/Absentee Voting, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on January 2, 2023
This is the fourth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 3 – New Voting Machines>
In this post we will cover Electronic Poolbooks – Why, How, and When we should add electronic pollbooks. Next time we will cover the alternatives for early voting in 2024. Hint: they all have advantages and disadvantages.
Our understanding is that UConn, under the direction of the Secretary of the State’s (SOTS) Office is already evaluating electronic pollbooks. Presumably they could be selected by the SOTS sometime in 2023.
Why Electronic Pollbooks (ePollbooks)
The answer here is not as simple and clear as many would suggest. There are two advantages often touted for ePollobooks which are not actually true:
Posted in CT, CT Law, In-Person Early Voting, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on December 28, 2022
This is the third in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 2 – Implementing Change> See <Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks>
In this post we will cover New Voting Machines – Why, How, and When we should implement new voting systems.
Why New Voting Machines
The simple answer is for two reasons..
Stay tuned, we plan at least one more post before we get to the choices for implementing in-person Early Voting.
Posted in Costs, CT, In-Person Early Voting, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on December 27, 2022
This is the second in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 3 – New Voting Systems> or <Part 1 – Expectations>
In this post we will cover Implementing Change – how election changes have been implemented in Connecticut and the risks of doing too much too fast and at the most challenging times. In the future we will address more specific issues associated with some of the changes coming. Then get to the tradeoffs in implementing in-person early voting.
Implementing Change
As we discussed last time, one of the big changes coming is in-person early voting.
In addition to that:
- In the last few months, the Secretary of the State (SOTS) and his office have selected and are presumably beginning implementing a replacement for the Central Voters Registration System (CVRS)…
Do one change at a time, test as much as possible, then test the change on a small scale, and implement it system wide at the least disruptive time...
Posted in CT, In-Person Early Voting, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on December 26, 2022
Having passed the Early Voting Constitutional Amendments in November, everyone expects the General Assembly will pass implementing legislation in 2023 and give some time for officials to implement it, i.e. the Secretary of the State’s Office to detail procedures and registrars to implement them.
We plan a series of posts. Today we will start with the expectations of various groups, as we understand them.
Voters
We can only speculate what voters expect, certainly they are not a homogeneous group. They have read and seen in the news that Connecticut is one of only four states that do not support some form of early voting (in-person early voting and/or no-excuse mail-in voting). They likely understand that this amendment only authorizes in-person early voting…
Posted in Chain of Custody, Costs, CT, CT Law, In-Person Early Voting, Our Editorials
