As this CTNewsJunkie post implies, it will always be called The Bysiewicz Test <read>
Ambiguously defined in law and only slightly less ambiguously by the Connecticut Supreme Court. All we know for sure is that you have to be a lawyer in CT for at least ten years and have different experience than Susan Bysiewicz had in 2010. As I commented in on the article:
I always find it interesting that the AG and Judge of Probate are the only offices that have qualifications, as far as I know. They are both related to law. I wonder if the composition of the General Assembly makes the legislature realize how important qualifications are, in just these cases?
Why is there no requirement that the Comptroller be a CPA with 10 years in practice? How about the Treasurer being an MBA with 10 years managing significant funds? Or that the Secretary of the State has been a Registrar, Municipal Clerk, and served in election administration or as a pollworker for at least 10 elections?
There is no such requirement for Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Or perhaps there should be no qualifications for any office?
The General Assembly and Denise Merrill, agree that to be a pollworker you must be trained before every election and primary; to lead a polling place or the counting of absentee ballots you must be a Certified Moderator; there are no qualifications to be a Registrar of Voters, yet you must become a Certified Registrar to remain a Registrar and be subject to some refresher training each year.
There remains no necessary training whatsoever to be Secretary of the State, while some of her employees, but not all need to be lawyers, to give advice to the public, would be candidates, and election officials. That could be going better, but of course, certification by itself does not preclude errors and incompetence, or as Jon Lender puts it Bungling: Candidate’s Lawsuit Says Bungling By Merrill’s Office Ruined Her Chance At Primary <read>
Ex-State Rep. Vickie Orsini Nardello, D-Prospect, claims in a lawsuit that bungling by Democratic Secretary of the State Denise Merrill’s office has deprived her of running in a 16th State Senate District primary that she qualified for at a convention in May.
Nardello says two Merrill subordinates told her two different things early this month: one, that a technical problem with her primary eligibility form (she’d failed to write “16” in the “Senatorial District” space) had been “resolved” and she was “all set”; and the other that “we are unable to accept your certificate of eligibility” and it’s too late to submit one that’s filled in correctly.
