WE ALL DESERVE A BETTER DEMOCRACY

Common Cause in Connecticut is a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizens’ lobby working for open, honest, and accountable government for everyone. Our members and allies made history on Election Day, Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 at the forefront of a statewide movement of voters that amended our state constitution by a very strong 60% margin to allow for Early Voting!

Realistically, what voters won is the ability to make sure state legislators design an Early Voting system that meets the needs of all Connecticut voters. This next fight is already well underway since the 2023 regular legislative session begins on January 4th.

Expanding democracy means protecting our elections—a lesson Americans learned all too well on January 6th, 2021. White supremacist insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol building in an attempt to overthrow democracy itself because their candidate was rejected by a large majority of American voters.

This antidemocratic spirit of obstruction is unfortunately nothing new and shows up every election cycle right here in Connecticut in ways large and small, unintentionally and intentionally. That is why nonpartisan volunteer polling place monitors deployed on Election Day outside one of our states polling places with the highest numbers of total voters and also of Black, Indigenous and other voters of color.

Election Protection Monitors took shifts for the primary and general elections and not only assisted voters but also found and reported obstacles to voting that disproportionately impact BIPOC voters.

81% of the highest Black and Brown population sites monitored on Nov. 8th, 2022 had one or more of five key obstacles to voting.

Clearly the values held by our elected officials matter and must be publicly known. Thankfully State Senate President Martin Looney and 91 others responded to the nonpartisan Our Democracy 2022 Connecticut survey. The public can see their responses on Early Voting, a Connecticut Voting Rights Act, a Ban on Foreign Spending on State Ballot Measures, a bill to Study Ranked Choice Voting and on No Excuse Absentee Voting.

In 2008 we secured and now continue to protect and expand the strongest campaign finance law in the nation, the Citizens’ Election Program. The CEP is a small dollar donor supported program that provides state grants for candidates willing to raise sufficient qualifying contributions.

With 2021 legislative steps toward Early and No-Excuse Absentee Voting and legislative wins on Automatic Voter Registration (AVR), Re-enfranchisement of Citizens on Parole and much more, Connecticut voters can be proud of moving forward while some states have been pushed backward. We continue to protect voting freedoms while advancing racial and economic justice.