News Clips

the Connecticut State Supreme Court has adopted a congressional redistricting plan, submitted by the court’s hired expert. The new map makes mostly minor changes to the boundaries of the state’s five districts to accommodate population changes.

Democratic legislative leaders may expedite a bill in the next several weeks to allow expanded absentee ballot voting in this year’s elections, mirroring temporary policies adopted during the past two years as a result of the COVID pandemic. “Voting is the fundamental right underlying our entire democracy,” majority Democrats said in a joint statement Wednesday. “While other states are restricting voting rights, we will take action to ensure that everyone that was able to vote before COVID will continue to be able to vote this year as COVID persists.”

“This is another example of why we need no-excuse absentee voting,” said Cheri Quickmire, executive director of Common Cause in Connecticut, the voter-advocacy and elections watchdog organization. Quickmire said Wednesday that last year, the state had a chance to put a constitutional amendment supporting universal mail-in balloting on the 2022 ballot, but it did not get enough Republican support to reach the 75-percent super majority.

A Connecticut congressional map recommended Tuesday by a court-appointed special master makes minimal changes in the racial, political and geographic features of districts that have produced only Democratic victories since 2008. The map drawn by Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford political scientist and law professor, was not unexpected, given the state Supreme Court’s directive that he make only the changes necessary to equalize the population of the five districts.

With an open seat for the first time in 12 years, at least nine candidates are running to become Connecticut’s next Secretary of the State. When three-term incumbent Denise Merrill announced that she was not seeking reelection, the scramble began on both sides of the political aisle because openings for statewide constitutional offices are relatively rare. A total of seven Democrats and two Republicans are interested in running for the job.

A court-appointed special master invited members of Connecticut’s bipartisan redistricting panel Monday to make one last attempt at negotiating the lines of new congressional districts. Last month, the state Supreme Court assigned the special master, Stanford University professor Nathaniel Persily, to draft a plan to ensure each of the state’s five congressional districts have an equal number of residents. The court inherited jurisdiction over the process when the legislature’s Reapportionment Commission failed to come to an agreement.