News Clips

The Connecticut Supreme Court granted the petition from Connecticut’s bipartisan redistricting panel for more time to complete work on a map of congressional voting districts. The Supreme Court is giving the group until 12 p.m. Dec. 21 to complete their work. However, the court would like the commission to give them an interim report on their progress not later than 5 p.m. on Dec. 15.

Rep. Stephanie Thomas, D-Norwalk, filed papers Tuesday that make her the first Democrat to declare a candidacy for Secretary of the State, a statewide office that will be open in 2022. Thomas, a first-term lawmaker who advocated for early voting and no-excuse absentee ballots as vice chair of the Government Administration and Elections Committee, scheduled a formal announcement Wednesday morning in Norwalk.

"...while Connecticut’s legislative leaders have agreed that the redistricting process so far has been fair, Cheri Quickmire, executive director of Common Cause in Connecticut, the election watchdog organization, said the secret aspect of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats isn’t good for public perception of the effort."

"...The legislature is hardly a disinterested body when it comes to election districts. The leadership can use the map to keep members in power or make life difficult for members who don’t toe the line. The number of truly contested races for both houses in every election cycle is a minuscule fraction of the total. The fact that this bipartisan body has pushed out a map with such oddities on it should be setting off alarm bells for anyone interested in fair elections..."

"Citizens might have expected the issue of foreign interference in all U.S. elections to have been banned by federal law. True, foreign nationals are barred from donating to U.S. political candidates or committees. But a recent legal decision by the Federal Election Commission confirmed that neither Congress nor the FEC has acted to close the federal loophole that permits foreign spending to influence the outcome of state and local referenda."

Lawmakers on Connecticut’s redistricting panel approved a map of new state Senate voting districts Tuesday which pulls a third district within Stamford’s city lines but leaves big portions of the state virtually unchanged.