Legislative Session 2021 Update: Maintaining Voter Integrity in CT

On June 3, the Senate took up a resolution to allow for No-Excuse Absentee Ballots in the state for all future elections, changing the language to Connecticut’s constitution.

Because this same resolution failed to pass the House by a 75 percent margin, the Senate could only pass it with an amendment, sending it back to the House—an amendment to allow for voter integrity, like many states already have. These protections include signature verification for mail-in ballots. The majority of you that have reached out to me want protections in place to ensure that your legal vote counts and is not canceled out by a fraudulent vote.

The Republican amendments for election integrity that I supported were:

• Signature verification: verify the signature on the absentee ballot when it is returned. This failed along party lines.
• Preventing mass mail-out of absentee ballot applications: This also failed along party lines. The Democrat proponent of the bill said that the Legislature will determine the rules for mailing by a majority vote. This means that the rules could be changed for every election by the Legislature with a simple majority vote.
• Picture ID: The type of picture identification would be determined by the Legislature and included free identification cards for those who could not afford them. This amendment also failed along party lines.

I could not support voting for this resolution without some protections in the State Constitution. This vote can return after 2022 and would only need a majority vote to be put on the 2024 ballot. We emphasized that if the Democrats accepted one of the amendments, then this item could have been on the 2022 ballot.

I will continue support measures that both provide access to to voting as well as ensure the integrity of each vote that is cast.