Press Release
Voting Rights Group: Too Soon to Abandon Early Voting
"Without a high-stakes election or any funding to educate the public, it is too soon for the Secretary of the State to abandon early voting."
Press
Media Contacts
David Vance
National Media Strategist
dvance@commoncause.org
240-605-8600
Katie Scally
Communications Director
kscally@commoncause.org
408-205-1257
Common Cause’s network of national and state democracy reform experts are frequent media commentators. To talk with one of our experts, please reach out to any member of the press team above.
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Rep. Stephanie Thomas opens campaign for Secretary of the State
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.
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.
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CT Post: ‘Border towns’ will be targets for congressional redistricting
"...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."
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Op-Ed: There Must Be a Better Way to Do Redistricting
"...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..."
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CT Law Tribune: Ban Foreign Spending on Ballot Referendum
"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."
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Redistricting Commission Tweaks Senate Map
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.
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Analysis: New House District Map Invests in Status Quo, But Sets Up Fairfield County Conflict
Population in Connecticut shifted south and west during the last decade, and the new district map for the state House of Representatives, approved Thursday by the Reapportionment Commission, reflects that change. But the reapportionment process is one controlled by the legislature, which means that the new map is designed to protect incumbents more than anything else.
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Lawmakers reveal new state House district map
The General Assembly's Reapportionment Commission unanimously approved a new map for Connecticut’s state House districts on Thursday.
In southeastern Connecticut, the 42nd District state House seat held by Mike France, R-Ledyard, has been moved to Fairfield County. Ledyard now belongs to the 43rd state House district seat held by Greg Howard, R-Stonington, and the change created ripples throughout the region.
In southeastern Connecticut, the 42nd District state House seat held by Mike France, R-Ledyard, has been moved to Fairfield County. Ledyard now belongs to the 43rd state House district seat held by Greg Howard, R-Stonington, and the change created ripples throughout the region.
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CT Reapportionment Commission unanimously votes to approve new statewide house district map
Fairfield County saw big population jumps. As a result, an entire state House seat is moving to Wilton and New Canaan from rural eastern Connecticut - which lost population. The move means Wilton will no longer be divided into two seats.
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Commission Vote on House Redistricting Map Expected Thursday
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Bipartisan deal struck on CT state House redistricting
The General Assembly’s bipartisan Reapportionment Commission is expected to vote Thursday on new maps for the 151 state House Districts to reflect population shifts counted by the pandemic-delayed 2020 Census.
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New Haven Independent: Redistrict Critics Slice Own District Maps
As they sat to draw their own legislative maps, the voting reform advocates aimed to keep various “communities of interest” intact. When a community of interest is split across multiple districts, that group’s vote is often diluted and overwhelmed by other priorities, giving legislators less of an incentive to represent its voice.
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CT Post, Opinion: Redistricting process should be transparent
Voters should pick their elected officials, not the other way around. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But it ain’t necessarily so. Too often the redrawing of voting districts, which is required every 10 years to conform with population shifts as reflected in the U.S. census, is done with an eye toward ensuring the reelection of officeholders...