News Clips

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.

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.

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...

Connecticut voters are eligible to cast absentee ballots during the coming Nov. 2 municipal elections as a result of legislative action which once again expanded voting options due to the pandemic, state and local officials advised Tuesday.

"Almeida said Common Cause has long supported an independent redistricting commission model where the people actually drawing district lines 'are everyday people, not politicians, not lobbyists, people without conflicts of interest.' Still, Almeida and others were realistic in recognizing the current system. They said there were different ways to protect the integrity of the redistricting process, whether through the committee or commission utilizing nonpartisan staff, allowing an abundance of public input and making sure the lawmakers composing the committee or commission are mostly nonpartisan..."

“We make sure that districts do not remove voting rights from Black and Brown and other people of color. And that we try to retain some contiguity and some continuity in the communities to benefit the voters not to benefit the elected officials,” Quickmire said.