Lamont signs bill aimed at expanding mail-in voting
Gov. Ned Lamont on Friday signed legislation to allow more mail-in balloting, while state election officials prepare for a permanent change to the state Constitution that they hope to ask statewide voters in 2024.
But Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, who used federal pandemic relief funding to mail absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in 2020, said her office still needs a legal opinion on who will actually be eligible for mailin voting this year.
During a virtual news conference from the Governor’s Residence in Hartford, Lamont, who is quarantining himself after testing positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, said the new voting law had bipartisan support in the General Assembly and will give busy state residents, especially commuters, the ability to mail their ballots rather than be limited by the narrow list of reasons, including personal illness, in the state Constitution.
“I want people voting,” Lamont said. “I want people to know that their vote matters. I want people to have a stake in the election and a stake in the outcome. I do believe that the more people who vote, vote with integrity, vote with safety, is the right thing to do for this state.”
Lamont said that in the record turnout in the 2020 presidential election, it became clear that state residents want options on how they exercise their franchise. “I think the number of people who voted by absentee was up by a factor of seven or eight times,” Lamont said. “I think something like 35 percent of our people voted by absentee. I think it was much safer for them to be able to do it, and much-easier for them to be able do it.”
With polls only open from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m., Lamont said that many rail commuters have had to choose between full work days, abbreviated hours, or not voting. The Constitution limits mail-in ballot to people working at election polls, military service, out of town on business or school and personal sickness.
The new law will allow people afraid of getting sick or who care for sick family members to vote by mail. Merrill said that either her legal staff or Attorney General William Tong will need to weigh in on the full ramifications of illness as defined through the new statute.
“Now that we have conformed the statue to the state Constitution, we’ll have to look at it,” Merrill told reporters. “We’ll have to look at the history of how that’s been applied. We’ll see. What we’ve done is just basically take the limiting words out of the statute to make it mirror the Constitution. At this point it’s really informing the voters and it’s up to the voters to kind of determine whether they feel that they are unable to get to the polls, due to whatever one of the exceptions they are using.”
Merrill said some towns can send out absentee ballots to voters at their own expense, but she is not planning on a reprise of the 2020 application flurry that was supported with federal pandemic funding that was one complaint from conservative Republicans in the legislature who charged that voters who had not lived in the state for years received ballot applications at their last known addresses, possibly creating an atmosphere for fraud.
“We want to make sure no one has to choose between their health and their vote,” Merrill said. Planned reforms will include a question before the state’s voters this year on the issue of early voting at a time when 46 states allow voters to cast ballots in various periods before Election Day.
Tia Murphy, president of the 600,000-member state chapter of the AARP, said maximum participation in the democratic process is important. “By changing the state absentee-ballot statutes, we are allowing more people who are caregivers for a loved one, those whose jobs demand the lions’ share of the day to be at work, and those impacted by public health emergencies the right to vote,” Murphy said.