Bill would shield privacy of election workers
Harassment of poll workers across the country have election workers here concerned the trend could spread to Connecticut amid the upcoming 2024 election, and beyond.
During a public hearing on a variety of votingrelated bills before the legislative Government Administration & Elections committee, Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas said that traveling around the state, election workers have told her that they are scared. She supports pending legislation that would shield the addresses of election workers from public disclosure, make threats to voting officials punishable as felonies, and ban weapons from electionrelated locations.
“I’m very interested in the protection of election workers,” Thomas said. “When I have monthly calls with registrars, town clerks, when I travel around the state doing poll worker appreciation events, they express fear and concern. They are actually more concerned about prohibitions or protection in the 90 days after an election. Because when someone doesn’t get the results that they want, that is when the harassment begins.”
During a news conference just before the hearing, state Rep. Matt Blumenthal and Sen. Mae Flexer, committee cochairs, underscored issues that are discouraging many poll workers from volunteering this year, including the type of threats being made. Blumenthal, D-Stamford, said threats started around the time of the 2020 presidential election.
“Election workers have faced a constant stream of death threats, often quite graphic,” Blumenthal said, stressing that 12 other states have similar laws. “It is little wonder — as a result — that many of our election workers are retiring or are not interested in reupping to support our elections. And they are absolutely vital to the success of our elections and our democracy running in a smooth, transparent and functional manner in which everybody’s voice is heard.”
The bill would make it a crime to harass election
officials, including doxing them with harassment over the internet.
“It’s vitally important not only to actually protecting election workers, but ensuring that they understand that we take protecting them very seriously and that all those who threaten them take seriously the fact that we believe in Connecticut that this behavior is unacceptable,” Blumenthal said.
In addition, election workers are being asked to do more than ever this year with extended voting, they said.
“Two weeks from today,
for the first time ever, Connecticut’s going to be engaged in early voting for our presidential primary. And we’re going to be having people working long hours,” Flexer, D-Killingly, told reporters, adding that will be followed by the August primaries and the November election. “It’s already been a challenge to get people to volunteer and step up to be election workers.”
Flexer said that threats to election workers around the nation have come home to Connecticut. “We’ve heard from registrars, we’ve heard from moderators, we’ve heard from town clerks that people who used to volunteer are anxious about the hassle,” she said. “We live in a small world. People see what happens in Michigan, what happens in Arizona, what happens in Georgia and they know that people who share some of those same beliefs are their neighbors, posting aggressively on social media and other platforms.”
Another section of the bill would make it a felony to possess firearms or deadly weapons within 1,000 feet of polling places, ballot drop boxes and municipal buildings during voting periods.
“We definitely support the spirit of this legislation, but the 1,000-foot radius might be too far and encompass private property,” said Kristin Sullivan, director of elections for the Secretary of the State. Sullivan also noted there would be easy ways around a shield on public disclosure of election worker addresses, including public voting records.
Thomas, in questioning from Blumenthal and Sen. Rob Sampson of Wolcott, a top Republican
on the panel, said 1,000 feet is probably too wide a radius.
“One thousand feet is substantial,” Sampson said, noting that state law already bans firearms in areas near schools. “It’s almost a quarter of a mile. I was just remarking to some of my colleagues that I live 500 feet from Town Hall. So under this bill I would effectively become a Class D felon for possessing a firearm on my own property.”
“I think many have already expressed that it makes sense for this prohibition to be around polling places and schools, so I think it makes sense” in substance, Thomas said of the draft committee bill.
“The way I look at it is, somebody who’s a bad actor intent on doing harm and using an election, they’re not going to care one iota,” Sampson said. “They’re going to go there to do harm regardless of what the law says. All this can do is prohibit someone that might be in a position to protect themselves from doing so. I think the public is more safe when the public is allowed to carry firearms.”