Secretary of the state candidates square off over issues of election integrity, early voting

WEST HARTFORD — Connecticut’s decentralized, town-by-town manner of holding elections was put under bright lights Tuesday evening as two of the candidates vying to serve as next secretary of the state competed in their first and only debate.

In the debate the Republican, Dominic Rapini, sought to cast himself as a defender of local and independent control of elections in each of the state’s 169 towns — while criticizing and at times exaggerating examples of faulty handling of elections by the Secretary of the State’s office under the last two decades of Democratic control.

Stephanie Thomas, a state representative from Norwalk who won her party’s nomination for the open seat, seized on Rapini’s comments as well as inaccurate claims he has made in the past regarding the results of the 2020 election, casting him as a spreader of “misinformation and extreme rhetoric.”

“As a leader, running around and screaming about fraud does not instill confidence,” Thomas said.

In response to the criticism, Rapini repeated his previous assurances that he does not doubt the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, but did not back down on his claims that voter fraud remains a significant issue in Connecticut, pointing to recent the recent guilty verdict of a Democratic Party official in Stamford and allegations of irregularities in a Bridgeport primary election as examples of a systemic problem. He also repeated at least one debunked claim — that over 5,0000 unregistered Connecticut voters cast ballots in 2020 — to support his allegations.

“There is absolutely a culture of fraud in our cities that we have to take care of,” Rapini said.

When asked by the moderator, WNPR Investigative Editor Walter Smith Randolph, whether additional steps are needed to secure the integrity of Connecticut elections, Thomas said that more information should be made available to voters about how elections are run to “make them less susceptible to fraud.”

Still, Thomas said that it is impossible to prevent all instances of fraud, and said the examples cited by Rapini are proof that the “system is working” to identify and respond to proven examples of fraud.

The two candidates also expressed starkly different views on the issue of early voting — to be decided by Connecticut voters in a referendum held at the same time as the November election — with Thomas saying she supports the idea as an easy and popular way of expanding access to the ballot, and Rapini casting early voting as an expensive and burdensome mandate on the state’s smaller municipalities, many of which do not have full time elections staff.

Still, Rapini said he would honor the will of voters if early voting is approved, and the candidate’s ideas about how to implement such a program were not as far apart as their thoughts on the merits of early voting. If the referendum passes, Thomas said she will push the Legislature to approve between two and five days of early voting, while Rapini said he would advocate for fewer than three days.

Another topic, the issue of ranked-choice voting, briefly brought both candidates into general agreement before sparking a tense exchange.

Rapini at first answered the question about rankedchoice voting by calling it a “Ponzi scheme,” while Thomas simply said the timing was not right to impose such a system in Connecticut. Then, Rapini followed up by encouraging Thomas’ supporters to consider supporting Independent Party candidate Cynthia Jennings — who was not a participant in the debate — who has been an outspoken supporter of ranked-choice voting.

“I find that a little insulting because [ Jennings is] an African American woman, and I don’t know what else we have in common,” said Thomas, who is Black. Rapini then quipped that Thomas was using a “race card,” before both candidates agreed to move on from the topic.

During their closing statements, Thomas again raised the issue of Rapini’s past statements and tweets — including his use the phrase “Stop the Steal” to refer to the 2020 election — to paint him as an election denier.

Asked afterward by reporters if he had any regrets about his previous statements, Rapini said he could not remember most of them.

In his closing remarks, Rapini repeated his vow to focus on election integrity, say that doing so “is my

priority, it’s in my DNA.”

The debate, which was held at the University of Hartford, was initially scheduled to be held in September before it was postponed due to “unforeseen circumstances” that caused Rapini to pull out of the original date. It was then rescheduled at the agreement of both parties.

The winner of the November election will succeed Mark Kohler, an attorney who was appointed by Gov. Ned Lamont to serve as an interim officeholder for the remainder of the term of Democrat Denise Merrill, who stepped down in June to care for her ailing husband.