“Shall the Constitution of the State be amended to permit the General Assembly to provide for early voting?”
Provided 75% of the State Senate votes “Yes” to House Joint Resolution 161 (HJ 161) you’ll be seeing this question alongside the options “Yes” or “No” on your 2020 ballot.
There doesn’t seem to be anything too controversial about allowing for early voting. The benefits to it couldn’t be clearer, early voting frees you up to spend your second Tuesday in November doing whatever it is you need to do that day and not adding to the stress of figuring out how to balance going to your polling place on a workday between all of your other responsibilities.
Two-thirds of states around the country have some form of early voting already and they have figured out how to make the costs work so that having early voting wouldn’t be prohibitive for towns. It also gives election monitors ample time to correctly carry out an election instead of being overwhelmed by the steady stream of voters and prevent people from accidentally voting in the wrong district, as was the case in both Stratford and Hamden last year.
These elections are by the people and for the people, so having this archaic barrier to voting makes no sense.
That is why I struggle to understand why Naugatuck Valley area State Representatives Jason Perillo, Ben McGorty, Rosa Rebimbas, and David Labriola all voted against HJ 161. I would hope that State Senators Kevin Kelly, George Logan, and Eric Berthel would agree to vote yes on this simple resolution so that we the people can decide for ourselves how we want our elections run.
Quinn A. Weber
The writer is President of the Naugatuck Valley Young Democrats and a member of the Shelton Democratic Town Committee.
