A recent headline  in the Hearst Connecticut Newspapers mentions that the constitutional amendment before CT voters in November "could pave way for all-mail elections in Connecticut."

Headlines aside, that wasn't exactly what the legislator said.  But it does highlight the piecemeal approach we have taken to designing elections in CT over the past few decades.

We regularly hear that we need something new because "40 other states have it".  I've been to a good many states, and I've talked to their election officials at conferences and during during in-person and online certification classes.  I'm not specifically opposed to any of them, but I do find it problematic that we don't highlight the downsides of some of these novelties.

In particular, CT residents need to understand that depending on how voting by mail is carried out, elections can take days or weeks to complete the process.  Will we continue to cut off mail ballots on election night? That is a necessity if you want to have results quickly.  But other states that have moved towards expanded mail balloting give days or even weeks for more ballots to arrive.  Waiting to post results does not inspire confidence.  It creates needless doubt.

Further, last year the state authorized borrowing $25 million dollars through bonding to pay for new polling places tabulators.

 

2023:

“We’re going to get the voting machines done,” Lamont told reporters. “We’re going to get it done in the Bond Commission, and we’re going to get it done in time for the next election.”

Election officials have yet to see what these tabulators will look like. But we have been informed there is no way they will be in place prior to the 2024 Presidential Election.

Instead of jumping on the bandwagon for the latest and greatest, we should focus on two things which everyone understands:  cost and turnout.  Below are the turnout figures for the last 6 Presidential elections for CT, the US, and Colorado (Colorado went to all mail ballots in 2013 after the 2012 Presidential Election.  No two people are going to look at these numbers and draw the same conclusions, but I would argue (as do most serious scholars in the field) that excitement/interest about candidates and issues means a lot more about turnout than the way in which we cast our ballots.

Colorado is considered the "Gold Standard" for all-mail voting.  Every registered voter is sent a ballot automatically.  And yet despite the change to all-mail voting in 2013, there is no significant change in turnout trends which are any different than the rest of the US, or what we see in CT.

I've also added to the graph data from Washington state and Oregon.  Washington went to all-mail elections just prior to the 2012 Presidential election.  Oregon has been voting by mail since before 2000.  Once again, the graph doesn't show any spike when you move to voting buy mail. 

 

Year CT Turnout USA Turnout CO Turnout
2000 62.5% 55.3%

57.5%

2004 66.2% 60.7% 67.3%
2008 66.6% 62.2% 71.6%
2012 61.4% 58.6% 70.6%
2016 64.9% 60.1% 71.9%
2020 70.7% 66.6% 77.6%

SOURCE: https://www.electproject.org/election-data/voter-turnout-data

 

The second graph shows the percentage "superiority" of Colorado vs. CT and the entire US.  By superiority I mean the percentage difference in turnout between Colorado and the other grouping.  So for instance in 2012 Colorado's turnout was 20.48% higher than the US as a whole.

The chart again shows little difference in the trend of Colorado turnout vs. Connecticut.  Colorado has clearly had a culture of high turnout for more than 20 years.  Mail-in voting did not change it, or even seriously improve it relative to CT or other states.

 

This data collection and building these charts took me an hour.  More can be done.  But I believe we need to to be looking at real data in making these decisions.  From what I can see, this is not a problem that people don't have sufficient opportunities to cast a ballot.