The Democratic leadership of the Connecticut General Assembly needs to do what it takes to pass H.B. 5434, the bill to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. By doing so, Connecticut will no longer be a spectator state in presidential elections; every vote cast for president will matter. Equally important, having the votes from all 50 states matter will dilute the well-documented efforts of the GOP to suppress Democratic-leaning voters in battleground states.
Since 2014 there have been Republican-led voter suppression efforts in eight of the 12 battleground states—the very same states that have outsized influence in determining who wins the presidency. In some of these states, estimates of the number of disenfranchised, Democratic-leaning, voters numbered in the hundreds of thousands—substantially more than President Trump’s margin of victory.
In announcing the just-formed Commission on Protecting the American Democracy from the Trump Administration, Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee said, “With the relentless attacks on voting rights that have become a staple in the playbook of the Republican Party, it’s absolutely imperative to develop a robust and permanent infrastructure within the Democratic Party for voter protection and empowerment,” Perez went on to recommend the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact as a solution to the attacks on voting rights.
Read enough? Click here to sign Daily Kos petition to tell Democratic leadership in CT General Assembly to pass H.B. 5434 to join National Popular Vote Compact.
The Compact is a constitutionally permissible agreement among states to award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The Compact is built on two simple principles: everyone’s vote for president should matter, and the winner should be the candidate who receives the most votes. Once states holding 270 electoral votes join, the Compact will go into effect, making the national popular vote winner the president. Ten states and the District of Columbia, representing 165 electoral votes, have joined the Compact over the past 10 years.
Sadly, virtually the entire Republican caucus opposes making every vote matter. But the bill can still pass on a party line vote. It is time for Democratic holdouts in the Connecticut General Assembly to end their unsubstantiated critiques of the Compact; they imagine problems where there are none. But by preventing Connecticut from joining the Compact, they are getting in the way of solving very real problems of disenfranchised voters, thwarting the will of the majority, and voter suppression.
A recent study from researchers at the UC San Diego analyzed votes after the implementation of voter laws in multiple elections and found that unnecessarily strict voter ID laws significantly suppressed minority, Democratic and liberal voters.
The study found “that strict photo identification laws have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of Hispanics, Blacks, and mixed-race Americans in primaries and general elections.” For strong liberals the estimated drop in turnout is10.7 percentage points, four times higher than for strong conservatives. Given virtually zero evidence of in-person voter fraud—the type that voter ID laws prevent—the true fraud is Republican efforts to steal elections through voter suppression.
Let’s be clear; what the small group of undecided and opposed Democratic legislators is saying is that the overwhelming majority of their caucus, the Governor, the Lt. Governor, the Secretary of the State, the ex-Attorney General with Yale law degree now U.S. Senator, Connecticut’s other U.S. Senator, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and many hundreds of lawmakers in other states got it wrong.
The holdouts believe they know more than the framers of the Compact who include Mark Grueksin, called by Campaigns & Elections magazine “Colorado’s best election lawyer, bar none,” Robert Richie, executive director for 25 years of Fair Vote, and Harvard trained attorney Tom Campbell who served as law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White and was a law professor at Stanford University for nearly 20 years.
After a decade of consideration the time is long overdue for the Connecticut General Assembly to make our votes matter—and to protect our democracy against the Republican assault on voting rights. Speaker Aresimowicz, House Majority Leader Ritter, Senate President Looney and Senate Majority Leader Duff need to use their positions of leadership to pass H.B. 5434 and join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Please sign the Daily Kos petition to tell the Democratic leadership to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact by passing H.B. 5434 before the legislative session ends on June 7.
Thank you to the following advocacy groups with more than 50,00 supporters in CT for sponsoring the Daily Kos petition
National Popular Vote CT
Action Together Connecticut and chapters
American Reformers (CT)
CT Working Families
DefenDemocracy of CT
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Democracy Awakens
Glastonbury Huddle
Indivisible CT, Greenwich and CT Shoreline
LegitAction
North Haven Wallingford Progressive Action Network
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Our Revolution CT Team
Politics Reborn CT
Prevail Blue
PSNCT
Women's March on Washington CT Chapter
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