At Friday’s Appropriations Subcommittee meeting, Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas again pled her case for more funding of the state’s Early Voting Initiative in the biennial budget. Her pleas come in the face of Lamont’s biennial budget proposals that include a 50% cut to the state’s current $1.3 million early voting budget for the next two years.

“Between 2023 and 2026, this office will have implemented more election reforms than in the past 15 years combined,” said Thomas. “We do this with a great amount of pride, yet our budget has not kept pace with this reality, and it’s just not sustainable.”

Provisions for early voting were first passed into state law in 2023. Since then, early voting has been the target of Republican lawmakers, who have stated that low voter turnout, in tandem with the increased costs that implementation would require of municipalities, made it more trouble than it’s worth. Thomas, an advocate of the initiative, has made repeated requests for better funding of early voting since even before the bill which implemented it was passed, yet so far her requests have fallen on deaf ears.

Currently, the biennial budget accounts for zero funds allocated to municipalities for costs associated with early voting. Thomas recounted that in 2023, towns received up to $10,500 in municipal grants for costs associated with early voting, or $1.8 million in total, while in 2024, they received $1 million. This year, there is no funding allocated.

Thomas told the subcommittee that early voting numbers have increased, with up to 41% of voters having cast their ballots in the early voting period for the November elections, which she thinks could be increased even more if funds were appropriated for voter education. With this increased turnout, she thinks it is likely that towns will have a higher demand for the implementation of more early polling stations, which would drive up municipal costs even further. Rep. Tammy Nuccio (R-Ashford) noted that in one of the towns in her district, early voters made up 57% of the vote.

Additionally, the Secretary of State’s office is also expected to take a $100,000 budget cut to its printing budget, funding of which is used to print out voting related documents such as the state’s Register and Manual or “Blue Book”, which inform voters on the state’s legislative process and officials. Additionally, six staff positions that were previously funded by ARPA, are now on the chopping block. Another position, a Bridgeport election monitor that was previously paid $150,000, has not been included in the proposed biennium.

“There’s also zero funds for the ARPA funded Voting Rights Act,” said Thomas. “So there were six staff positions and other components of the Voting Rights Act that after June 30, won’t be funded at all.”

Sen. Saud Anwar (D-East Hartford) said that it appeared to him that the proposed budget “in its current form, going to put your entire department a very significant disadvantage.” He asked how it got to this point, to which Thomas said that the Secretary of State’s office had “more positions 20 years ago than now,” and that the office has downsized significantly during the state’s more financially turbulent years.

“It’s actually hard to do our job at all, forget about good or otherwise,” said Thomas. “And of course, everything we do requires a very high level of excellence, whether it’s on the business registration side or the election side.”

Thomas said of elections that “the work is getting more sophisticated, the volume is much higher.”

“In addition to all of the voter facing projects, like early voting, hopefully one day no excuse absentee voting, automatic voter registration, all of these reforms that we already have,” said Thomas. “There’s a lot of back of the office projects that have to do, with mandated reporting that we have to send to the federal government on a regular basis, voter roll updates. There are just countless projects.”

She noted that in addition to elections work, the Secretary of State’s role in business registration adds an entirely different workload that requires an entirely different expertise. Provost confirmed that the office is currently looking to fill nine vacancies in total. Thomas said that even if only one position was filled on the department’s business registration department, that the state would be collecting “even conservatively, another $700,000 annually, best case another $900,00 annually,” making the positions a net gain for the state’s budget.

“I just think the risk to our election system by operating on a shoestring is, frankly, a risk I’m not comfortable taking, and I think it’s too high, and I think the voters of Connecticut would think it’s too high,” said Thomas. “I just think we’re at a point that is perilously close to the breaking point.”

Republish This Story

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.