Connecticut’s ballot access laws have created an anti-democratic system where no U.S. House member has ever faced a primary challenger – and the courts and media are letting it happen.

As a civil rights attorney who has spent years fighting for democratic participation, I find Connecticut’s primary election system nothing short of scandalous. Here we have the only state in the nation where no sitting member of the U.S. House has ever been challenged in a primary. We not only have no AOC, no AOC has even made the ballot. Ever.

This isn’t because Connecticut lacks ambitious challengers or politically engaged voters. It’s because our state has erected what may be the most restrictive ballot access regime in America, creating a protective fortress around entrenched incumbents. Not that you would ever hear about it in the media.

Consider the case of Muad Hrezi, a 27-year-old progressive Democrat who dared to challenge Rep. John Larson in 2022. Despite raising over $500,000 and mobilizing enthusiastic supporters, Hrezi crashed into Connecticut’s Byzantine ballot access laws. At the Democratic convention, he won just 14 delegate votes to Larson’s 390 – about 3.5%, nowhere near the 15% threshold needed to automatically qualify for the primary ballot. This forced him onto the petition route, where the real nightmare began.

Connecticut demands that candidates collect signatures from 2% of registered party members in their district within just 42 days. The law applies equally to all parties. But in practice, it’s mostly Democratic incumbents who go unchallenged because Democrats hold all the U.S. House seats in Connecticut. The party convention is a fairer fight when one of the candidates is not an incumbent who is naturally going to have more support from party insiders.

For Hrezi, the petitioning law meant gathering 3,833 valid signatures – over 91 per day for six straight weeks. Compare that to other states: New Jersey requires 200 signatures, Tennessee just 25, Ohio only 50 plus a small fee. More than 20 states allow candidates onto the primary ballot with just a filing fee and no signatures at all. Hawaii? A mere $75 and 25 signatures.

Yet Connecticut forced Hrezi’s campaign to spend roughly $20,000 on petition gathering alone – money that in most states could fund an entire ballot access effort with plenty left over for actual campaigning.

The restrictions pile on like weights designed to break a challenger’s back. Incumbents, comfortably nominated by convention, get to skip this part.

All signatures must be collected in person, on paper – no electronic collection allowed, even though Gov. Ned Lamont proved during COVID that electronic signatures work perfectly well when he temporarily suspended the in-person requirement. Every single petition page must be notarized, adding hundreds of individual notarizations to the process. Only registered Democrats living in Connecticut can circulate petitions, arbitrarily excluding willing helpers who don’t meet these narrow criteria. Signatures must be organized by town on separate sheets, turning a shopping center petition drive into a juggling act of multiple clipboards.

Hrezi’s team worked themselves to exhaustion. Campaign staff testified about sore feet from daily pavement-pounding, long hours that pushed them to burnout, and the physical toll of racing against an impossible deadline. They increased pay for signature gatherers from $20 to $30 per hour in desperation, but even that couldn’t attract enough workers willing to endure the grind. “Maybe if I paid them $100 per hour,” Hrezi mused, “but at some point it becomes absurd when you have to pay for signatures.” Despite heroic efforts, they fell short.

Once again, Rep. Larson – in office since 1999 – faced no primary opponent.

When Hrezi took his fight to court in Hrezi v. Merrill, he raised fundamental constitutional questions that should concern every American who believes in democratic competition. How can a system that has literally never produced a primary challenge to a House incumbent be constitutional? The lawsuit meticulously documented how Connecticut’s cumulative burdens effectively “well-nigh eliminate candidate opportunity and voter choice” – language borrowed from the 2003 Campbell v. Bysiewicz decision that struck down Connecticut’s previous, even more restrictive system.

The legal arguments in Hrezi’s case were compelling. Under the Anderson-Burdick framework that federal courts use to evaluate election laws, severe burdens on ballot access trigger strict scrutiny. Connecticut’s scheme is severe by any measure – it combines the highest signature requirements with one of the shortest collection windows in the nation.

The state, defended by Attorney General William Tong (who will likely abstain from any rumored primary challenge for governor and either run as an incumbent or wait for another seat to open up), presented no witnesses at trial to defend these restrictions, relying instead on bare legal arguments. They couldn’t explain why 42 days was necessary instead of the 80-90 days originally proposed in a bill introduced after the Campbell v. Bysiewicz ruling. Neither could they explain why electronic signatures would threaten election integrity when they worked fine during the pandemic, or what legitimate purpose is served by requiring petition circulators to be registered Democrats when only Democratic voters’ signatures count anyway.

Under Connecticut’s own constitution, which courts have repeatedly interpreted as providing broader protections for speech and voting rights than the federal baseline, these restrictions should face even stricter scrutiny. Our state has a proud history of expanding voting rights through constitutional amendments, yet we maintain primary ballot access laws that effectively disenfranchise voters by denying them any choice beyond the incumbent.

The court ultimately denied Hrezi’s injunction, finding the system “challenging” but not unconstitutional. The judge pointed to one statewide candidate who had successfully petitioned onto a ballot (though it was not against an incumbent) as proof the system wasn’t impossible. But this misses the forest for the trees. When a law produces zero successful challenges to House incumbents across decades, that’s proof of systemic failure.

What’s perhaps most troubling is how invisible these structural barriers remain in public discourse. Media coverage focuses on the horse race – who might run, their credentials, their image – while ignoring the legal obstacles that predetermine outcomes. A recent Hartford Courant article speculated about potential 2026 challengers to Rep. Larson, including former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, without once mentioning that any challenger must collect nearly 4,000 signatures in 42 days or secure 15% at a hostile party convention. The article treats a primary as inevitable if certain candidates enter the race, when Connecticut’s rules make it anything but.

This is about power. These laws protect incumbents who’ve held their seats for decades, insulating them from accountability to voters. John Larson has served since 1999, Rosa DeLauro since 1991, Jim Himes since 2009.

Across nearly 80 combined years of service, not one has faced a primary opponent on the ballot. That’s carefully maintained oligarchy dressed up in democratic clothing.

The solution is straightforward: Connecticut must reform its primary ballot access laws.

• Either create one track for all candidates – incumbents and challengers alike must gather signatures under reasonable rules – or eliminate the convention endorsement shortcut entirely.
• Extend the petition period to at least 80-90 days as originally proposed in 2003?.
• Allow electronic signatures as we did during COVID.
• Let any legal voter circulate petitions regardless of party registration.
• Reduce signature requirements to levels comparable to other states.

These are basic democratic reforms that would simply bring Connecticut in line with the rest of America. Every other state has seen incumbents challenged in primaries because every other state allows genuine competition. Connecticut voters deserve the same opportunity to hold their representatives accountable.

As we approach 2026, we’ll undoubtedly see more speculation about potential primary challenges. But until we address the structural barriers that have protected incumbents for generations, such speculation is merely theater. The real story is whether our laws will even let challengers on the ballot. In a democracy, that question should have only one answer. Connecticut’s current answer – “probably not” – is a disgrace to our constitutional values and an insult to voters who deserve better than a rigged game.

The rights of voters and candidates cannot be separated. When we burden candidates with impossible requirements, we steal from voters their fundamental right to choose. Connecticut’s primary system has stolen that choice for too long. It’s time to take it back.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Alexander Taubes is a civil rights attorney in New Haven.