The campaign to make voting by mail a universal option in Connecticut moved forward Thursday as the House Democratic majority passed and sent to the Senate legislation that would lift the last barriers to no-excuse absentee voting.
House Bill 5001 passed on a party-line vote of 101-49, reflecting a divide that opened during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when President Donald J. Trump denounced emergency measures liberalizing voting by mail.
But the measure passed quickly Thursday, a dramatic turnaround from the previous night, when a vote was postponed just before 11 p.m. after Republicans threatened to debate all night to protest Democrats’ refusal to consider even modest changes.
“We just needed to take a timeout,” said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford. “There was a way to solve it, but it’s really hard to solve at 11 o’clock when everybody’s tired and a little frustrated, and a little grumpy.”
The bill would repeal a law that now denies absentee ballots to any voter who cannot attest to being unable to vote in person due to sickness, disability, absence, military service, religious conflicts or being an elections worker.
Until the passage of a constitutional amendment in November 2024 by a margin of 58% to 42%, those same six conditions were part of a state constitution that was unusually prescriptive on rules for absentee voting.
“For far too long in our state, our laws have been far too restrictive,” said Rep. Matt Blumenthal, D-Stamford, co-chair of the committee overseeing elections legislation. “In fact, they’ve been some of the most restrictive in the country.”
That is what he said Wednesday, opening a debate that resumed Thursday afternoon with Blumenthal outlining revisions that had been negotiated overnight with Republicans.
One change struck a provision that would have allowed a voter to permanently sign up for voting by mail, which would have resulted in ballots automatically being mailed before every election.
“We had a real issue with that,” said Rep. Gale Mastrofrancesco of Wolcott, the ranking Republican on the elections law committee.
Republicans complained that the original provision left municipal officials with no way to verify if voters signed up for permanent voting by mail still lived in their communities.
The amended version allows voters to sign up for absentee ballot applications to be automatically mailed to them, not the actual ballot.
“I think that’s much more of a secure way to do it,” Mastrofrancesco said.
Republicans had objected to other provisions of the bill, including anti-intimidation language and a section intended to bar federal immigration agents from coming within 250 feet of a polling place.
Mastrofrancesco praised Blumenthal for negotiating changes. They did not win Republican votes, but they ended a filibuster threat.
“I appreciate the chairmans of the committee here working to get this done. I appreciate that, although there are other parts of the bill that I still am not happy with,” she said. “I can’t support the bill at the end of the day because there’s other parts of it. But I think this part, this section of the bill, was a big improvement, and I appreciate the dialogue.”
