“This is what democracy looks like.” A chant at the “No Kings” marches. But here in Connecticut, it’s worth asking whether that phrase applies.
I recently became politically active because of what I see as blatant federal corruption. This led me to volunteer for a candidate seeking a spot on the Democratic primary ballot. What I discovered wasn’t about Washington — it was about my own state and its Democratic town committee delegates.
Several delegates have publicly pre-committed their votes against any challenger before the convention even opens. They have expressed anger at volunteers for being emotional, for the passion that ordinary citizens bring to an extraordinary political moment. Then they lecture about decorum. Grow up.
What volunteers are demanding is a process that is transparent, competitive, and without manufactured barriers to entry. Some delegates have even stated that they are hesitant to sign a petition getting the challenger on the ballot because their job and their standing in the community could be damaged.
Under Connecticut law (CGS § 9-400), receiving 15% of delegate votes at the May 11 convention doesn’t mean delegates are endorsing a challenger — it simply qualifies them for the ballot. The endorsed candidate remains the party’s official choice. A vote for the threshold is a vote for democracy, not against anyone. Delegates know this.
The petition alternative — collecting roughly 4,000 notarized signatures from registered Democrats in just 42 days — has defeated every challenger who has attempted it.
In a lawsuit 23 years ago brought by the Brennan Center for Justice, U.S. District Court Judge Peter Collins Dorsey upheld the parties’ by-laws as constitutional, but conceded that the 15 percent rule “so limits the number of candidates who can qualify to appear on primary ballots as to well nigh eliminate candidate opportunity and voter choice.” Another lawsuit was filed by Muad Hrezi, who attempted to challenge John Larson in a 2022 primary. The lawsuits were filed. The system remains.
I have lived and voted in five states over the past 30 years and have never encountered such a restrictive primary process. The record speaks for itself: in the Third Congressional District, no challenger has ever qualified for a Democratic primary ballot against an incumbent. Not once.
The 2026 midterms are among the most consequential elections of my lifetime. Democracy requires contested choices — within parties as much as between them. When the door to a primary has never once opened, that isn’t democracy. That’s incumbency disguised as democracy.
The convention is May 11. Delegates, the statute gives delegates permission. All that’s missing is the will.
Mary Malaszek lives in Hamden.