Editor, The Cheshire Herald:
The voting franchise is the most sacred and solemn aspect of our democratic republic. The proposed Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) scheme (House Bill 5701) will further erode this franchise and create additional doubt in the minds of the electorate as to veracity of process and procedures.
Voting is defined as one vote per one person. With Connecticut’s motto of “The Constitution State” we have had a constitutionally defined ballot process that has worked well since enactment of the State’s constitution in 1808. Ranked choice voting will do nothing to improve the voting franchise in Connecticut. In fact, based on the experiences of RCV in Maine, New York and Alaska, it will decrease voter participation, increase costs and create more doubt in the minds of the electorate about the integrity of their vote.
State budgets are already stressed to the point of not being able to update voter rolls in a timely and efficient manner (as required by law) in many towns. What makes the sponsors (which include Representative Linehan) of this proposed RCV legislation think that Connecticut will be able to implement the costly, confusing, time consuming process of RCV? Perhaps that is the goal, to further confuse the public and cause people to further give up, thus keeping the one-party rule of Connecticut of the past 40 years intact?
Robert Ham
Cheshire