26 September—Back in January, Sen. Saud Anwar, Rep. Brandon Chafee, Rep. Michael D’Agostino, Rep. Joshua Elliott, Rep. Anne Hughes, and Rep. Geraldo Reyes, all Democrats (of course) and only a small cadre of the usual suspects who propose most of the asinine legislation the Connecticut General Assembly regularly inflicts on the state’s citizens, residents, taxpayers, and even visitors, proposed Bill No. 5704 to their colleagues. This is it:

AN ACT CONCERNING MANDATORY VOTING

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened:

That title 9 of the general statutes be amended to require that (1) each qualified elector either cast a ballot at an election or provide a valid reason for not so casting a ballot, (2) an election official mail to any qualified elector who did not cast a ballot at an election a form inquiring as to why such elector did not so cast a ballot, and (3) any such elector who did not cast a ballot at an election either respond to such form with a valid reason or be fined for not responding.

Statement of Purpose:

To make changes to election laws designed to institute mandatory voting and incentivize civic engagement.

It’s gospel among fascists and Democrats that there’s no better way to incentivize civic engagement or anything else, after all, than by threatening to fine people who don’t engage civically or otherwise perform as required. Okay, there is a better way—threatening imprisonment or death. And in our naïveté we thought that incentives were supposed to be positive—like carrots—rather than negative—like truncheons.

So the civic-duty sextet wanted to force people to vote, like it or not, and have election police nab the scofflaws.

Well, out of the 65 people who offered testimony on HB 5704 to the Joint Government Administration and Elections Committee hearing in March, it’s not surprising that only three—Sen. Anwar; old faithful progressive Democrat and former Secretary of the State Miles Rapoport; and Sarah Ganong of the Working Families Party—spoke or wrote in favor of the coercive—sorry, incentivized—voting legislation. ACLU lawyer Jess Zaccagnino’s written testimony summarily mentioned a number of voting bills and implicitly favored change.

The other 61 people who took the trouble to offer testimony made it clear that the choice of whether or not to vote is personal to each citizen and should not be mandated by any agency or level of government.

In defense of the malignant bill, Rep. Elliot claimed that fines for noncompliance would be nominal, “five, 10, 15, 20 bucks,” although HB 5704 itself neither specifies minimum and maximum penalties nor defines valid reasons for not voting. To justify the fines, Josh insisted, “If you say, ‘We want universal voting’ and then there’s no punishment at all, you aren’t really saying anything.” Talk about incentivizing. Anything you say, Josh.

Bottom line: Connecticut citizens still aren’t required to vote. We still have the right to vote, of course. But we also have the right not to vote. For now, anyway . . .