by Donald Eng CTNewsJunkie
HARTFORD, CT — Could this be the year ranked choice voting comes to Connecticut?
On the day Senate Bill 386, which would allow municipalities to voluntarily adopt ranked choice voting in party caucuses and primaries and some municipal elections, cleared the Government Administration and Elections Committee, a group of municipal leaders wrote to Gov. Ned Lamont and legislative leaders urging its passage into law.
The letter — addressed to Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, Speaker of the House Matthew Ritter, D-Hartford, and House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford — emphasized that the proposal would not mandate RCV statewide, but instead empower cities and towns to adopt the system for their own municipal elections if they choose.
“This is a practical, incremental reform that respects local control,” the municipal leaders write. “It gives communities the freedom to strengthen democratic participation in ways that best reflect their residents’ needs.”
In the letter, the group pointed to declining civic engagement in the 2023 municipal elections, with Bridgeport seeing 19.98% turnout (down from 21.98 four years earlier) and Hartford seeing 13.74% (down from 18.14% in 2019). They said the numbers reflect voter disengagement with a system that can produce plurality winners without majority support.
Ranked Choice Voting allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, ensuring that winners secure majority backing in multi-candidate races. Supporters contend that this approach reduces negative campaigning, encourages coalition-building, and leads to more issue-focused elections.
The practice has been gaining in popularity across the country and is in use in about two dozen states in various jurisdictions, notably in New York City beginning last year. It generally works by allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference. If a candidate received 50% of the first-choice votes, they win. If no candidate achieves a majority, there is an instant runoff, where the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are distributed to the remaining candidates based on the next preference on the ballot. The process continues until one candidate tops 50%.
The letter also notes that the opt-in municipal framework is consistent with the Governor’s Working Group on RCV.
“As a mayor, my priority is making sure residents feel heard and represented,” said Barbara Smith, Norwalk mayor. “Ranked Choice Voting offers a way to encourage broader participation and ensure that winners in multi-candidate races have true majority support. Giving cities like Norwalk the option to adopt RCV is a practical step that strengthens local democracy while preserving our ability to choose what works best for our community.”
Mayor Caroline Simmons of Stamford agreed.
“This opt-in framework is exactly the kind of practical, incremental reform that respects local control while modernizing our democratic processes,” she wrote. “Allowing municipalities to adopt Ranked Choice Voting voluntarily ensures that communities can evaluate and implement reforms that strengthen participation and better reflect the will of their voters.”
And Gov. Ned Lamont said Connecticut works best when focused on practical solutions.
“Allowing municipalities to adopt Ranked Choice Voting on an opt-in basis respects local control while giving communities a tool to increase participation and ensure majority support in local elections,” he said. “This is not about partisanship, it’s about empowering voters and modernizing our democracy in a thoughtful, constitutional way.”
But partisanship may be unavoidable. The GAE Committee passed the measure by a party-line, 18-11 vote and Republicans have spoken out against it.
At the hearing, Democratic Sen. Cathy Osten of Sprague, who served on the working group, spoke in support of the proposal saying it would increase flexibility in elections. She also urged funding for equipment, software, education and training “so that people may exercise their franchise in the most secure and convenient manner possible.”
State Rep. Gale Mastrofrancesco of Wolcott, the ranking Republican on the committee, said she was “totally opposed” to the proposal.
“This complicated, multi-round system would make voting harder to understand and put even more strain on the local officials who actually run our elections,” she said.
Republican Sen. Rob Sampson, also of Wolcott, called it a foolish policy that would confuse voters.
“This contradicts the Democrats’ supposed goal of enfranchising every eligible voter in Connecticut,” he said. He pointed to a January, 2024 opinion from Attorney General William Tong in which Tong said nothing in the state constitution explicitly prohibited RCV, but he had concerns about passing it without a constitutional amendment and felt it could be successfully challenged.
But Tong, in his letter to Ritter, explicitly stated that his opinion was for state legislative and constitutional office elections only.
“General elections for federal and municipal office, and all primary elections, are beyond the scope of this opinion, since different constitutional provisions control those elections,” he wrote.