Republican National Committeeman John H. Frey and Committeewoman Patricia Longo were unanimously re-elected to four year terms at tonight’s Republican State Central Committee meeting in Stamford, Connecticut.  Delegates to the Republican National Convention were also unanimously approved - we’ll post that list in the coming days.

Republicans across the state will be gathering this week to nominate delegates to the May nominating conventions.  According to the Secretary of the State’s Election Calendar, delegates must be nominated between March 25th and April 1st.  The list of delegates must be reported to the local Town Clerk by 4pm on April 2nd.

Here is how the process works:  Each Republican Town Committee has Bylaws which spell out how delegates are chosen.  Some towns use the caucus method - that is, all registered Republicans in the town are notified via a public notice in the local newspaper that there will be a caucus of registered Republicans in town.  The caucus is open to all registered Republicans, not just Town Committee members.  At the caucus, a slate of delegates is nominated to represent the town at the various conventions - U.S. Congress, State Senate, and Assembly Districts made up of multiple towns.  If the nomination has a second voice of support, then it goes to a vote of the caucus.  Other towns nominate their delegates via a special meeting of the Republican Town Committee.  The only difference at this meeting from the caucus is - of course - only Republican Town Committee members are allowed to vote.  The nominations are usually done by RTC is large towns where assembling a caucus would be unwieldy.

 You can find out how many delegates are allocated to each town by clicking here and finding the name of your town in the list.  Note that there are three lists on this page - one for Congressional delegations, one for State Senate delegations, and one for State House delegations.  The delegate allocations are determined by formula, as spelled out in the Connecticut Republican State Party Bylaws, Article III, Section 2(a).  One delegate is awarded to a town for every 750 votes, or fraction thereof, received by the Republican candidate for Governor in the most recent election, plus 1 delegate if the Governor received a plurality of votes from that town.  Thus, to determine how many delegates must attend the conventions from each town, you use the following formula:

(# of votes for Governor Rell in 2006 / 750 ) + 1 delegate if Gov. Rell won the town = # of Delegates

Example:  If you were to get your money’s worth out of the Secretary of the State’s new website, you’d learn that the Governor received 924 votes in the Eastern Connecticut town of Andover.  Andover receives one delegate for the first 750 votes, one delegate for the remaining fraction, and one delegate because Gov. Rell’s 924 votes resoundingly defeated John DeStefano’s 510 votes.  Add it all up and Andover is sending three delegates to the 2nd Congressional District Convention, three delegates to the 19th Senatorial District convention, and three delegates to State Representative Pam Sawyer’s 55th State House District Convention.

Each of the conventions for the U.S. Congress will be held on Saturday, May 10, 2008.  The State Senate Conventions will be on Tuesday, May 13, Thursday, May 15th for the multi-town State House districts, and the week of May 20-27 for the Single Town Assembly Districts.

The Norwich Bulletin has an almost life-sized photographof Connecticut’s esteemed Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz, on their website today with an article about some of the problems encountered by voters, Registrars, and Town Clerks as they attempt to administer elections with the many new changes that have been mandated.

The Secretary of the Connecticut Republican State Central Committee, Bill Jenkins of Chaplin, offered his thoughts on the new ballots and enumerated some of the problems that occur - such as wet ballots and privacy issues. 

Some officials were strongly critical of the Bysiewicz and her office, such as the Norwich Democratic Registrar of Voters, Nancy DiPietro:

Nancy DiPietro, Norwich Democratic registrar of voters, expressed her frustration about the complaints of Dickerson and others. She said her office never expected the amount of people who turned out to register Monday before the primary, but her staff “did the best we could.”“I don’t want someone to not have the right to vote,” she said. “There are always going to be mistakes. There will never be a perfect election. There will never be a perfect ballot.”

And what solution was offered by the Secretary? More dramatic changes in the shape of Election Day Registration.

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz said Monday one way to address the problem is to allow same day registration. That way, if an individual’s registration was not listed, they could register right at the polling place.

Adding additional work and confusion to the Election Day environment certainly doesn’t seem like a good way to make things less complicated.  There is a very discerning pattern emerging here from quarters of the Democratic Party.  Whenever there are issues raised about problems with voting, many Democrats start shouting about the need to institute Election Day Registration as a fix.  But many of problems that arise on Election Day, including many of the problems alluded to in the article, are solved with simple changes that require the government to do very little.  Laura Lillan Dickerson can assure that her sons register to vote by going to Town Hall at some point before the very last minute.  Her sons are 19 years old - meaning they have been eligible to register for at least a year.  Let’s stop worshipping at the false idol of ‘convenience’ and start asking the citizens of this State to take just a little bit of responsibility for registering to vote.  Republicans want everyone to be able to vote - we always have a link for people to register to vote on our website.  We don’t need to make government bend to the lowest common denominator every time.