After a long run of mediocrity, the Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz has a new campaign website up.  You can check it out by clicking here.

 The new website features more streamlined navigation menus, soft shades of blue, and a copious amount of Susan Bysiewicz photographs.  The main page features rotating images - Secretary Bysiewicz with kids, speaking to firefighters at a podium, shaking hands with the troops - all the standard campaign website Secretary of the State’s website fare.  Soon, the site will even feature a page for kids to learn about life in the always-exciting Secretary of the State’s office. 

In case you were burning to know just what SotS Bysieciwz is up to this week, complete with summaries and photos, you can visit the Week in Review section.  You can also read one of the many musings of the Secretary in the Latest News section.  For example, the Secretary is concerned that the State’s Boards and Commissions do not feature enough African-Americans, Women, and Latinos.

The Secretary’s website will certainly strengthen her bid for Attorney General efforts to improve the flow of communication between the voters people of Connecticut and their duly elected Attorney General Secretary of the State.

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz jumped on the Barack Obama bandwagon today. The Stamford Advocate quotes her thus (Emphasis added):

Bysiewicz says it’s impossible to ignore the surge of enthusiasm that led to record turnout over 50 percent in Connecticut’s primary.

She says she’s ready to believe in a candidate willing to use government as a means for improving people’s lives.

The Secretary, in all of her politicking, has yet to figure out that improving people’s lives happens when government gets out of the way. Don’t hold your breath for a change.

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.