For the first time since 2005, Montana election administrators in some counties will begin running the state’s new voter management system alongside the current system in a series of “parallel tests” before a more-broad deployment next year. The current schedule calls for all the state’s counties to switch over to the new “ElectMT” system on the third week of 2023, state Elections Manager Stuart Fuller told lawmakers Thursday. Before that happens, Fuller said, 15 counties will conduct parallel tests during the 2022 primary and general federal elections. That will give those election workers the opportunity to test-drive the ElectMT system while the official election processes — from registering voters to printing, mailing and accepting ballots — will be run on the tried-and-true MontanaVotes system. MontanaVotes was adopted statewide in 2006, and the state has been developing a successor to the aging system since 2019.
Connecticut Bill easing access to absentee voting wins final passage | Mark Pazniokas/Hartford Courant
A bill that would allow out-of-town commuters and caretakers of the disabled or chronically ill to vote by absentee ballot won final legislative passage on a 30-4 vote in the Senate. The measure stops short of allowing no-excuse absentee voting, a step that would require passage of a referendum amending the Connecticut Constitution — something that cannot happen before the 2024 election. Instead, it amends statutory language that is more restrictive than the standard set in the constitution, which disenfranchises voters in some circumstances. The constitution empowers the General Assembly to allow absentee voting by anyone “unable to appear at the polling place on the day of election because of absence from the city or town of which they are inhabitants or because of sickness, or physical disability or … the tenets of their religion.”
Full Article: Bill easing access to absentee voting in Connecticut wins final passage – Hartford Courant