On February 21, the Democratic National Committee unanimously passed a resolution in favor of voting rights, and in favor of amending the U.S. Constitution to guarantee the right to vote. Here is the language of the resolution, from the Brad Blog. The Brad Blog post was written before the resolution passed. The resolution has many interesting factual details, including data on which national constitutions guarantee the right to vote. Only a handful of nations omit such a guarantee, according to the resolution, and the resolution names those countries.

It would be helpful if the resolution expressed the idea that the right to vote includes the right of choice for whom to vote. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.

Connecticut holds three special legislative elections on Tuesday, February 24. One of them is for the State Senate, 23rd district, in Bridgeport. The Working Families Party nominee, Edwin A. Gomes, is a registered member of the party, and he is given some chance of winning. He is a former Democratic State Senator from this district, but he was defeated in the 2012 Democratic primary. The special election has five candidates on the ballot: Gomes, Democratic nominee Richard DeJesus, Republican nominee Quentin Dreher, independent candidate Rev. Kenneth Moales, and independent candidate Charles Hane.

The special election was triggered when Senator Andres Ayala resigned to become head of the state’s Motor Vehicles department. In November 2014, Ayala had been the only candidate on the ballot. Ayala received 9,476 votes on the Democratic line and 807 on the Working Families line.

Gomes is at a disadvantage because Connecticut’s discriminatory public funding law gives the Democratic nominee $71,017 in campaign funds. Because the Working Families Party didn’t poll as much as 10% in this district in November 2014, Gomes can’t receive any public funding unless he completes a petition signed by 10% of the last vote cast in this district. He can’t receive equal public funding unless his petition has 20% of the last vote cast. Nevertheless, it is not known if his petition succeeded.

Political Science Professor Michael McDonald has a webpage that posts turnout data for each state. McDonald determines the number of ballots cast in each state, and divides that by the voting-eligible population. “Voting-eligible population” means not only the number of registered voters, but the number of people who could register if they chose to. The webpage shows turnout for all recent congressional and presidential elections. To see the 2014 data, see here. To see the 2010 data, see here.

When one compares 2014 to 2010, one sees that California easily had the sharpest drop in turnout of any state. The 2010 California turnout was 45.8%, and the 2014 California turnout was 30.0%. Comparing those percentages shows that the 2014 percentage was only 67.2% of the 2010 percentage. No other state had a ratio lower than .7. For the nation as a whole, the 2014 turnout was 88% of the 2010 turnout.

One likely reason that California’s turnout in 2014 slipped so badly relative to 2010 is that in November 2010, voters were given a choice of six parties for the statewide offices, whereas in November 2014 California was the only state in which it was impossible for anyone to vote in any statewide race unless that voter voted for a Republican or a Democrat. In November 2010, over 10% of the voters had voted for a minor party candidate for Lieutenant Governor or Insurance Commissioner.