CT state Senator Haskell with MDA
Image source: www.senatedems.ct.gov
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Connecticut state Senator Will Haskell has a plan; a Proposed Bill No. 180 would institute a $20 fine for not voting.

That title 9 of the general statutes be amended to provide that (1) at the 2024 state election and each state election thereafter, all qualified electors shall either cast a ballot or provide a valid reason for not casting a ballot, (2) following the 2024 state election and each state election thereafter, (A) the Secretary of the State shall mail to all qualified electors who did not cast a ballot at the most recent state election a form inquiring as to why such elector did not cast a ballot, which form shall advise that valid reasons for not casting a ballot include travel, illness, conscientious objection or such other reason as the Secretary may prescribe, and (B) failure to respond to such form with a valid reason shall result in a fine of twenty dollars paid to the Office of the Secretary of the State

This is a remarkable way to encourage civic engagement. I think we should institute fines for anyone not exercising all of their Constitutionally protected rights.

A fine of $20 per year for not exercising the right to keep and bear arms is in order.

Of course, as in voting, no record of how one exercised that right could be maintained; no record of who you voted for, no firearm registration.

Hmm… and if we can vote by mail, then we should be able to buy guns by mail again. I think Haskell is on to something here.

Of course, seeing with whom he hangs, I doubt that he’ll see this our way.

(Note to the sarcasm-challenged: This is sarcasm. I’m pointing out the hypocritical way different rights are viewed. I am not advocating for fines.)

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81 COMMENTS

  1. The same Republicans who insist that Democrats should just “move on” from the 1/6 insurrection continue to refuse to acknowledge that they spent months lying to their base about the election — and that, as a result, their base *hasn’t* “moved on,” and sees 1/6 as only a prelude.

    • When the Democrat Party rounds up and prosecutes all of the “insurrectionists” that burned and destroyed Federal property and attacked Federal Officers throughout 2020 in places like; Seattle, Portland, Washington DC, etc…, then we can talk about January 6th. Let’s stop pretending that what happened on January 6th was the first time we saw acts of “insurrection”.

      • 100% stupid is ignoring 4 plus years or slander and libel topped off with election fraud. You don’t hear the democRat Party talking about the Electoral College anymore because they found a way around it. Stop the presses in the dark of night, cook the books and say democRats won and confirm it with blocked investigations. Rest assured if it were POTUS DJT said to be cooking the books investigations would be never ending. After 4 plus years of never ending slander. libel and KGB style investigations the Rat Party has proven what they would do.

        If Jim Crow Gun Control joe can sign an order to kill thousands of jobs and injure thousands more down the pipeline then that sick self serving pos can bully anyone he wants including the pasty mouth “democRat” crime syndicate twerp pointing a finger at the GOP.

        Now Jim Crow Gun Control joe and the rest of the Rat Party are in a hurry to use POTUS DJT’s idea for $2000.00 stimulas payments in an attempt to put out their tyrannical fires. If POTUS DJT killed jobs like that he would be crucified by the hypocrite maxist media.

        It’s waaaaaay past time to cease playing games with the democRat Party. Now that inanimate statues are gone it is time to hold the democRat Party responsible for putting those statues there in the first place. The democRat Party should be held monetarily liable for slavery, segregation, lynching, Jim Crow, the KKK, Eugenics, Gun Control and other democRat Party race based atrocities.
        The democRat Party has skated on by their insane racist history for decades. No Justice No Peace needs to directed solely towards the democRat Party. Months of marching drama over a few bad cops however when compared to what the democRat Party has done to Blacks the actions of a few bad cops amount to a gnat fart.
        Bottom line…A Black American belonging to the democRat Party makes as much sense as a Jew belonging to the nazi party.

    • Democrats are the crime syndicate. They have a long, sordid history of stealing other peoples stuff then blaming the innocent. Native Americans, Americans of Japanese descent, racial minorities, anyone who votes against them, etc, etc.

    • Like how there are also Democrats calling for impeachment, but that we should just “move on” from the “most secure election ever” when there are so many inconsistencies, and that the “insurrection” where DC police let people into the capital just happened to interrupt the vote where several members were planning to challenge the results based off of the inconsistencies? And that the riot started while Trump was still talking, and that there was antifa in the riot? And you expect to believe this whole crock of shit the media is force-feeding us about damn “insurrection”?after the whole “summer of love” and “peaceful protests”? Bless your pea-pickin little heart.

      • Y’all wanted to lock up Hillary Clinton over emails but want Democrats to ‘move on’ from an organized and fomented by former President Trump and his agents. Just let this hypocrisy sink in.

        • Hillary has been in and around government institutions since 1979. She should know better than using a private unsecured server for govt business. And yet she used it anyway. Or do you deny that the server ever existed?

          As for Trump, where in his speech did he call for violence? Did you even listen to the speech, or are you just listening to CNN & co? Seriously? Bet you still think he called neonazis “very fine people” after charlottesville. For the sake of our Republic do your own research, before we all have to pay the price for your ignorance.

        • What she did was illegal on many levels. What some states did was unconstitutional on federal and state level. Trump did not tell people to do anything illegal. Only in your messed up leftist mind anything a conservative does has to be wrong. So I say to you fuckoff and die mother fucker.

        • LOL!!! Tough talking ‘Tired of the bs’ is a decorated 5 star general in the Keyboard Kommando Korps 🤣🤡🤣🤡

        • LOL – is your life such a sad state of affairs that the only joy you have is to troll here? Go get a hobby in real life for your own sake, and quit wasting everyone’s time on this site who actually wants to civilly discuss firearms and related topics. Your pathetic ad hominem attacks on other users here is a waste of bits on a server. Either grow up and act like an adult, or politely fuck off and let the adults speak.

        • The problem with your (and the Democrats’) theory about Trump inciting to insurrection is that the FBI has publicly announced that they have hard evidence, and have arrested and gotten indictments against some involved, of the riot on 1/6 being planned before Trump’s speech.
          Which means, for those who can follow a calendar, Trump couldn’t have incited the riot.
          Please try to keep up.

    • ‘insurrection’.

      Cool story Share Blue. Next tell us how 30+ ACTUAL murders plus multiple billions of damage to public and private property was just a constitutionally protected protest for ‘racial justice’.

      • “The troll is strong with this one.”

        If it weren’t for bad trolls, we’d have no trolls at all.

    • If Jan-6 was an “insurrection” you really need to brush up on your history. The Symbionese Liberation Army put on a better insurrection but the oppressed masses were too apathetic to do a popular uprising to overthrow the state. And there was the Puerto Rican independence group who did storm the Capital building and killed several people back in the 1950s.

  2. After the election last year I lost faith in the integrity of our election system and in the Republican party’s willingness to fight. With Republicans like Mitt Romney, who needs Democrats?

    I contacted my county elections office and unregistered to vote. I will not vote again and I unregistered to make sure no one could vote in my name.

    I REFUSE to participate in a rigged system with no safeguards and no integrity.

    • Soap, Ballot, jury, bullet. But perhaps the whole GameStop stock incident recently introduced the stock market as a fifth box. At least till they kick us off of that or make it more rigged than it already is.

    • Michael, why bother to amend it? If you don’t vote “correctly” the machine will change it to the “correct” vote.

      • What the hell? If you don’t vote, the machine will vote Democrat for you. …maybe 5 or 6 times. In some states, if you DO vote Republican, they’ll vote again for you anyway …as a Democrat.

        • Ed Schrade says: “Even if you don’t vote, someone will vote for you.”

          And those who think this didn’t happen are, to put it simply, too stupid to be allowed out in public without a keeper.
          Here’s how it worked: States decided (in some cases illegally) to mail ballots to the address of all registered voters. But, some of those voters moved, and didn’t notify their registrar of the move. So their ballot goes to someone who lives at their old address, who simply fills out the ballot and mails it back.
          Don’t tell me this didn’t happen. You will be trying to say that people who see an opportunity to illegally ‘help’ their candidate with little to no chance of being caught wouldn’t do it. I, though, know more about people than some think.
          I can search the web, and find people who, in the last election, have been arrested and charged with election fraud. And more, over the last several elections, who have been convicted. So I, rather we know it happens.

  4. “(Note to the sarcasm-challenged: This is sarcasm. I’m pointing out the hypocritical way different rights are viewed. I am not advocating for fines.)”

    If you have to explain the joke, it wasn’t funny in the first place.

    (Trust me, I know.)

    • I prefer to think that it never was sarcasm, and I’d be more than happy to join a campaign to expand the mandatory participation model to every aspect of civil rights.

      Raise your voice in the public square at least once per year (letter to the editor, a substantial blog post, a letter to a legislator, a public demonstration, etc.), or pay the penalty.

      Buy a gun or at least $20 worth of ammo — better yet, train with a militia — or else pay your penalty into a public fund that subsidizes low-income folks’ purchase of a modern musket.

      I’m serious.*

      If there’s a proposal that includes both of those things, I’ll sign my name to it. And I say make the penalty hurt, too. $200 or $2,000 would be better. Nobody gets to freeload on the participation of others. If civic participation and exercising civil rights are important, let’s MAKE them important. All of them. To everyone.

      * Well, okay…I’m not agitating for anything like this, but I’d be willing to consider it.

      • “I’d be more than happy to join a campaign to expand the mandatory participation model to every aspect of civil rights. ”

        If exercising our constitutionally protected rights were mandatory, would we really live in a free country?

        And, as someone pointed out, how ’bout all those unenumerated rights covered by the 9th and 10th Amendments?

        • The country and the people aren’t the same thing. The country as a whole could be more stable, prosperous, and free than ever under such a system. As individuals we may have less leeway — maybe. Maybe the societal benefits would be worth it.

          re: all those other unenumerated rights… Better get in shape, because we’re all going to be exercising nonstop. 😀

          • Two things:
            – The country absolutely is the people. Without people, what you have is uninhabited, fallow land. Thus, if the people are free, you have a “free country”. People are not free if coerced, in a country, or a county.
            – If someone (Government? Really?) is going to require that “the people” exercise all their rights, then the amount, number, array, span of unenumerated rights cannot be regulated because they are unenumerated, uncounted, uncountable.

  5. In Chiraq folks get paid to vote…just ask “Dr.” Willie Wilson @ “where’s MY hunert dollah bill”?!?

  6. The Democrats have turned DC into an armed encampment as part of their political theater. They have decided that the GOP and conservatives in particular need to be silenced. Part of that is to support the lie that an unarmed miniature riot was a full blown armed rebellion and to pretend this “insurrection” somehow threatens the legislative body of the most powerful country in history. If they truly believed believed that I would call them chickens, but these people aren’t as cowardly as one might think, they are instead diabolical. They seem to want cover for the destruction of the entire Bill of Rights, trying to provoke a true insurrection to allow them to seize complete control as a Socialist Oligarchy.

    • The left’s end game is total destruction of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The left doesn’t even support the right to life as evidenced by their position(s) on abortion.

  7. While I understand the CT proposal is not, I hope the suggestion we fine people for not exercising all their rights is tongue in cheek. Why?

    Read the 9th Amendment. If a right can be defined as any action which does not use force or fraud to violate the rights of another, the number of rights contained in the 9th are so staggering, we could make every person on the planet millionaires dining people for the rights they don’t exercise.

    Never mind questioning how we are expected to exercise our 3A rights when government never tries to violate it in the first place.

  8. The dems and der Fuhrere Joedolf Biden are following Hitler’s playbook to the letter. Why they are allowed to continue in our Constitutional Republic is beyond my comprehension.
    The have and are still commiting treasonous felonies .

    • “The dems and der Fuhrere Joedolf Biden are following Hitler’s playbook to the letter.”

      You gotta get out more, and educate yourself. Stalin was far better at “Hitler’s playbook” than was Hitler. Adolph was a Boy Scout compared to Stalin. And he stayed in power longer.

      Hitler made suggestions, and turned his agents loose. Stalin issued directives, and turned his agents loose. Once you start declaring “Hitler”, you lose all credibility, becoming just a clanging cymbal, much sound and fury signifying nothing of importance.

      You have the power to fix your deficiency.

      • Hitler promoted competition and had different groups trying to perform the same function. He believed the best and most ruthless would be the winner. It also led to a lot of duplicated efforts and wasted resources.

  9. The dems and der Fuhrer Joedolf Biden are following Hitler’s playbook to the letter. Why they are allowed to continue in our Constitutional Republic is beyond my comprehension.
    The have and are still commiting treasonous felonies .

    • In my wife’s homeland, it is illegal to not vote in an election, if you are a citizen of voting age. There are stiff penalties for non-voters who are otherwise eligible. If you happen to be out of the country and miss an election, you are required to visit an embassy or consulate and report in, and complete a special form that goes into your record. If you don’t, then you face eventual arrest and a stiff fine whenever you return. Of course, if you happen to have a judge, upper level bureaucrat, or well-connected lawyer in the family, it can be made to go away.

      Whenever we would travel to visit her family, and then return to the States, I would get off the plane and kiss the ground, thankful to be back. That sentiment is at risk of fading these days.

  11. This is very confusing. I would agree that this becomes a poll tax. The wording of this article leaves me wondering about one thing though. Are we talking about ‘voters’ or ‘electors’?

    • “Are we talking about ‘voters’ or ‘electors’?”

      In every election other than presidential, the voters are the electors. In presidential elections, the official “electors” are the voters.

      • Certainly sounds more like a way to legitimize getting rid of the electoral college in peoples’ minds.

        • “Certainly sounds more like a way to legitimize getting rid of the electoral college in peoples’ minds.”

          The Dims certainly wouldn’t object to that being a side benefit, but the terms “elector” is in line with the history of Connecticut laws.

          Kinda like Louisiana, where “counties” are “parishes”, and people are not “citizens”, but parishioners.

  12. How about fining people who don’t own a gun? People who have to call the cops to save their sorry asses?

  13. Every time a house member does not show for a vote, that individual should pay a $20,000,000.00 fine.

  14. I kind of like this idea because it would make sure that EVERYONE has an ID to vote and it may discourage voting by people who shouldn’t be voting. Once the demowit figures that out, this proposal is DOA. On the other hand, you’re free not to exercise a right.

    • “On the other hand, you’re free not to exercise a right.”

      What the authorities overlook is that not voting is a vote.

      • There is an exception for conscientious objection in the proposal. “I cannot in good conscience vote for either rats or snakes” ought to do it.

  15. Unbelievable!! If one were to look at what the Soviets did in order to tout that their elections were so much more inclusive so people there were voting at 100% then you get an idea as to why. They imprisoned those who did not vote and more particularly vote for the only political party on the ballot!!! It is no longer a “secret” that Dems are the new incarnation of the “benevolent communists” of old!!!

  16. Well, if they can’t charge us for voting, they’ll charge us for not voting. If you take a stroll, they’ll tax the street. If you try to sit, they’ll tax your seat. If you get too cold, they’ll tax the heat. If you take a walk, they’ll tax your feet.

    Biden promised us tax increases. We simply didn’t know how creative his little minions could be.

  17. All THIS talk is ok, it keeps things stirred up, but we all know what must happen to put THIS NATION back on track, WE ALL know the election was fixed, WE ALL know the Democraps plan to eliminate the people’s rights, regardless of what the laws say, the democrats or not abiding by ANY, that’s how they got in by doing whatever it took, SO that’s WHAT we must do to REMOVE THEM, legally are not, BY ANY and ALL MEANS that is Necessary, the TRASHaCrats MUST Be TAKEN OUT.

  20. Let’s not dismiss this idea summerly.

    Let’s suppose a precinct consisting of 100 eligible voters. (Scale to pleasure). Suppose that only 10 are politically active enough to register to vote; and, only 1 of these actually votes.

    Such a precinct is ripe for fraud. The 90 eligible voters who did not register leave the door open for 90 false registrations in their names. The 99 eligible voters who did not vote leave the door open for 99 fraudulent votes.

    Now, then, if we suppose that there is a $20 fine for failing to exercise your civic duty to register and vote, then we have a solution to close these doors. Each eligible voter would make an effort to at least register. And, upon the advent of each election, at least return a mailed-in document constituting a nominal entry of his appearance in the election; effectively, voting “Present”. The election officials will then check-off his “appearance” as having “voted” sort-of. Now, no one can fraudulently submit a ballot in that voter’s name.

    In our simple example, the one guy who presented his legitimate ballot would not have his legitimate vote offset by 99 fraudulent ballots.

    Election officials in this precinct would tally the rolls: 99 registered voters were accounted for having voted “Present”; 1 registered voter submitted his ballot which was tabulated. The ballot-box was not “stuffed” with fraudulent votes. Total appearances: 100. Total registered voters: 100. 100 – 100 = 0 No over-vote; no under-vote. The books balance.

    Voters often move out of their precinct. A mailing from the precinct inviting registered voters to either: Vote; submit a nominal appearance of “Present”; or, become vulnerable to a $20 fine would likely result in citizens who have moved-out of the precinct submitting documentation voluntarily vacating their registration in that precinct. This would clean-up the voter rolls in each precinct.

    Driver’s license records of current addresses should serve to clean-up voter rolls. If the DMV has the citizen in precinct B while he is still registered in precinct A, then he should be removed from the rolls in precinct A (upon due notice by mail). Furthermore, precinct B should notify the citizen that he is liable to register in precinct B and failing to do so makes him subject to a $20 fine upon the next election.

    As citizens we have some civic duties. For example, to serve on juries and to register for military service. If we fail to appear for jury duty (or register for military service) the consequences are quite severe. Somehow, we manage to submit to these laws; and, the laws are enforced. Warrants are issued for non-compliance. I don’t see why our legislatures could not adopt laws compelling compliance with voter registration/vacating registration after moving. (Likewise, we are compelled to keep our addresses up-to-date for driver’s licenses). I don’t see why we couldn’t adopt laws compelling us to make an “appearance” on each election so as to ensure the voter rolls are kept current and that fraudulent ballots aren’t cast in the names of citizens who don’t care to vote.

    • Half the country cannot or will not vote. The half that does is pretty evenly split along party lines. Which means it wouldn’t take much to make the pendulum swing a certain way. It means that 25% of the country is forcing the other 75%. Right or wrong, there is a reality to be dealt with that I’m not confident the Republican Party even sees. Much less can properly handle.

  23. I’m not sure that incentivizing more people to vote without insisting they think or learn about how they’re voting is a good idea.

  24. Valid reason? How about failure to compose a slate of candidates worthy of a vote. Such a ridiculous proposition must include None of the Above among the ballot choices. They might be surprised how well NOTA performs. Be careful what you ask for.

  25. I would not charge anyone $20 for failing to vote. Maybe a dollar for a first offense, but never more than five bucks. Twenty is way over the line of reasonable.

    Collect all the fines and share the money with those who did vote.

    Call it “Pizza Money By Voting”.

    Or beer money … whatever your like really.

  26. “You have the right to do anything you want to do or not do, but if if you don’t do it we’ll force you to.”
    Proof once more that any fool or idiot can be a politician. Whether or not they understand and abide by the Constitution is of minor consequence.

    • “Whether or not they understand and abide by the Constitution is of minor consequence.”

      So wrong, on so many levels…get a clue.

      The Prime Directive of any politician is to benefit election donors. All the rest is just minutiae.

  27. Would the good senator also punish people for NOT owning firearms? Would None Of The Above constitute an acceptable vote?

  28. These A holes are absolutely nuts!! Can you say domineering, pretentious, tyrannical scumbags??? Rights are there for all of us to decide to use or not, the main one is called FREEDOM!!!! If you want to enforce a RIGHT, enforce the 2nd amendment!!!!

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