On Tuesday, April 9, Connecticut Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas held a discussion on campus to engage young people in getting involved titled “Use Your (Civic) Power!”
The Princeton Review ranked Sacred Heart University as #15 on the list of least politically active students out of 389 colleges surveyed, based on student ratings of their own levels of political awareness.
22 seats of the 160 seat East Theatre at West Campus were filled for the event held to promote civic engagement. Of the 22 people in attendance, 11 were members of university administration or faculty, 4 were with Secretary Thomas, and 4 were members of the media.
Before the event, the Spectrum conducted a one on one interview with Secretary Thomas.
“People always ask me, when did you decide to get into politics, and I say, I never decided, I’m not in politics, I’m in governance. I just happened to have to run for office and a political system. But before this, I worked in the nonprofit sector. So I’ve always believed in giving back and doing good. And I think the same is true of the student body here,” said Thomas.
“They don’t have to be politically minded to be good civic citizens. Because I promise you, everyone either has or will have an issue that they care about, for student debt forgiveness, lower taxes, the ability to have a certain license for a certain job, like whatever it is, we all have things that are decided by elected people that will be important to us,” Thomas continued.
Thomas’s initiative, Next Gen Elections, trains 40 college students as poll workers for the November 2024 and 2025 elections. Applicants must be a freshman, sophomore, or junior undergraduate student enrolled in a Connecticut college or university for the 2024-2025 academic year. Before election day, participants will complete an eight hour, primarily virtual, training course.
Source: Isabella Fabbo, Photo Editor
Source: Isabella Fabbo, Photo Editor
The inspiration for the program came from wanting to expand the conversation of what Thomas referred to as overall “civic health.”
“Our inspiration was, how do you inspire the next generation to see either elections as a career as a registrar of voters or town clerk, but also just thinking about it, like a job that you can do much like you work at a summer camp or as a lifeguard. You can also be a poll worker,” said Thomas.
Connecticut’s Secretary of State is the Commissioner of Elections, responsible for administering all state and federal requirements relating to elections.
In a March letter to the State Election Enforcement Commission, Thomas referred several possible election violations following Bridgeport’s do-over mayoral elections. A judge threw out the results of the original September Democratic primary, after evidence surfaced that Mayor Joe Gamin supporters had stuffed multiple absentee ballots into outdoor ballot collection boxes.
“After the Bridgeport court case, I was doing some research and I saw things have gone back for decades. So nothing’s going to be solved overnight and like most complex problems, it requires complex solutions,” said Thomas.
Thomas’s office proposed mitigation legislation efforts following the election.
“Ultimately, it’s going to come down to a culture shift. And that’s going to require funding and elections. And frankly, I don’t think there’s enough funding and elections, either at the federal level, the state level or the local level. And I think that is the crux of the problem. Here in Connecticut, we absent state funding, and like robust town funding, we basically rely on candidates and political parties to advertise to the electorate, and I just don’t think that’s a way to run a democracy.”
Thomas concluded the interview with her hopes for the future of Next Gen Elections, before starting the event.
“My final hope is that it’s a good potential model to be replicated not only around Connecticut, but in other places as well. That it raises the visibility around election work. It’s one of the most important jobs in our democratic process. But most people don’t spend any time thinking about it, and we all seem to think elections just work because they’re supposed to,” said Thomas. “But no, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to make sure they work. So I would love to see the next generation think about their role in that process.”
