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hudsonvalley

News 12 Staff

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I'm Mark Sudal. Welcome back to Power and Politics Secretary of the State, Stephanie Thomas joins us now. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Well, let's talk about early voting which started this week. My favorite subject of, of course, it is as of Friday here, we're taping this show. Uh What are the numbers looking like? We have had 210,000 people vote early over the past four days? Amazing. Amazing. It far exceeds what I expected. In fact, um we have had to order a lot of extra early voting envelopes because every registrar across the state didn't expect it to be so high. So it certainly seems like this is shaping up to really be a game changer. Yeah. Yeah, it, it apparently, you know, over 60% of voters said they wanted early voting, but it remained to be seen how many would actually use it. So now I think we're seeing they wanted it and they got it. So now they're using it and this goes till November 3rd and of course, you want to remind people about weekends. Yes, most people forget. It's also open the next two Saturdays and two Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Um, nothing special required. You don't have to let anyone know you're going or fill out any special paperwork. If you're eligible voter, you can, uh, go and vote and if you still need to register, bring all your appropriate documentation and you can register and vote in the same day as well. And then you have those long days in the 29th and the 31st. Yes. Um, October 29th and Halloween, October 31st. Exactly. I'm like, it's not a trick. It's a treat. You can go from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Now, the question on the ballot this year concerns allowing each voter to vote by absentee ballot. Now, why should people vote? Yes. Um, you know, I think people should do their research. A yes vote means we join the majority of the country. Actually. 36 states plus the district of Columbia offer universal access to absentee ballots. So imagine most people check off something like sickness or I'm out of town, but nobody is policing that like no one showing up to your house asking for your airline ticket. So most states have conformed their law to match what people are doing. Just make it universal and you'll have to go through all the normal steps. So, voting yes, would allow Connecticut to join the majority of the states and it seemed like it worked pretty well during COVID. Right. Absolutely. Um, there was one pick up as I recall with um how the mail process worked. But what I love about universal acc access is that um states who have it, have a lot of different security features built in that our system was not designed for because it was low volume. So nowadays you can track your ballots like you do your UPS package. Um You know, there's all sorts of verifications you can build in. Um So again, I think everyone should do their research. Um But here in Connecticut, it has to be a constitutional amendment which is unlike every other state, just because our constitution is so old and it was built in. Yeah, big time. Now you mentioned you kind of touched on security as we get closer to Election day, what measures are being put in place here to make sure that our polling places are safe. Yeah. Um we've been working for over a year now with the Connecticut Fusion Center so that um involves all of, of law enforcement. So saying homeland security FBI State police, you know, uh and so on. Um And we have been building resilience both in local law, enfor enforcement officers, but also election workers making sure they are thinking about various scenarios and how they would handle them in advance of anything going wrong. Um And there are a lot of other things, but if I told you I'd have to kill you. So you're so official. No. Um everyone is taking security very seriously. And I think uh people on the ground will see a different level of response because we are so co ordinated and have been planning for over a year. I mean, look, it's no surprise that, you know, this is a very expected to be a very close presidential race and it certainly is bringing, I think a lot of people out to vote. Do you expect to see that in our state? And, and how is our state gonna be able to handle all this Connecticut usually um outperforms most of the country in terms of presidential election turnout. But I hope people will also remember and turn out we have Congress on the ballot, a senator on the ballot, all of our state senators and representatives and some local candidates as well and the ballot question. So I think all of those factors combined will hopefully keep Connecticut in the top third of the country in terms of voter turnout. So if you haven't made a plan to vote, make a plan and go out and vote. So now let's talk a little bit about uh our, our voting system and we use, you know, those paper ballots. Yes. Uh would you say, would you say they're still effective? And would you change anything or um I think right now paper ballots are seen as best in class, right? You always want to be able to go back and perform an audit trail. So I certainly wouldn't suggest moving away from it. And in fact, people have raised questions about early voting ballots because if you haven't done it yet, it's slightly different in that your ballot goes into a sealed envelope so that we make sure your vote is secured and not known until election day. And that's when those envelopes are opened. And um the envelope is segregated from the ballot and then the ballots are counted. We had a couple of glitches this week here in Connecticut. But because of the early voting envelopes, the voter had a concern. They were able to find that envelope, give it to the voter and that enabled us to unearth an issue and solve it very quickly. Um So that is a great benefit of early voting and in the 30 seconds, we have left uh maybe some insight on uh what people should do about possible political scams that may be coming out. Um Disinformation is a real issue. So I encourage people to go to our website, my vote.ct.gov for trusted election information. Sometimes it's a scam but sometimes people just get the details wrong. So please visit our website. Um We've got you covered Stephanie Thomas. Thank you so much. Thank you. Happy to be here. Well, Connecticut's Uber and Lyft drivers are trying to, again, to get a minimum wage will tell you their new strategy.

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At the state Capitol, rideshare. Drivers are once again demanding more protections and better pay. An effort failed last year after Uber and Lyft threatened to pull out of Connecticut. Now, drivers are trying a different strategy. News. 12 Connecticut's John Craven has that. Drivers have long argued that Uber and Lyft aren't fair to them. But now they're saying ride sharing apps cost the rest of us too. It's getting really worse and worse and worse every day is worse. Jenia Rodriguez is an Uber driver in New Haven. She wants a minimum salary and more transparency and how she's paid. They charging the customer 60 $70 but then we get 18 $15 or even $12 at the state Capitol. Similar bills have failed for several years after Uber and Lyft hinted they could leave the state. But this year, the Connecticut Drivers Union is trying a new strategy arguing the state is losing out on millions of dollars in unemployment insurance because drivers are considered independent contractors. You're not even paying taxes over here. They, they, this is, this is unfair. Connecticut's neighbors are cracking down on Uber and Lyft in Massachusetts. An audit found the state lost out on $226 million. In New Jersey, Uber paid the state back 100 million. And in New York, both companies created a $328 million fund for workers. Drivers also get $26 an hour plus sick time. We reached out to Uber but did not hear back. Lyft told us the overwhelming majority of drivers don't want to be employees. However, we are always looking for ways to improve the driver experience. Lyft says recent changes now guarantee drivers 70% of fares after external fees. There's nobody wants to work for one hour, two or $3 is that's out of control. The Connecticut drivers union believes drivers are actually classified as employees under state law and should have the same protections as other workers. John Craven News 12 Connecticut and that's all our time. I'm Mark Sudal. Thanks for watching.

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