Public testimony submitted on Connecticut bills has surged in recent years, including in the 2026 legislative session, according to an Associated Press review of written submissions and interviews with lawmakers and political scientists. The review found that the number of written comments—signed and anonymous—has risen sharply, but that lawmakers are increasingly dealing with submissions that do not identify who is speaking.
State figures show that more than 43,800 pieces of written testimony were submitted during the 2026 session, nearly a 250% increase compared with 2016. The same review reported that 7,878 of those submissions were anonymous this year, accounting for 18% of all written testimony. It was also reported that anonymity in 2025 was lower, though still notable, with a Connecticut Mirror analysis putting anonymous testimony at nearly 18% of all testimony submitted last year.
Connecticut’s process allows people to submit testimony through an online form or by other means, including email and mail. An online testimony submission form implemented in 2022 allows submitters to add their name, title and organization, but none are required, and the form includes a box that autofills the name fields as “Anonymous.” The online form makes anonymous submission easier, even though anonymous testimony has long been allowed under the Office of Legislative Management’s account of the process.
Over time, anonymous testimony has grown as a share of total written submissions. The Associated Press review reported that in 2017, only 11 of about 23,000 pieces of written testimony were anonymously submitted, and that anonymous counts first broke 100 in 2021. This year, the review said, anonymous submissions reached 7,878 pieces, though it added that the number likely undercounts submissions because it does not include testimony submitted under pseudonyms.
House Majority Leader Rep. Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, said he noticed the increased anonymity as he read bills. “I saw a lot of anonymous testimonies submitted. It’s fine that somebody has expressed an opinion, but I don’t know if that’s a chat bot sending in 57 pieces of testimony,” Rojas said. He added that anonymity itself poses a challenge, saying, “When it doesn’t have a name, that’s a challenge too, and I think that has had the effect of inflating the overall numbers that we get.”
Rojas also said he worries about losing context that could help legislators understand whose perspectives matter. He said he cares “a lot more” about the voices of Connecticut residents, but that the combination of volume and anonymity makes it harder to determine who is local. Rojas said some legislators have discussed limiting out-of-state testimony, but he said he has not decided whether that should happen and worries that restricting testimony could cut off voices from outside the state with expertise.
On specific bills, anonymity has reached particularly high levels. Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey, D-Fairfield, described reading testimony on H.B. 5044, which protects vaccine accessibility. The Associated Press review reported that the bill received 1,098 pieces of anonymous written testimony, nearly 29% of all written testimony on the bill and the highest count of any bill introduced during the 2026 session. Vahey said, “Just clicking through actually took a pretty significant amount of time just because there are thousands of pieces of testimony,” and added that she believed she read them all: “there were so many anonymous pieces of testimony when I was clicking through, I was wanting to make sure that I wasn’t repeating.”
Political science researchers said it can be difficult to pinpoint why testimony keeps rising as anonymity grows. Seth Warner, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Political Science, said the increase might not simply be the result of individual civic engagement. He described what he called the “Schoolhouse Rock” picture of people writing because they feel a sense of civic duty, but said, “the vast majority of 43,000 pieces of written testimony are based on some sort of organized political activity.”
Warner said anonymity makes the drivers of the increase less clear, including whether modern tools affect submissions. He said it is difficult to determine which pieces of testimony are written by chat bots or researched using artificial intelligence, and he suggested the online tool for testimony could play a role in making it easier for people to send organized material. “That’s not to say that the AI has written the testimony but somebody felt like they had a position but wasn’t quite sure how to articulate themselves,” Warner said. “It could be a waypoint between having the idea and being able to put pen to paper, digitally speaking.”
Another political scientist, Sawyer Rogers, a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts, said nationalized interest groups can increase participation by circulating ready messages and prompting members to submit similar testimony. Rogers said there are “these nationalized interest groups that are sending these canned messages out and having their people who are members of the interest group send out that message back to the legislature.” Rogers said social media efforts can also contribute by making it easier for political issues to spread and for organizations, legislators, and local groups to mobilize participation.
In the review, the scale of testimony and anonymity varied across bills, including ones that have drawn attention from outside groups. For example, a bill allowing municipalities to ban the sale of cats, dogs and rabbits in pet stores received 1,261 pieces of written testimony, the report said, and nearly 75% of that testimony was submitted anonymously. The Associated Press review reported that the American Kennel Club and a group called Don’t Ban Pets issued legislative alerts urging opposition and suggested that organized advocacy can drive submission volume.
Other groups in Connecticut said they also organize people to write testimony as a routine part of political engagement. The Rev. Jocelyn Gardner Spencer, lead organizer of Greater Hartford Interfaith Action Alliance, described a process of gathering community stories and then training people to submit testimony for relevant bills. Spencer said the group comprises 53 congregations around Hartford and has been active since 2019, and that once it identifies issues that may reach the legislature, “then we train and organize folks to submit testimony as part of the public hearing process.”
Spencer said the organization creates testimony guides that explain issues and how the relevant bills respond, and that members submitted written testimony on multiple bills this year, including bills dealing with immigrant protections. Warner said that other associations, unions and employers across Connecticut organize people to testify as well, noting he was asked twice to testify at the Capitol last session by both UConn and his faculty union.
Although written testimony is one of the simplest ways for the public to participate, the Associated Press review said the growing volume and anonymity are becoming a burden for lawmakers. The review described written testimony as easier than in-person testimony because hearings can last for hours and timing can be unpredictable. But Rojas said navigating the submissions to find who is behind them creates a barrier for legislators trying to hear directly from constituents.
For now, lawmakers are left weighing how much anonymous and outside participation should count as public input, especially as organized advocacy and online sharing make it easier to flood bill records. The surge in testimony, with a rising share of anonymous submissions, is changing what legislators see when they try to interpret what the public is saying before they vote.