Running for office in Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region, Connecticut.

The short version.

Connecticut has no county government. It has not had any since October 1, 1960, when 1959 Public Act 152 abolished it outright, and Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 6-2a still says so in terms: on and after that date all property and all powers of the several counties were vested in the state. There is no county commission or county council to run for, no county clerk, no county assessor, no county treasurer, no county coroner and no functioning county seat. There is no county sheriff either, because Connecticut voters repealed the office by constitutional amendment (Article XXX, approved November 7, 2000) and Public Act 00-99 replaced it on December 1, 2000 with appointed State Marshals. And there is no county district attorney: Connecticut's prosecutors are State's Attorneys, they are APPOINTED by the Criminal Justice Commission, and they are organised by 13 JUDICIAL DISTRICTS rather than by county.

The Census Bureau finished the job in 2022. Under 87 FR 34235, published June 6, 2022, Connecticut's eight legacy counties stopped being county-equivalents and were replaced by NINE PLANNING REGIONS, with new FIPS codes 09110 through 09190; the old codes 09001 to 09015 are retired. So this guide is organised the way the state and the Census Bureau now organise Connecticut, by planning region, and every page tells you what you can actually run for inside that region: the towns, the probate district each town sits in, the regional school district boards, and the state legislative seats. The 2026 ballot is decided at the state level and in the towns, not at the region. Local office in Connecticut is an ODD-year event and the next one is Tuesday, November 2, 2027. The one door still open for 2026 is the write-in, and it closes at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, October 5, 2026.

This page covers that for Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region and points you at your local election office for anything specific to your planning region. It is not legal advice; the official rules live with your election office and the Connecticut Secretary of the State, Elections Division.

Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region by the numbers.

Connecticut election calendar (2026).

Connecticut runs one statewide calendar and the planning region is not part of it. Every date below is the same in all nine regions, and all of them come from the Secretary of the State's official 2026 Election Calendar (revision of May 28, 2026) cross-read against the statutes. The primary already happened, on Tuesday, August 11, 2026, and every petition route onto the November ballot closed before it. What remains is the write-in registration, which opened on August 5, 2026 and runs to 4:00 p.m. on Monday, October 5, 2026.

• Wed Apr 1, 2026, 4:00 p.m.Certification of delegates to state and district conventions -- CLOSED (sec. 9-391(b)).
• Tue May 5 to Tue May 26, 2026Party endorsement conventions for state and district office -- CLOSED (sec. 9-383). Municipal-office endorsements ran May 19 to May 26.
• Tue Jun 9, 2026, 4:00 p.m.Last day to file PRIMARY petitions -- CLOSED (secs. 9-400, 9-405(a)(2); the 63rd day before the primary).
• Wed Jul 29, 2026, 4:00 p.m.Last day to file NOMINATING petitions (the new-party or no-party route) with the Secretary of the State -- CLOSED. sec. 9-453i(a) sets this as a pure day count, the 97th day before the election, since P.A. 23-178 took effect on June 28, 2023. Any guide still saying 'the second Wednesday in July' is describing repealed law.
• Wed Aug 5, 2026, 4:00 p.m.Last day to file NOMINATING petitions with the town clerk -- CLOSED (sec. 9-453i(a), the 90th day). This is also the day the write-in registration window OPENED: sec. 9-373a allows a registration filed not more than 90 days before the election.
• Tue Aug 11, 2026STATE PRIMARY -- ALREADY HELD (sec. 9-423(a), the second Tuesday in August).
• Wed Sep 2, 2026Minor-party nomination and certification (secs. 9-452, 9-452a), and the last day a minor party may endorse a candidate who qualified by nominating petition (sec. 9-453o). Still open, but only to an organised minor party, not to an individual.
• Mon Oct 5, 2026, 4:00 p.m.WRITE-IN REGISTRATION CLOSES. This is the live date and the last door of the 2026 cycle. sec. 9-373a, as re-keyed by P.A. 23-5 and P.A. 23-204, requires registration not later than 4:00 p.m. on the fourteenth day preceding the start of early voting. Early voting begins Monday, October 19, so the fourteenth day before it is Monday, October 5, 2026. The Secretary of the State's own 2026 calendar prints this date. Registration with the Secretary covers state, district AND municipal offices.
• Mon Oct 19 to Sun Nov 1, 2026EARLY VOTING for the general election (sec. 9-163aa). Fourteen days, and the reason the write-in deadline sits where it does.
• Tue Nov 3, 2026STATE ELECTION, polls 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Cite sec. 9-1 for the date -- the state election is the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November in even-numbered years. Do NOT cite sec. 9-164, which governs municipal elections only.
• Tue Nov 2, 2027MUNICIPAL ELECTION -- the next time town and city office is on a ballot anywhere in Connecticut (sec. 9-164(a)(1)(A)). Every milestone for 2027 below this line is COMPUTED from statute, because the Secretary of the State has not yet published a 2027 calendar.
• Mon Jan 4, 2027COMPUTED. First business day of 2027, the earliest a nominating petition for the 2027 municipal election may be issued (sec. 9-453b).
• Tue Jul 13 to Tue Jul 20, 2027COMPUTED. Municipal party endorsement window (sec. 9-391(a)).
• Wed Jul 28 and Wed Aug 4, 2027COMPUTED. Nominating petitions to the Secretary of the State (97th day) and to the town clerk (90th day) under sec. 9-453i. August 4 is also the primary-petition deadline under sec. 9-405(a)(1).
• Tue Sep 7, 2027COMPUTED. Municipal primary, the 56th day before the municipal election (sec. 9-423(b)).

Two traps worth naming. First, the 2027 dates above are arithmetic, not publication: the Secretary of the State has not released a 2027 calendar, so treat them as the shape of the year and confirm each one before you rely on it. Second, several widely used reference sites still say Connecticut write-in registration closes fourteen days before the ELECTION, which would make it October 20. That was the law until the early-voting statutes re-keyed it; the deadline is fourteen days before EARLY VOTING starts, which is October 5, 2026, and that is what the Secretary of the State's own calendar prints. Confirm anything you plan to rely on with the Elections Division at 860-509-6100.

Offices on the ballot in Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region.

Here is the honest answer to 'what is on the ballot in my region', and it starts with a subtraction. A planning region elects nobody. It is a geography and a voluntary council of towns, not a layer of government with its own officeholders, so nothing below is a region-wide seat. What the list does is name every elected office that covers part of this region, tell you which district each one runs in, and be explicit about the offices that other states have and Connecticut does not. Read the town list at the end: in Connecticut the town is the unit of government, and the town is where nearly everything you can run for actually lives.

• Judge of Probate -- the one genuinely useful quasi-county office in Connecticut, and it IS elected. Four-year terms, voted at the state election in even-numbered years, so these seats are on the November 3, 2026 ballot. There are 54 probate districts statewide, consolidated in January 2011 from more than 100. CANDIDATES MUST BE ATTORNEYS admitted in Connecticut, which narrows the field sharply and is why probate races are so often uncontested. The 5 probate districts covering the Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region: New London, Niantic Regional, Norwich, Southeastern Connecticut Regional and Windham-Colchester. See OLR report 2025-R-0124 for the election rules.
• Probate districts OVERLAP this region, they do not sit inside it -- 3 of the 5 listed above also cover towns in another planning region, so a probate race here is not a race in this region. Specifically: Niantic Regional (also covers Old Lyme in the Lower Connecticut River Valley Planning Region); Norwich (also covers Voluntown in the Northeastern Connecticut Planning Region); Windham-Colchester (also covers Chaplin, Hampton and Scotland in the Northeastern Connecticut Planning Region). Check which district YOUR town is in before you plan a probate campaign; the town list at the end of this page names it.
• Registrar of Voters -- elected in EVERY one of the 19 towns of this region, at the even-numbered-year state election, so on the November 3, 2026 ballot. Connecticut elects two per town, one from each major party, and they are named expressly in the sec. 9-185 list of offices that shall be elected. This is the office that holds your town's check list and certifies your petition signatures.
• Regional board of education -- none. No regional school district under Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 10-46 covers any town in the Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region; every town here runs its own board of education, elected at the municipal election on Tuesday, November 2, 2027.
• Town and city office -- this is where nearly everything you can run for in Connecticut lives, and it is an ODD-YEAR ballot: Tuesday, November 2, 2027. Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 9-185 says that unless a special act or charter provides otherwise, boards of assessment appeals, selectmen, town clerks, town treasurers, collectors of taxes, constables, registrars of voters, boards of education and library directors SHALL BE ELECTED, and that where a board of finance exists its members shall be elected too. Everything else defaults to appointed.
• NOT elected by default, and this catches people out: planning and zoning commissions, zoning boards of appeal and assessors fall under the sec. 9-185 catch-all that 'all other town officers shall be appointed as provided by law'. MANY Connecticut towns do elect their planning and zoning commission by charter, and many do not. Check your own town's charter before you plan a P&Z campaign. Towns may also flip constables, the town clerk, the treasurer or the tax collector to appointed by ordinance, and a charter town with a mayor and council overrides the selectman default entirely.
• NOT on any ballot in the Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region, or anywhere in Connecticut: county commissioner or county council, county executive, county sheriff, county clerk, county assessor, county treasurer, county coroner, county surveyor, register of deeds and county district attorney. None of these offices exists. Land records and vital records are kept by the TOWN CLERK, not a county clerk. Court process is served by State Marshals, who are appointed. Prosecutions are brought by State's Attorneys, who are appointed and organised by 13 judicial districts.
• You cannot run for the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments (SECCOG). A Connecticut regional council of governments is created by ordinance of its member towns under Conn. Gen. Stat. secs. 4-124i to 4-124p and is made up of their chief elected officials. It has no popularly elected seats and never appears on a ballot. The route onto it is to be elected your town's mayor or first selectman.
• The 19 towns of the Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region, each with the probate district it sits in -- this is the list that actually matters, because the town is the unit of government in Connecticut: Bozrah (Norwich), Colchester (Windham-Colchester), East Lyme (Niantic Regional), Franklin (Norwich), Griswold (Norwich), Groton (Southeastern Connecticut Regional), Lebanon (Windham-Colchester), Ledyard (Southeastern Connecticut Regional), Lisbon (Norwich), Montville (Niantic Regional), New London (New London), North Stonington (Southeastern Connecticut Regional), Norwich (Norwich), Preston (Norwich), Salem (Niantic Regional), Sprague (Norwich), Stonington (Southeastern Connecticut Regional), Waterford (New London), Windham (Windham-Colchester).

Statewide and legislative seats covering Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region are on the same ballot:

• Governor and Lieutenant Governor -- on the November 3, 2026 ballot, four-year terms, nominated and elected as a ticket. The incumbent Governor was first elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022.
• Secretary of the State, Treasurer, Comptroller and Attorney General -- all four constitutional officers are on the November 3, 2026 ballot, four-year terms.
• State Senator -- all 36 districts are up, and all 36 are up every even-numbered year, because Connecticut senators serve two-year terms. Senate districts do not follow planning-region lines; a single region can be split across many of them.
• State Representative -- all 151 districts are up, two-year terms, same every-even-year cycle. With 151 seats in a state of 3.6 million people, a Connecticut House district is roughly 24,000 residents, which is one of the smallest constituencies of any state legislature in the country and the reason door knocking decides these races.
• United States Representative -- all five Connecticut congressional districts are on the ballot, two-year terms.
• NOT on the 2026 Connecticut ballot: United States Senator. Neither seat is up. Connecticut's senators sit in Class 3 and Class 1, next contested in 2028 and 2030. The Secretary of the State's 2026 calendar prints 'U.S. Senator' in its generic list of even-year offices, which is boilerplate rather than a statement about 2026, and it has misled more than one guide.

One more subtraction, because it is the single most common error made about Connecticut. There is no county district attorney and there never will be. Prosecutions are brought by State's Attorneys, who are APPOINTED by the Criminal Justice Commission under Article XXIII of the state constitution, and who are organised by 13 judicial districts, not by county or by planning region. The judicial districts split the larger regions, so 'my county prosecutor' does not identify an office, a person or a district in Connecticut. Nobody votes for a prosecutor here.

How to get on the ballot.

Connecticut charges NO candidate filing fee. Public Act 79-616 deleted the old fee provisions, and what remains is signatures. That makes ballot access cheap in money and expensive in time, and for the 2026 cycle the signature routes are all shut. The route that is still open costs nothing at all: register as a write-in candidate with the Secretary of the State by 4:00 p.m. on Monday, October 5, 2026.

Write-in registration -- the live door, and it closes at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, October 5, 2026.

This is the only remaining way onto the November 3, 2026 ballot in Connecticut, and it is free. Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 9-373a requires a registration form filed with the Secretary of the State not more than ninety days before the election and not later than 4:00 p.m. on the fourteenth day preceding the start of early voting. Early voting begins Monday, October 19, 2026, so the deadline is Monday, October 5, 2026. The window opened on August 5, 2026.

Nominating petitions -- CLOSED for 2026, and this is the rule for 2027.

The new-party or no-party route. Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 9-453d sets the signature requirement as the LESSER of (1) one per cent of the votes cast for that same office at the last-preceding election at which that office appeared on the ballot, or (2) seven thousand five hundred. The 7,500 is a hard cap added by P.A. 94-209 and there is no statutory floor, so for most offices the real number is the one per cent figure and it is small.

Primary petitions -- CLOSED for 2026, and the numbers are higher than people expect.

If you want a major party's nomination but did not get the endorsement, sec. 9-400 lets you force a primary by petition. The thresholds are percentages of that party's ENROLLED MEMBERS, not of all voters, and they are not the same as the nominating-petition rule above.

Minor-party nomination -- narrowly open until September 2, 2026.

A minor party that already has ballot status for an office may nominate and certify a candidate for it by September 2, 2026 (secs. 9-452 and 9-452a), and may endorse a candidate who has qualified by nominating petition by the same date (sec. 9-453o). This is a route through an existing party organisation rather than something an individual can start, but it is worth knowing about if a minor party in your district has a line and no candidate on it.

Statutory references: Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 6-2a -- county government abolished. 1959 P.A. 152, effective October 1, 1960: all property and all powers of the several counties vested in the state. Federally corroborated at 87 FR 34235, which records that Connecticut's counties 'ceased to function as governmental and administrative entities in 1960'. · Connecticut Constitution, Article XXX (approved by the voters November 7, 2000) repealed Article Fourth, sec. 25 and abolished the office of county sheriff. P.A. 00-99 transferred the functions on December 1, 2000 to the Judicial Department and to State Marshals, who are APPOINTED by the State Marshal Commission. · 87 FR 34235, 'Change to County-Equivalents in the State of Connecticut', Census Bureau Docket 220519-0117, published June 6, 2022. Nine planning regions replace eight counties as county-equivalents; FIPS 09110 to 09190 replace the retired 09001 to 09015. The planning regions themselves are established by Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 16a-4c. · Conn. Gen. Stat. secs. 4-124i to 4-124p, chapter 127 -- the regional councils of governments. A council is created by ordinance of its member municipalities and is made up of their chief elected officials sitting together. It has no popularly elected seats, so there is nothing on it to run for. · Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 9-1 -- the state election is held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November in even-numbered years. Tuesday, November 3, 2026. NOT sec. 9-164, which is the municipal-election section. · Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 9-164(a)(1)(A) -- on and after January 1, 2022, and NOTWITHSTANDING ANY CONTRARY PROVISION OF LAW, each municipality holds its municipal election biennially on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November in ODD-numbered years, with a single alternative: the first Monday of May in an odd-numbered year, if the municipality's legislative body so determines by a THREE-FOURTHS vote. June Sp. Sess. P.A. 21-2 inserted that clause; the old idea that a town sets its own election date by charter is no longer the law. · Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 9-185 -- unless otherwise provided by special act or charter, members of boards of assessment appeals, selectmen, town clerks, town treasurers, collectors of taxes, constables, registrars of voters, members of boards of education and library directors SHALL BE ELECTED; all other town officers shall be APPOINTED as provided by law; and where a board of finance is established, its members shall be elected. · Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 9-373a, as re-keyed by P.A. 23-5 and P.A. 23-204 -- write-in registration with the Secretary of the State, filed not more than ninety days before the election and not later than 4:00 p.m. on the fourteenth day preceding the commencement of early voting. For 2026 that is 4:00 p.m. on Monday, October 5. · Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 9-453d -- nominating petitions require the LESSER of one per cent of the votes cast for the same office at the last-preceding election at which it appeared, or 7,500. Hard cap, no floor. sec. 9-400 sets the separate primary-petition thresholds at 2 per cent statewide, 2 per cent in district for U.S. Representative and 5 per cent in district for State Senator, State Representative and Judge of Probate. · P.A. 79-616 deleted the candidate filing fee from sec. 9-400. Connecticut charges no filing fee for any office. · Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 10-46 -- regional school districts. Each member town elects at least one member of the regional board of education, on staggered four-year terms. With the county gone, this and the probate district are the only genuinely supra-town elected bodies in Connecticut. · Conn. Gen. Stat. sec. 9-50d, as repealed and substituted by Public Act 26-1 (Substitute S.B. 298), section 96, signed March 3, 2026 and effective from passage -- voter registration information may only be used for election-related, scholarly, journalistic, political or governmental purposes, and date of birth is now limited to the YEAR of birth alone. Section 97 of the same act makes the penalty a civil one only, capped at two thousand dollars per offence under sec. 9-7b(a)(2).. Fees and signature counts change; confirm before you file.

The Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments (SECCOG).

There is no election office at this level, because there is no government at this level. Candidate filings in Connecticut go to the Secretary of the State's Elections Division in Hartford (860-509-6100), or to your TOWN CLERK for the town-clerk half of a nominating petition and for a representative-town-meeting write-in. Elections themselves are run town by town by two REGISTRARS OF VOTERS in every municipality, one from each major party, and they are the people who hold your local check list. The council of governments below is the region's only region-wide institution. It cannot take a candidate filing and you cannot run for a seat on it, but it is the one office that can tell you what this region actually is, which towns are in it, and where the regional plan and the shared services sit.

The Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments (SECCOG) is this region's only region-wide institution, and it is a council of its member towns rather than a government. It was created under Conn. Gen. Stat. secs. 4-124i to 4-124p; the region itself is one of the nine established by sec. 16a-4c and adopted by the Census Bureau as a county-equivalent in 2022. Two naming points worth carrying. First, the Census Bureau warned in 87 FR 34235 that a planning region's name is sometimes different from its council's name, which is exactly the case here: the region is the Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region and the council is the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments (SECCOG). Second, the legacy county name this area used to carry is retired for Census purposes -- FIPS 09110 to 09190 replaced 09001 to 09015 in June 2022, so any dataset keyed on the old codes returns nothing for Connecticut. For anything about a specific race, the office to call is the Secretary of the State's Elections Division at 860-509-6100, or your own town clerk and registrars of voters.

Contact details verified 2026-08-15. Official statewide sources: Connecticut Secretary of the State: Elections and Voting · The official 2026 Election Calendar (PDF) -- every date on this page comes from it · Public Act 26-1 (Substitute S.B. 298) -- the act that rewrote the voter-file statute in March 2026 · Conn. Gen. Stat. chapter 143 -- electors, registration and sec. 9-50d · Connecticut Probate Courts -- find your probate district · Secretary of the State's Register and Manual: the nine regional councils of governments.

Common questions.

After you qualify: the field operation.

Three things about Connecticut change how a campaign is run here. First, the town is the unit of everything: ballots are printed by municipality, the check list is kept by municipality, petition signatures are certified by the town's registrars of voters, and results are reported by town and voting district. Cut your turf by town and every piece of paperwork falls into line behind it. Second, the districts are small. A State Representative district is about 24,000 people and a town office can turn on a few hundred votes, which is knockable in a single organised season. Third, Connecticut gives you an address-and-history file and nothing else: since Public Act 26-1 the state's voter registration data carries the YEAR of birth only, and it has never carried a phone number or an email address you can rely on. The door is not one channel among several here. It is the channel.

That is the part Motion51 was built for. You scope your district, cut turf, and send volunteers out with a phone instead of a clipboard. It works offline, so canvassing does not stop where the cell signal does, and every door is logged with a timestamp for your records. Our For Candidates page walks through what that looks like.

Planning Regions next to Southeastern Connecticut.

Running in a district that crosses a planning region line? Each of these has its own guide.

See all Connecticut planning regions →