A working agenda for Delaware

I support public safety tools when they solve a defined problem and are subject to clear limits. I don't support permanent surveillance systems that expand without a public vote, meaningful audits, or an end date.

Surveillance technology approval and renewal

• Require a public surveillance impact report before any state or local agency acquires, deploys, or materially expands cameras, automated license plate readers, facial recognition, drones, location tools, or comparable technology.
• The report must identify the problem, baseline data, alternatives considered, vendor and total cost, data collected, who can access it, sharing rules, security safeguards, measurable goals, and the civil-rights impact.
• Provide at least 30 days of public notice, a public hearing, and a recorded vote. Every authorization expires after no more than 12 months unless renewed after a new evaluation and public process.
• Require shutdown or corrective action when a system misses its goals, is misused, suffers a material breach, changes vendors or data practices, or loses its funding source.

Automated license plate reader limits

• Delete non-hit plate data within three minutes unless the plate is tied to a verified alert, arrest, citation, missing-person case, or court-authorized investigation.
• Require a warrant for historical movement searches, with narrow emergency exceptions and after-the-fact judicial review.
• Prohibit monitoring of protected speech, worship, health care, immigration activity, labor organizing, or lawful association. Ban vendor sale, monetization, or unrelated sharing of plate data.
• Require human verification. An automated alert alone should not justify a stop. The officer must confirm the plate and the underlying alert. Log every search and sharing event for independent audit.

New Hampshire already requires most non-hit plate records to be purged within three minutes and says a positive alert alone is not reasonable suspicion. Seattle provides a useful model for public impact reports and legislative approval before surveillance technologies are used.

Digital data protection

• Require warrants or court orders when government seeks sensitive location, communications, search, health, biometric, or reproductive information, including data purchased from brokers.
• Strictly limit reverse-location and reverse-keyword searches, require minimization, notice when lawful, and public reporting on frequency and outcomes.
• Strengthen Delaware privacy law with data-minimization duties, protections for precise location and sensitive inferences, broker registration, meaningful deletion rights, and a private right of action for serious or repeated violations.

Dynamic pricing without profiling

Dynamic pricing can be legitimate when it responds to objective market conditions such as time, inventory, weather, demand, or clearly disclosed service costs. It becomes unfair when a business secretly estimates what a particular person can be pressured to pay.

• Prohibit individualized prices or discounts based on browsing or search history, prior purchases, precise location, device identifiers, cookies, estimated income, financial vulnerability, willingness to pay, protected characteristics, sensitive data, or close proxies for those traits.
• Apply the rule to merchants, marketplaces, delivery services, ticket platforms, travel services, and third-party pricing vendors. A company may not avoid the rule by buying a score or audience segment from a data broker.
• Require a clear notice whenever an automated system changes price using objective factors and identify the categories of factors used. A notice doesn't make profiling legal.
• Authorize audits, record retention, civil penalties, restitution, and a consumer complaint process. Allow a limited research safe harbor for testing that does not affect real customers.

Other states are moving in this direction. New York requires notice when a price is set using a consumer's personal data. Maryland enacted broader protections for food and delivery transactions that take effect October 1, 2026. Delaware should ban the profiling itself instead of just requiring a notice.

Small-business owners should know what government requires, what it costs, and when they'll get an answer. I've run restaurants in Delaware for years. The paperwork shouldn't be harder than the work.

Small business regulatory bill of rights

• Create one statewide portal, one business identification number, one application status page, and one secure document vault that agencies can reuse with permission.
• Set a deadline for agencies to determine whether an application is complete, followed by binding decision deadlines, automatic escalation, and fee refunds or credits when the government misses its clock without good cause.
• Coordinate inspections so businesses do not receive duplicative or conflicting visits. Publish plain-language checklists, scoring standards, appeal rights, and the legal basis for every denial or correction order.
• Assign navigators for small businesses and provide translated forms, reminders, and a public dashboard showing processing times by agency and permit type.
• Allow reuse of approved floor plans when a tenant makes no material change. Rationalize signage fees, food-truck permits, and repetitive licensing. Use risk-based food-safety training and inspection tiers.

Restaurant gross receipts tax relief

The tax that hurts Delaware restaurants is the gross receipts tax, not the corporate franchise tax. It's charged on sales before a restaurant pays for food, payroll, rent, insurance, utilities or delivery commissions. Relief should go at the taxable-receipts threshold and leave the corporate franchise system alone.

• Bring back House Bill 417. Raise the monthly deduction from $100,000 to at least $250,000 and the quarterly deduction from $300,000 to at least $750,000 for qualifying restaurants.
• Tie the deduction to inflation so relief doesn't shrink over time. Have the Division of Revenue publish the next year's number by October 1, rounded so businesses and tax software can plan for it.
• Avoid a cliff. Let smaller operators file quarterly, reconcile the deduction once a year, and phase out relief over a range instead of charging the full tax after one extra dollar in sales.
• Publish a yearly report on how many restaurants file, how many get full or partial relief, the revenue impact, and openings, closings and jobs. Review the policy after three years, but don't let relief expire automatically while restaurants are making long-term decisions.
• Pass restaurant relief now and start a broader review of the gross receipts tax, so the state can deal with tax pyramiding and the burden on other small businesses. The longer review shouldn't hold up restaurant relief.

House Bill 417 proposed the $250,000 monthly and $750,000 quarterly deductions in 2026 but never passed. A new bill should start with those numbers and add inflation indexing, simpler filing and public reporting.

Simpler OABCC licenses

Delaware updated parts of its liquor law this year with Senate Bill 243, which added special-event and bottle-club licenses and changed how license protests work. The next step is making the licenses themselves simpler. The fee schedule still lists a long set of separate on-premises categories and add-ons that are hard for a new owner to sort out.

• Replace overlapping retail labels with a few core licenses based on what the business does: on-premises beer and wine, on-premises full alcohol, off-premises retail, manufacturing, wholesale or supply, and temporary or nonprofit events.
• Use add-on endorsements for the things that vary, like catering, patio service, alcohol to go, live entertainment, bottle-club activity, tastings, growlers and approved off-site storage. A restaurant shouldn't need a different license for every combination.
• Grandfather every existing license with its current privileges. Offer free conversion, and don't require a new hearing, floor plan, inspection or fee just because the state renamed a category.
• Create one online application with a license wizard, one document checklist, state and local review at the same time, a ten-business-day completeness review, and a public status tracker. Standard applications with no protest should get a decision within 60 days of being complete, unless there's a written safety or legal reason to take longer.
• Allow an interim operating permit when a business in good standing changes owners at the same location and nothing material changes. Keep server training, age checks, three-tier safeguards, public-safety review and real community notice.
• Set fees by the core license and actual endorsements, publish how fees are calculated, and ban charging twice for the same review. Require OABCC to report processing times, incomplete applications, hearing delays, approval rates and the most common reasons for denial.

Texas is a good model. A 2019 law that took effect in 2021 cut its alcohol license and permit types from 75 to 37 and moved licensing to a modern online system. Delaware can do the same thing on a smaller scale without weakening alcohol safety rules.

Fair third-party restaurant platforms

Delivery and ordering apps should get paid for the services they actually provide. They shouldn't control a restaurant's menu, hide charges, or make a small business pay for the app's mistakes. Delaware should set one statewide standard for delivery, pickup, marketplace, white-label ordering and related advertising.

• Require a written agreement before an app lists a restaurant, takes its orders, uses its name, or changes its menu items or prices. The restaurant must be able to fix or remove wrong information quickly.
• Cap per-order charges at 15 percent for delivery, 5 percent for other marketplace services, and 3 percent for payment processing, unless the app can document that it actually paid more. Ads, premium placement and promotions have to be opt-in and cancelable without retaliation.
• Itemize every commission, fee, promotion, refund, adjustment, tax, tip and processing charge on the restaurant's statement. Ban retroactive fees, hidden menu markups, forced discounts, clauses that stop restaurants from charging less on their own sites, and contract changes without at least 30 days' notice.
• Don't make a restaurant pay for a late order, failed handoff, unauthorized refund, fraudulent order or driver mistake without evidence and a chance to dispute it. Resolve billing disputes within 30 days and keep transaction records for at least three years.
• Don't let an app tie normal search visibility or basic delivery to buying ads, promotions or data products. Sponsored placement has to be labeled as paid.
• Give restaurants the order data they need to serve customers, fix errors and follow the law, while respecting customer privacy choices. Ban selling restaurant and customer data or using it for unrelated purposes, and ban retaliation against a restaurant that complains, drops an add-on or uses its own ordering system.
• Show customers the full price before checkout, with food, delivery fees, service fees, taxes and tips listed separately. Don't call a charge a tip or a driver benefit unless that money actually goes to the worker on top of their base pay.

Full tips and fair pay for delivery workers

• Pay 100 percent of a delivery tip to the worker who made the delivery. Pay 100 percent of a pickup tip to the restaurant to distribute under Delaware tip law. If a customer is offered a split tip, show the exact split before they pay and let them choose.
• A tip can't reduce base pay, a promotion, a guarantee, mileage pay or any minimum payment. The app has to match the customer's tip to the worker's pay statement, keep records that can be audited, and fix any shortfall quickly.
• Before a worker accepts an order, show the guaranteed base pay, estimated time and miles, pickup and drop-off areas, known tolls, and whether the total includes a tip that could change. After the order, give a receipt that breaks out base pay, incentives, mileage, tip, adjustments, and total time and miles.
• Set a statewide pay floor. At minimum, pay 120 percent of Delaware's minimum wage for time from accepting an order to finishing or canceling it, plus a per-mile payment adjusted every year. Tips are paid on top. Pay something for canceled orders and for long waits at the restaurant.
• Pay workers at least weekly with a free option. Require notice and a human appeal before a worker is deactivated, except for an immediate, documented safety threat. Ban retaliation for wage complaints, turning down orders, or working for more than one app.
• These protections apply no matter how an app classifies its workers. The law shouldn't decide whether someone is an employee or a contractor, override stronger employment rights, or stop the Department of Labor from finding misclassification.

Tips and card processing fees

Delaware already protects workers here. The Department of Labor says an employer can't take credit card processing fees out of an employee's wages or tips (19 Del. C. §§ 902 and 1107). What's left is the fee the card network charges the restaurant on the tip itself.

• Bring back House Bill 315 so card networks and processors can't charge a percentage fee on the tip portion of a credit or debit sale. Keep the bill's refund remedy and per-transaction penalty.
• Require card terminals, processors and networks to accept a separate tip field and give merchants a practical way to send the exempt amount. Ban new fees aimed at transactions that include a tip.
• Put the Department of Labor's current rule into the law in plain language. Employees get the full card tip by the next regular payday, employers can't deduct card costs from it, and pay stubs show gross tips, tip-pool transfers and net tips.
• Let the Department of Labor audit tip records and order back pay, damages, interest and penalties. Keep the complaint process simple, protect workers from retaliation, and require apps to hand over transaction-level tip records when the Department lawfully asks.
• Look at extending this to sales and excise taxes the way Illinois did, but carefully. Illinois's law has been tied up in federal preemption lawsuits and a 2026 order from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency covering national banks. Any Delaware version should include severability, a solid technical record, and a backup remedy that still works if part of it is struck down.

Enforcement and state models

• Require large apps to register every year with the Department of Justice, name an agent, post a bond or other security to cover restitution, and report Delaware totals on orders, restaurant charges, worker pay, tips, disputes and deactivations.
• Give the Department of Justice authority over restaurant and consumer practices and the Department of Labor authority over worker pay and tips. The two should share complaints, publish joint guidance and run risk-based audits while protecting personal and business-sensitive data.
• Allow restitution, actual damages, statutory damages for missing tips or false disclosures, attorney fees for restaurants or workers who win, and bigger penalties for repeat or knowing violations. Keep stronger wage remedies and don't let app contracts waive these rights.
• Give apps 180 days to comply, with model contract disclosures and a compliance guide for small platforms. Review the fee caps every three years using audited cost data. A review can adjust the caps going forward but can't suspend the rules on transparency, consent, tips or retaliation.

Households and small businesses shouldn't pay for utility mismanagement or for infrastructure built mainly for large energy users. Delaware took real steps this year. Now the Public Service Commission has to enforce them, and we need to finish the job.

• Create a separate large-load rate class for data centers and other unusually intensive users. Require cost-causation studies so households and ordinary businesses do not subsidize generation, transmission, substations, or upgrades built for those loads.
• Require long-term service commitments, deposits or other financial security, minimum-demand charges, and exit fees sufficient to protect other customers if a project is delayed, downsized, or abandoned.
• Publish load forecasts, interconnection assumptions, and infrastructure plans. Require independent audits. Limit interim rate increases. Make bills understandable.
• Adopt reliability standards, transformer and grid-resilience plans, outage credits, extreme-weather shutoff protections, and public disclosure of expenses sought from ratepayers.

Delaware should treat homes, small businesses, electric vehicles, and community facilities as part of the energy system. Residents who install batteries or allow flexible devices to support the grid should be paid for the capacity, reliability, and avoided infrastructure costs they provide. The long-term goal is a statewide virtual power plant that lowers peak demand, strengthens outage resilience, and lets Delawareans share in the value they create.

Delaware Virtual Power Plant and Home Energy Bank

A virtual power plant coordinates thousands of smaller resources so they can respond like one power plant. A participating home might charge a battery from rooftop solar, community solar, or low-cost off-peak electricity, keep a protected reserve for outages, and discharge part of the stored power when the grid is strained or wholesale prices are high. The customer keeps backup power and gets paid. The grid avoids some expensive peak purchases and upgrades.

• Launch a statewide pilot through the Public Service Commission, DNREC, Energize Delaware, Delmarva Power, Delaware Electric Cooperative, municipal utilities, and qualified independent aggregators. Begin with at least 1,000 homes and small businesses across all three counties and design the pilot to provide at least 10 megawatts of dependable capacity.
• Reserve at least 40 percent of pilot enrollment and funding for low- and moderate-income households, medically vulnerable customers, manufactured-home communities, multifamily properties, and neighborhoods with frequent outages or constrained distribution equipment.
• Offer two participation paths: a customer-owned battery with an upfront rebate and a no- or low-cost lease in which the utility or a competitively selected provider owns and maintains the equipment. Solar should be encouraged but not required. A stand-alone battery may qualify when it charges during verified low-cost or low-stress hours and reduces peak demand.
• For income-qualified and high-resilience-need households, cover up to the full reasonable installed cost after other incentives. For other customers, set the rebate according to the kilowatts and hours committed to the grid, with higher support for pairing storage with new or existing solar.
• Pay participants both an upfront enrollment value and annual performance payments. Return at least 70 percent of net wholesale-market and verified avoided-cost revenue to participating customers after transparent, audited program costs. Do not allow utilities or aggregators to collect twice for the same grid service.
• Give every participant a protected backup reserve, storm mode, clear limits on the number and duration of dispatch events, advance notice when practicable, and a reasonable right to opt out without losing ownership of the battery. Emergency dispatch rules must preserve power for medically necessary equipment.
• Prefer charging from on-site or community renewable energy and periods of verified clean-energy surplus. Also permit batteries to bank low-cost off-peak power when doing so lowers system costs, but do not market grid-charged energy as renewable unless the energy attributes are documented.
• Require open technical standards so batteries, smart thermostats, water heaters, heat pumps, and eventually bidirectional electric vehicles can participate without being locked to one manufacturer. Customers must be able to change approved aggregators without replacing functioning equipment.
• Direct utilities to publish hosting-capacity information, use standard interconnection agreements, meet review deadlines, and waive duplicative study fees for certified systems below a reasonable size. Utilities may pause a dispatch only for a documented local safety or reliability condition.
• Allow aggregated resources to participate in PJM's capacity, energy, and ancillary-service markets as those pathways open. State rules should assign metering, telemetry, cybersecurity, distribution review, settlement, and consumer-protection responsibilities before enrollment opens.
• Use batteries first as a non-wires alternative when they are cheaper than a transformer, feeder, substation, or transmission upgrade. Competitive solicitations should compare the full life-cycle cost of storage, demand response, conventional construction, and other alternatives.
• Require UL-listed equipment, qualified installation, Fire Marshal standards, remote fault detection, clear emergency-response information, minimum warranties, and producer responsibility or funded recycling for end-of-life batteries.
• Protect customer data. Device-level information may be used only for billing, dispatch, safety, audit, and customer-authorized services. It may not be sold or used for advertising, credit scoring, insurance pricing, or unrelated surveillance.

Scale and accountability

• After two independently evaluated years, expand toward 100 megawatts of aggregated residential and small-business capacity by 2032 if the program produces positive net benefits, maintains reliability, and meets equity and customer-savings targets.
• Publish quarterly enrollment, installed capacity, dispatch performance, customer payments, bill savings, outage support, emissions effects, avoided infrastructure, complaints, equipment failures, and participation by income and geography.
• Fund the program through Energize Delaware and Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative resources, approved utility non-wires budgets, competitive federal or regional funds, and market revenue. Do not shift unrecovered program costs onto customers who cannot participate unless an independent review finds systemwide savings exceed those costs.
• Create renter, multifamily, and community-resilience options so participation is not limited to single-family homeowners. Schools, fire stations, libraries, shelters, affordable housing, and small businesses should be eligible to host batteries that support both the site and the surrounding grid.

What other states are doing

Delaware already has most of the pieces. What's missing is a program that pays households for helping the grid. DNREC's climate plan calls for storage targets, streamlined grid integration, time-of-use rates, incentives, demand response, and a vehicle-to-grid pilot. A June 2026 Energize Delaware study estimated that faster battery deployment could create up to $1.18 billion in net state benefits from 2027 through 2036, including $166 million in utility savings driven largely by avoided transmission and distribution investment. Delaware SHINES, announced in September 2026, now helps families buy solar and batteries, but no Delaware program yet pays participants for dispatching stored power to the grid.

The regional market is opening up too. Under PJM's rules for distributed-energy aggregators, aggregated resources could first offer capacity in the auction for the 2028/2029 delivery year, and participation in PJM's energy and ancillary-service markets is scheduled to begin February 1, 2028. Delaware still needs retail tariffs, interconnection rules, customer protections, and a program administrator capable of turning that wholesale opportunity into direct household payments.

Parents can't work without childcare, and providers can't stay open when the state pays less than care actually costs. Delaware should expand access without pushing out the providers families already trust.

• Build a voluntary mixed-delivery prekindergarten system for all three- and four-year-olds through public schools, Head Start, licensed centers, and licensed family child care homes. Use common quality and reporting standards while preserving family choice.
• Raise initial Purchase of Care eligibility from 200 percent to 275 percent of the federal poverty level in stages, with a higher continued-eligibility threshold and gradual phaseout so a modest raise does not cause a sudden loss of assistance.
• Cap family copayments at no more than 7 percent of household income, consistent with the federal affordability benchmark.
• Pay providers using the cost of quality care rather than only historic market prices. Add differentials for infants, children with disabilities, nontraditional hours, and childcare deserts. Adjust rates for inflation. Pay based on enrollment rather than day-to-day attendance.
• Fund wage supplements, scholarships, apprenticeships, and portable credentials for early educators. Provide facilities and startup grants in underserved communities and create a public portal showing real-time or regularly verified openings.
• Make the child and dependent care tax credit refundable for lower- and middle-income families and report annually on access, waitlists, workforce turnover, provider closures, family copayments, and child outcomes.

Delaware House Bill 387 proposed the 200-to-275-percent eligibility expansion but remained in House Appropriations as of September 27, 2026. It was not enacted law. A separate 2026 joint resolution, HJR 10, proposed a 10 percent provider-rate increase. I support both, and I'd add rates based on what care actually costs, support for early educators, and a permanent fix for the benefit cliff.

Judge healthcare policy by what patients pay and whether they can see someone when they need to.

• Restrict hospital facility fees for routine outpatient services and require advance, patient-specific disclosure when a fee is allowed.
• Require pharmacy benefit managers to pass rebates through, disclose conflicts, and stop spread pricing in public programs. Give the state authority to set upper payment limits for selected high-cost drugs after a transparent review.
• Use enforceable health-cost growth standards with corrective action plans, public reporting, and stronger review of hospital, physician-practice, and insurance-market consolidation.
• Expand primary care, behavioral health, maternal care, and community health capacity while improving price-comparison tools that show the patient's expected out-of-pocket cost.

Delaware needs more homes. Faster approvals have to come with affordability, infrastructure planning and protection against displacement.

• Set completeness and review clocks for permits, coordinate agency review, and allow by-right approval for projects that meet clear zoning and design rules.
• Legalize accessory dwelling units with safety standards, publish preapproved plans, and tie state infrastructure grants to local housing-production goals and transparent reporting.
• Require public subsidies to produce durable affordability, not short-term discounts. Preserve existing affordable housing, support rehabilitation, and pair new development with anti-displacement assistance.
• Expand supportive housing for people leaving homelessness, foster care, treatment, or incarceration, with services funded alongside units.

Every student should leave high school with a real plan, whether that's college, a trade, the military or a good job.

• Fund schools according to student needs, including poverty, disability, multilingual learning, and concentrated disadvantage, and publish understandable school-level spending data.
• Improve educator pay, retention, and hard-to-fill recruitment while reducing redundant administrative requirements that do not improve instruction.
• Expand career and technical education through employers, unions, and community colleges. Fund paid apprenticeships, transportation, equipment, and testing fees. Publish completion, credential, placement, and wage outcomes.
• Invest in early literacy, high-dosage tutoring, student mental health, and timely special-education services.

If you can't read the form, you can't use the service. That goes for applications, deadlines, decisions and appeals.

• Require every major agency to maintain a language-access plan, translate vital documents, provide qualified interpreters, and identify a responsible coordinator.
• Provide Spanish services in high-contact agencies and expand other languages based on objective community need. Use a statewide interpretation contract so smaller agencies and local governments can participate at lower cost.
• Create a verified referral directory, response-time standards, and annual reporting on language requests, fulfillment, delays, and complaints.

People should be able to report a crime, see a doctor, go to school, go to church or show up to court without worrying it will turn into an immigration case.

• Do not enter 287(g) agreements that turn state or local officers into federal civil-immigration agents.
• Require a judicial warrant before holding someone solely for civil immigration enforcement, with narrow rules for valid criminal warrants and serious public-safety matters.
• Protect schools, health facilities, courts, places of worship, and other sensitive locations. Limit disclosure of addresses and service records. Prohibit private detention or deportation contracts.
• Require public reporting, complaint procedures, and remedies for violations while preserving lawful cooperation on criminal investigations and warrants.

Moms Demand Action recognized me as a 2026 Gun Sense Candidate. Delaware has passed a lot of good gun laws over the last few years. I want to protect them, make sure they're enforced, and close the gaps that are still there.

• Defend Delaware's bans on assault-style weapons and large-capacity magazines.
• Keep universal background checks and the handgun permit-to-purchase law.
• Make sure police, courts and families know how to use extreme risk protection orders when someone is a danger to themselves or others.
• Require safe storage at home and in vehicles, and pay for public education on safe storage and suicide risk.
• Enforce the new ghost gun serialization law so untraceable guns come off the street.
• Make people under protection-from-abuse orders or convicted of domestic violence turn in their guns, with follow-up to confirm they actually did.
• Keep strong permitting and training requirements for concealed carry.
• Prohibit open carry in public places.
• Oppose Stand Your Ground laws.
• Keep guns out of K-12 schools and off college campuses.
• Let towns and counties pass reasonable local gun rules instead of blocking them with broad state preemption.
• Hold gun makers and sellers accountable under Delaware's industry accountability law.
• Fund community violence intervention programs through the state's new permanent Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

Residents should have a safe, affordable way to make some of their own electricity without a costly rooftop installation.

• Authorize certified portable solar systems up to 800 watts that comply with the National Electrical Code, anti-islanding requirements, equipment certification, labeling, and safe-use instructions.
• Use simple no-fee registration instead of discretionary utility approval for compliant systems that are not net metered. Prohibit special standby fees and unreasonable landlord or homeowners-association restrictions while preserving legitimate safety rules.
• Require clear warranties and consumer disclosures and use an independent safety study to guide later expansion.

Delaware Senate Bill 270 proposed this framework in 2026, including an 800-watt limit, equipment standards, online registration, and a safety study. As of September 27, 2026 it's still a proposal. Plug-in solar isn't authorized statewide yet.

Open partisan primaries for unaffiliated voters

Delaware should adopt a semi-open primary. A voter registered with a party would continue to vote only in that party's primary. An unaffiliated voter could choose one participating party's ballot for that election while remaining unaffiliated. No voter could cast more than one party ballot, and members of one party could not cross over into another party's primary.

• Do not publicly disclose which party ballot an unaffiliated voter selected. The public voter-history record should show participation, not the chosen party ballot.
• Use neutral language at polling places and online. Tell unaffiliated voters they can pick one party's ballot and that picking it doesn't enroll them in that party.
• Modernize registration forms so party choice and its effect on primary eligibility are unmistakable. Send immediate confirmation, provide online correction, and notify unaffiliated voters before the primary.

House Bill 188 is a current Delaware proposal following this general model. It passed the House on June 30, 2026, but the official bill page still showed no chapter number or effective date as of September 27, 2026. It's still pending.

Registration, voting access and clear information

• Adopt same-day registration during early voting and on Election Day with identity and residency verification and a provisional-ballot fallback. Delaware will need to complete its constitutional process before ordinary legislation can fully implement this reform.
• Expand preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds beyond the DMV, including online and nonpartisan school-based registration drives, and permit 17-year-olds to vote in a primary when they will turn 18 by the general election.
• Preserve early voting with evening and weekend hours. Set minimum locations using population, geography, transit access, and wait-time data, and allow countywide vote centers where secure and feasible.
• Pursue the constitutional changes necessary for no-excuse mail voting, a permanent mail-ballot list, secure drop boxes, and on-demand mail ballots at election offices.
• Create a personalized voter portal showing registration status, district, sample ballot, polling place, early-voting locations, mail-ballot status, cure instructions, and election deadlines in plain language.
• This platform does not include a paid voting leave mandate.

Ranked choice voting

In a single-winner ranked-choice election, voters rank candidates first, second, third, and so on. If a candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, that candidate wins. If nobody has a majority, the last-place candidate is eliminated and each ballot for that candidate transfers to the next ranked candidate who remains. Rounds continue until a candidate has a majority of the continuing ballots. A voter may rank only one candidate. Later rankings do not count unless earlier choices are eliminated.

The research is mixed. RCV can avoid a separate runoff and reduce vote splitting. Critics point to ballot exhaustion, delayed final tabulation, cost, and voter confusion. NCSL's implementation review found that the challenges are not dramatically different from those of existing systems, but age has been associated with overvoting or exhaustion and education remains essential. It won't end polarization on its own. The evidence points to small effects that depend on the place.

Recommended Delaware approach:

• Do not combine semi-open primaries and statewide ranked-choice voting in one bill or ballot question. Each reform should stand on its own merits.
• Authorize a time-limited local option for municipal single-winner elections, with local public hearings and either a voter referendum or an explicit, recorded governing-body vote after technical review.
• Require certified equipment, a voter-verifiable paper record, plain and multilingual instructions, sample ballots, public mock elections, disability testing, and outreach beginning at least 60 days before voting.
• Publish cast-vote records in a privacy-protective format, first-choice totals, every elimination round, exhausted-ballot totals, transfer rules, and recount procedures. Conduct a risk-limiting audit of the paper record.
• Commission an independent evaluation after at least two election cycles measuring errors, undervotes, exhausted ballots, wait times, voter understanding by age and demographic group, cost, turnout, and confidence. Require a new public decision before expansion.

Voters choose who fills vacant seats

When an elected seat becomes vacant, voters should choose both the party nominees and the officeholder whenever time permits. Under current Delaware law, voters cast ballots in the special general election, but major-party county committees select their nominees. I want to change that.

• Require the writ of election within five days after a legislative vacancy is created. Open a five-day candidate filing period and publish every deadline immediately.
• Hold a special primary 35 to 40 days after the writ when two or more candidates seek the same party nomination, followed by a special general election 35 to 40 days later. Preserve early and absentee voting in both elections.
• If only one candidate files for a party, that candidate advances. Party committees may not substitute their preference for a special primary when qualified candidates filed.
• Align the special election with a regular primary or general election when that protects voter choice and avoids duplicative elections. Don't move dates around to get rid of a competitive primary.
• If no candidate files, or a nominee dies, withdraws, or is disqualified too late for a primary, require public notice, an open and livestreamed selection meeting, candidate statements, conflict disclosures, a recorded roll-call vote, and a written explanation.
• For other state and local elected offices, require a special election when a substantial portion of the term remains. Any appointment should be a temporary caretaker appointment only until voters elect a successor at the earliest practicable date.

House Substitute 1 for House Bill 183 provides a useful Delaware baseline: a writ within five days, a special primary 35 to 40 days later, a special general 35 to 40 days after that, and ten days of early voting. It remained a proposal as of September 27, 2026. This platform strengthens it by making the special primary mandatory whenever a party has multiple qualified candidates and by tightly limiting committee nominations.

Election transparency, integrity and protection

• Require voter-verifiable paper ballots, public logic-and-accuracy testing, and a statewide risk-limiting audit after every primary and general election before certification. Publish the random seed, sample, escalation rules, and final report.
• Publish results by precinct and voting method, the estimated number of outstanding ballots, the expected next update, and reconciliation data. Mark election-night results clearly as unofficial.
• Create a uniform ballot-cure process with notice by multiple channels, a meaningful deadline, online status tracking, reasons for rejection, and an appeal path.
• Protect voters and election workers from threats, intimidation, stalking, and doxxing. Provide rapid-response law-enforcement coordination without criminalizing ordinary criticism or peaceful observation.
• Use transparent, documented voter-list maintenance with notice, reliable matching standards, cure opportunities, and public aggregate reporting. Never use mass challenges or weak data matches as a shortcut.
• Put campaign contributions, independent expenditures, and lobbying data in one searchable, downloadable database. Require rapid reporting of large late contributions and independent spending, clear ad sponsorship, and disclosure of materially deceptive AI-generated alterations.
• Use an independent redistricting process with public maps, public data, hearings around the state, written explanations, and enforceable standards against partisan favoritism and dilution of minority voting strength.