 Government Operations Committee on Wednesday morning. We are going to cover a few COVID response issues this morning. This is certainly a never-ending wave of questions and concerns and uncertainty about how to safely proceed with various functions of state and local government while we are maintaining appropriate social distancing. Today we're going to have some folks from the Secretary of State's office spending some time with us. I'd like us to spend just a few minutes covering the issues around remote notarizations so that we can understand how that's working in practice and what, if anything, needs to be done in order to make that work more smoothly. And then I would like to switch gears to elections contingency planning. We have a lot of folks who are asking questions about what happens, how do we conduct a primary and or a general election in this time of social distancing. In particular, we recognize that in many of our communities it is our retirees, our former social studies teachers, our little old church ladies who are the ones who are volunteering for election day duties. And we want to of course make sure that we are planning our elections contingencies to protect public health in general, but most specifically to make sure we're protecting our poll workers who would be exposed if we were to do a conventional election like they did in Wisconsin earlier this week or last week. So at any rate, I would like to start off with a little bit of conversation about remote notarizations and we have several of you from the Secretary of State's office who are with us and I'm not sure which of you would like to speak first on that and I think I see Chris Winters giving a little wave. So go ahead Chris and update us on remote notaries. Great, thank you everybody and good morning. Can everyone hear me okay? Good. My name is Chris Winters and I'm the Deputy Secretary of State and I'm one of two people in the office at 128 State Street today. We've been splitting time some of us coming in just a few of us every other day or so. I'm happy to talk to you about remote online notarization, remote notarization and the emergency rule that we put into effect. We filed it on Tuesday, March 24th and then it went before the legislative committee on administrative rules on Monday and got the legislative committee's approval. As this committee very well knows, a notary public is one of our most important forms of fraud deterrence for our legal papers. We spent multiple years coming through your committee trying to update and modernize the notary public act in the state of Vermont and Vermont was lagging far behind other states, didn't have a lot of the requirements that other states had and so as you all know a notary is an impartial witness who performs an official act, an official act of certification, attestation or other act authorized by law and they're a way that we bring our private papers into the public in a reliable way. Notaries are a fraud deterrent that you are who you say you are and they preserve the integrity and the reliability of some very important transactions that we all are taken at some point in our lives here in the state of Vermont. The vast majority of transactions are going to be inland records but notarizations used for a lot of other papers and filings and as I referred to before you all passed a law and the governor signed it into law in 2018 and that put the jurisdiction of notaries under the jurisdiction of the secretary of state's office and in January of 2019 we started issuing commissions and then the law around notarial acts became effective in Vermont on July 1st of 2019 so it's been almost a year now that we've had the new standards in effect and as you all also know a notarial act requires the notary and the signer to have a face-to-face transaction in which the notary verifies the identity of the signer so of course in this strange time that we're in in this health crisis it became you know very obvious to us that this was something that we needed to address that it was the exact opposite of social distancing requiring people to be face-to-face in order to perform a transaction so I'm at the secretary of state's office we sent our staff here home on I think it was Monday March 16th and I say that because it was that same week when secretary condos and I were still basically the only ones in the office we were starting to get a lot of inquiries in the different ways that coronavirus was affecting our people's lives in Vermont and they were looking to us for things like as they look to you for things like open meetings and conducting elections and notarization became one of those issues that came up that week and we started getting all kinds of inquiries about how we can address this and it really started to hit home with us that week because some of the scientific models started to indicate an even more serious health crisis and was predicting widespread sickness and even widespread death unless we took some more drastic measures the social distancing measures to stay at home orders that soon came out after that or right around that same time so we started hearing then about the need to allow notarial acts to to keep happening what happened through remote means so we were hearing things about the elderly and other vulnerable populations who couldn't execute really important legal documents because it was going to require them to come into contact with a stranger the notary or it was even prevented by the shutdown of visitors to hospitals and nursing homes so notary couldn't possibly come in there and do some of those really important transactions that included things like wills trust documents powers of attorney for healthcare all critically important things but made even more important in a time of a health pandemic so and at the same time we're also getting lots of comments about real estate transactions and the need to keep these important transactions moving if at all possible and over the last couple of days I think you've seen some clarification from the agency of commerce and community development on what's an essential service when it comes to real estate and they've narrowly defined some things that will make real estate transactions essential but for the most part we were focused on the wills the trust the powers of attorney for healthcare trying to make sure those things could happen in the time of the health pandemic thinking that there was a lot of sickness and potential death coming our way as as dire as that sounds so our response that week was the week of the 16th was to begin drafting an emergency rule to modify the personal appearance requirement of the notary law and the way the statute is written it allows that to happen to include audio visual means a secure communication link so we wanted to modify what personal appearance meant while changing as little as possible about all the other parts of the notary law so we were first contacted by some attorneys in private practice we had the bar association terry car zones very very helpful and rounding up comment and input and folks and stakeholders organized some some conference calls we talked to the bankers association the association of realtors multiple notaries multiple private attorneys both in real estate law and in elder law we heard from some the department of children and families we had questions about adoptions about custody cases so we really worked hard those three or four days intensely and over the weekend to get the emergency rule out the very next week and then shortly after that we issued some guidance on how to perform a remote notarization and so you can find the emergency rule which I think is about five pages long that simply modifies personal appearance to include a quote unquote secure communication link audio visual means of doing the personal appearance and on then also some guidance about how you get that document signed get it to the notary attached the certificate and then there are a couple of things that I'm assuming that the committee wants to talk about that were changes that not everyone liked but we felt that they were necessary because this change introduces some additional risk into the process under emergency circumstances you don't have that person sitting right in front of you you don't you aren't holding their driver's license in your hand to check id you're doing it through a camera through a video we added a few additional safeguards and because what we were looking at were you know really important things like wills trusts powers of attorney for health care we're dealing with an elderly and vulnerable population we added some additional safeguards in there in the form of an additional form of id so you have to have a couple of different forms of id that's not necessarily required when you do the traditional in person notarization and that the audio visual transaction be recorded and that it be stored for a period of seven years and we've had a good deal of pushback from some people I won't say it's it's a lot of people but we have heard some people wanting to perform notarial acts some notaries out there who either find it difficult to find the technology to record or don't want the expense or don't understand how to store something like that recording for a period of seven years and they're wondering why that's necessary when we don't require that of an in-person notarization and I think it's it's kind of obvious that what we're looking at is additional risk so this is an additional safeguard we did look at other states and what they were doing either with remote notarization or with their emergency rulemaking and there are a number of states who also require recording and storage just to make sure if that transaction is ever called into question that you can look back you can see the recording and maybe have some further proof in court that it was a legitimate transaction that there wasn't any undue influence or coercion and then just the last piece that I'll add about that is you probably all remember the conversation that we had about whether notaries ought to have a journal in the state of Vermont be required to have a journal we always say it's best practice it really is best practice to have a journal of all the notarial acts that you perform but ultimately I think actually the house did pass the requirement for a journal and that the senate took it out that there was some objection to having to have a journal as a notary to having it be mandatory so ultimately we ended up with no journal requirement in the law so that's a further reason why we felt the recording and storage was an important piece of this emergency rule from the reports we're hearing out there it did its job there are a number of attorneys and other notaries out there who are doing these remote notarizations for their clients and they're able to get these really critically important things done without the face-to-face notarization I realize it's not perfect there's some in the I believe in the real estate world some additional work trying to to move ahead in some of the other committees trying to make sure that it's adequate for for title protection and for real estate transactions but I'll just close with this that when we passed this we didn't we didn't think we didn't assume that every notary is going to jump all over this and be able to do it in fact we only want a limited number of notaries who actually know what they're doing to do something like remote notarization people who understand the technology people who understand the guidance document that we put out who know how to record the transaction who know how to store the transaction it's not for everyone no notary has to do it no town clerk has to do it if they don't want to we knew this wouldn't be for everyone but we knew it would solve this specific problem this urgent need this emergency situation and we think we've done that if there are ways that we can make it better we're obviously open to talking about that and seeing if there's anything else we can do but we think it's in a pretty good spot where it is so i'm sorry that was kind of long but i'm happy to answer any questions the committee might have i'll also note that we have lauren layman our one of our staff attorneys from the office of professional regulation lauren did a lot of the heavy lifting in this in the drafting of the rule and the gathering of input and getting these documents put together and so she's here to answer questions as well thank you great thank you so much chris and and welcome lauren i have a couple of committee members who have been patiently waiting so i've got bob hooper and then marcia gardener and then rov leclerc hi chris uh two things uh the journal i mean if you happen to be an ffl holder you keep a journal you keep it as long as you're an ffl holder and when you quit you send it in in this case probably to the secretary of state's office and they retain it it seems reasonable but secondly i got a question from someone who is a notary about kind of a how much latitude does an existing notary have in exercising discretion when i go down to the courthouse and get something notarized i slide it under the window and they do what needs to be done nursing homes are now closed nobody can get in this remote thing facilitates that if you can find somebody that will do it there was a notary who basically said the document that i'm going to notarize is in the hands of somebody that's on the first floor of this building and he's got a window right there beside the parking lot and i can see his driver's license and i can see him sign it and i can do everything except speak directly to him unless i yell really loud through the window um does that meet some place in the middle of the hybrid of the old system and the new system yeah that sounds like it does that's very creative but uh i think we've seen a lot of creativity come out of this crisis including uh notarial acts that are happening at a distance with you know clipboards and individual pens and masks and you know maybe screens in between um it sounds like that could still meet the uh the notarial act requirement and i notice lauren isn't fainting in her chair so yes no there's no legal panic here and i am very risk averse as a lawyer are um there's two requirements there's alternative requirements for the personal appearance in the statute one is sharing the same physical space and it sounds like that's what this is is they're sharing even if it's a open outdoor space they're sharing a similar physical space um so it meets that requirement what we did with this rule is when it's impossible to share the same the alternative to that physical space is doing it via a secure communication link and so the this rule is under that statutory authority to propagate rules um defining the secure communication link and we defined it as any sort of video conference um audio visual conference such as zoom we didn't put any security standards in there um we actually used the language that the federal government's using for HIPAA and during the crisis so we've made it a very loose definition of secure communication link at this time but that's um where this exception comes in if you're able to share the same physical space under this traditional statutory um structure that's um fine as well so uh speakerphone call into the ditto everything's PG as long as you can see and hear yeah okay cool thank you go ahead marcia well i just wanted to add a few things since i was part of the conversation at the meeting um for lcar on monday regarding these emergency rules um the secretary of state's office did talk with some of the town clerks i was concerned about uh the town clerks and their ability to do remote notarial acts but most of them have said that they will continue to uh perform notarizations the way they always have and probably won't take advantage of uh this remote ability um also i think it's worth noting that um the secretary of state said that most of the software Skype etc that would be used has recording abilities so you don't have to have someone standing there with a cell phone as you're recording this which um i thought was important and then several on the committee brought up the need to protect those who are most vulnerable at this time um and they felt that recording these notarial acts was very important to um protect uh their safety and welfare so just some comments thank you great uh rob leclerc thank you manager well excuse me chris and i've talked about this a couple times and obviously i've talked to several people before then and after then um the main area of concern that i'm hearing from whether it be attorneys or some town clerks that have actually spoken with is seven years of having to keep this stuff um on file and in particular one having to find a vendor to having to incur that expense ongoing um especially for some folks that maybe don't notarize a lot and the concern is is that we're going to go from not even keeping a log to now we have to keep a record for seven years and obviously those are going to come at an expense so now something that is done a majority of the time for free there could be an expense that's going to be incurred by those looking to have it done i haven't spoken to an attorney that said that they've ever notarized anything for anybody that they didn't know personally now some of the town clerks and others that are notaries that i've spoken with have had the occasion to have stuff notarized for people they don't have a personal relationship with and that's when it falls back to their training as far as getting the identification that they need to know who they're notarizing for so i guess my concern is my suggestion would be is i think this is all fine with exception of the seven years if there was it's also my understanding in the rules that there is a hard copy of this notarization that's going to come out of this is is that correct chris that's correct it's correct as a regular notarization right so we'll still have a paper hard copy which is even a hundred percent more than what we do now so the comments that i've had is that if they have to go through and do this there are several of them that are considering just not doing any notarizations especially remotely so it seems that we're instead of helping vermont vermoners out we're going to take less options away from them well representative lucario i would just say that this is an emergency situation and these recordings are only required if a notary does remote notarization under these circumstances using an audio video communication there there is a provision in the law for remote online notarization but we're not there yet as a state and when we do get there we would have the same requirements at least that's what we would propose by through our rulemaking that's what other states do when there's an online notarization there's a reporting requirement and a storage requirement just to realize that and and and the the cost i suppose would be passed on to it wouldn't be in the case of a town clerk who's doing it for free but in any other situation where someone's performing a notary service that cost could be passed on in the form of their notary fee if they're doing something as technologically advanced as a remote online notarization and having to store it i'm not exactly sure what the cost is or what the mechanics are storing something like that but i could check with um our state archivist who would be very well that's and that's one of the main problems that i've heard about chris is that nobody knows what that cost is going to be um we've had a good robust discussion on our committee about uh the cost for public safety for the the video cams and that storage and we've heard widely different amounts um you know i've heard you say a couple times that this is what other states are doing and as much as i can appreciate that we're not starting at what other states are doing we're starting at where we are right now where we don't even require a log and it seems to me that we're going from zero to a hundred here all at once when realistically i think if we went from zero to fifty uh we're still going to get the assurances that we need and yet it's not going to be that cumbersome for those that have to participate in the participate in the process so like i said the only thing that i have the feedback that i've gotten that they would like to see is this seven-year rule um be dropped everything else they're fine with because you're going to wind up with a hard copy anyway of the interaction so that would be the backup documentation thank you madam chair all right any other questions from committee members on the issue of remote notaries all right so what i would like to do at this point um and i know that we have bobby bram bramble bramble cone and uh carol does um from the town clerk's perspective um but i i am most eager to switch gears to the issues around elections contingency planning and um and so bobby and carol if you are yearning to um to weigh in with respect to remote notaries i welcome you to take a few moments at the end of your comments on elections to do that um but right now i'd like to switch gears so that we get a full hour and a half of conversation around elections contingency planning and so chris i will defer to you to tell me who from the secretary state's office would like to share with us the planning that that the secretary state's office is doing around voting by mail or other elections safety issues you're muted sorry about that can you hear me now yes i'll get there eventually um thank you um that would be willsenning and uh i'll just lead off by i think will is on um i will lead off by saying that we've done um a heck of a lot of thinking about this as you might imagine in the last month and even before that um and i'll speak on behalf of secretary condos in saying uh whatever we do um we're committed to providing free fair and accurate elections and we have two primary goals in driving the decisions that we have to make relatively soon around our 2020 elections in august and november one is that we preserve vermoner's right to vote in the upcoming elections and to protect the health and safety of vermoner's and that we shouldn't um force that choice between being healthy and safe and being able to vote so whatever path we go down uh we are focused on those two things preserving the right to vote and protecting the health and safety of vermoner's and with that um maybe will could uh key you into some of the the things we've been looking at so far and maybe some of the key decisions that we'll have to make in the coming weeks thank you thanks chris go ahead will thank madam chair and everybody hear me um yes just a quick heads up that my internet here does sometimes come in and out it um if i freeze i usually come back in about 10 seconds so just hold on um and also my napoli watching a movie right now but we'll see if she pokes her head then with that said can everybody still hear me sorry i'm seeing freezing okay with that said i think you know chris chris um gave a nice introduction we have been working very hard for the last three weeks um trying to figure out the appropriate course forward for the 2020 elections um as chris said it's it's a balance between the health and safety of vermoner's which for me is paramount takes the highest priority and um protecting the right to vote which is what that can so that presents a really significant challenge we've been watching that challenge play out over the last few months across the country you mentioned the situation in wisconsin but um many states across the country have been faced with that over the last few weeks and will be in the upcoming months um and i'll breathe a sigh of relief that we got our presidential primary done before the virus really broke out and got bad um that leaves us with the august statewide primary on august 11th and the november general election of course on the third um voting for that statewide primary will start in the middle of june the ballots on a in normal times and and now we'll get delivered to the clerks by june 19th and so the early voting and absentee voting process will start at that time as well um i'll get to that in more detail in a second and want to back up and just note for everybody that the nature of the challenge i think um almost every aspect of the election administration process in normal circumstances requires close human interaction um whether it's preparing ballots and mailing them out receiving them back opening them up feeding them into the tabulator counting them on election night and of course the entire election day process at the polls all of that again in normal circumstances in a good way involves close human interaction and a lot of um people working together in close quarters and obviously that um may be very difficult in august and november um we're trying our best to gather the best information about the outlook for the virus but as you all know that's that's hard even for the best health professionals to predict but there's certainly a i think a pretty strong feeling that there's a high likelihood that it comes back with some force in the fall um whether it's significant proceeds during the summer so um that leaves us i think our big posture right now has to be to assume well at least be less safe to vote in person at polling places in november and august than it typically is we don't know how bad that will be but i think we have to assume at this point that it will be less safe so what are the steps we can take now of course to to try to minimize that risk whatever degree of that risk might be at the time um and the obvious one to everybody and what's being talked about a lot is is encourage people to vote early ballot mail um thankfully is in a very good position relative to other states thanks to the smart forward-thinking policies that we've five years so even if we were to change nothing with the current process it would be a massive effort to encourage people to use the current process to vote early and by mail as you guys don't know we have a really robust early voting structure in vermont we have multiple forms of request you can make a request online by phone by mail or in person of course which would be less likely during these times a lot of states for example are ramping up right now and taking the big first step of even making it available to request about online and addressing this situation with a first step that way um we're down that road already and have all those options available which is great um you also can request you can make a single request for all the elections coming up in the calendar year and you can do so at one time so we're really encouraging people now to put in absentee ballot requests for both august and november regardless of the situation or what we end up doing um and then of course you have 45 days in which to receive that ballot if you've put the request in before that time and return it to the clerk i think we can all feel good about the fact that even starting where we are um we could probably be there to be by mail absentee voting numbers much higher than usual i think that's not just full thinking either in that we have to remember that everybody outside participating is very scared of this virus and i think that the fact of the virus and how contagious and deadly and dangerous it is um will just in itself um encourage a lot of people to exercise their early voting options and mail options um but like i said the the overall goal is to maximize the amount of people voting by mail and early and the sort of the um the easy answer to that and the data proves that more people will return a ballot by mail if you mail a ballot to every person every voter and so of course you've you've heard about that the cynic of ops and and in the media and in some um announcements from secretary condos that that's an option we're considering i want to be clear with everybody here i've tried to be clear with everybody i've talked over the past three weeks that we have not made any decisions yet um and that we are still figuring out the best course that i'm doing a lot of the underlying research that needs to be done talking with my ballot printers my invulters postal service i was on the phone for about two hours with the regional postal service wrap yesterday um our various service provider election management system and also potential new service providers for instance mailing centers in vermont that could accomplish mass mailings for me which we don't do as a normal um process so i've been trying to lay the ground for chairs what i'm trying to say out us to implement any of these options once we decide what we're doing um and while i say we haven't made any decisions yet it has to happen soon um probably within the next couple weeks i've said internally in our office by the end of the month i would like to at the very latest have our course forward for august and november um so a big part of that now i've been working you know 24 i'll have and thinking about these issues as we all have and i'm now at the point where we've got a clear enough sort of idea of the options out there that i really want to start and be engaging and have engaged with the clerks who are the most important um constituency we have and stakeholder we have in this process it's important for everybody to remember when we're talking about the ideas we have for how this is done that's the clerks and their poll workers who we're going to be asking to carry out um whatever we come up with and so their input is obviously critical and that's part of why we're here today and i'm happy to see carol and bobby i had a nice conversation with carol yesterday um i'm trying to go on too long so i'll i'll close it up soon really we're triaging decisions too there is so much to think about for how we're going to do these elections in the fall that all the decisions can't be made at the same time and what i'm trying to figure out is what decisions need to be made now and which ones can be delayed to a later time so i can devote the time now to the decisions that need to be made now an example is we don't need to decide now what the perfect process is for the polling places i'll back up there i should have said earlier that regardless of what we do in terms of early and absentee voting whether we mail a ballot to every voter or not there will have to be in person voting options on election day for multiple to serve particularly to serve populations that are difficult to reach by mail and that have less ability to engage in the absentee process by mail and for a host of reasons i think we will need to have an in-person option whether it's less than normal less time than normal less locations than normal those are decisions i don't think we have to make right now and that will be better informed and better at a time when we know at a time when we know the course of the virus at that point we're closer to that point there's there's a possibility that polling places could be much safer in august and then much more dangerous again in november for instance the decisions that do have to be made now address the way that we're going to do the early and absentee voting and particularly whether or not we're going to send a ballot every voter or not that's because i need to now start making the envelopes that will accommodate that process with the appropriate prepaid permit numbers another point i can get out there right now into the ether of this conversation is that the secretary of state's office intends to pay for any increased postage costs due to these process changes and we have federal funding specifically earmarked to do so and that we can use to do so and plenty of it so we need to be making those envelopes now and then whatever process we decide we need to be setting in motion the things that will accomplish that process for instance starting to talk to a mailing house and all the coordination that it would take to mail the correct ballot to every voter or if we don't do that how how we do a series of probably mailing campaigns to every voter in the state instructing them how they request an absentee ballot and vote early and and putting an absentee ballot application in front of them by that means too so those are the decisions i think we all should focus on now and that's what i'm trying to do last point is that as you know in act 92 h 681 h 792 whatever it came out as you all gave our office the authority with the agreement of the governor to implement any necessary improper procedures order or permit is the language in the law any any necessary procedures to address the covid 19 crisis i really appreciate that it gives us the ability to be flexible flexible be nimble respond to the changing circumstances in real time and to implement what what makes sense so i appreciate this conversation but i also encourage the people who are interested in giving input into this process and the decision we make to contact me and our office directly i'm having those conversations throughout the day all day with all kinds of stakeholders in this process and that's the best way i think to directly communicate to me your thoughts about it and with that said i'm happy to open up the conversation thank you so much well for for helping us understand some of the many facets of the decisions that need to be made in order to to hold free fair and accessible elections august and in november i've got a lineup of committee members who want to ask questions and um so i would just remind committee members that if your question gets asked um just pop your hand back down uh and i will get to you eventually so i've got jim harrison first thank you madam chair well thank you for the outline i am especially pleased that uh we will still have some kind of in person voting come november i think back to 2018 and i have very fond memories of the cold freezing rain and standing outside the polling booth i wouldn't want to miss that opportunity um this year so thank you for that um but more importantly uh i'm interested um you know i i i think as you said um we have a very good and robust absentee voting process uh where people can start requesting ballots anytime and you know 45 days out and less even a week before they can request an absentee ballot um and i don't remember the numbers as to what actually who actually voted absentee um both in the primary and in the general election but i if i recall it was a pretty high percentage overall um so that would that's question one what the percentage was last time and secondly when would you have to make the decision for the august primary if the primary ballots start to go out in late june uh not that they would have to go out i would assume right off the back but you know you i guess you could send them in july um or late july even so i'm just curious to what your initial thinking is in terms of timetable for the decision not to get ready the decision to actually send them to everybody that's what i'm talking about by the end of the month no later the end of this month correct okay even though you couldn't actually mail them until you know late june or july yes okay i guess i i could i could maybe push it to mid-may rep harrison what really drives that is the ability of the envelope printers to produce and get into the hands of 245 clerks the appropriate envelopes they would need to send those ballots in mid-june and he's told me he needs about a month which pushes it to mid-may and i don't think he knows necessarily this the scope and so i want to i want to give him six weeks okay but putting the envelopes out there to the clerk is one decision actually telling the clerks to print and or receive from you the ballots and mail them i think is a second decision where we actually bring them to the post office isn't it i'm not sure i follow but but if we are going to mail a ballot to every voter it's going to be a very different quantity of envelopes that are required and so it's about how you ordered your there may be some flexibility to order just a mess of envelopes and and not make the decision yet but my goal is end of the month there there are a number of other considerations that push that rep harrison also yeah and i understand and i appreciate you know all the things and what ifs that you have to go through i'm just you know the envelopes i get you gotta get them printed you gotta get them ready you gotta give them out to the town clerks but we don't even know what the ballot's gonna look like until after may is over with so we can't actually pull the our push the button on mailing them until you know at sometime in june at the earliest i would think but it's june 19th june 19th okay all right and the other question how much uh how many people voted absentee percentage wise last time oh yeah thank you it it hovers around 30 percent in general elections i believe we've just been saying the last two general elections were were right around 30 percent and less so in primaries i think it dips to 25 okay thank you and i'll note though rep harrison you at since you asked that's the states being oregon washington colorado utah who already use a vote by mail system mail a ballot to every voter and have been doing so some for a long time especially uh washington and oregon um when the crisis hit and when a lot of states started jumping at the idea to implement that kind of system um they just threw a note of caution that it's sort of orders of magnitude higher depending on where harder where you start where your absentee ballot population starts from so states that have way more strict absentee ballot rules and only have say five six three percent of their voters voting early absentee that it will be much harder for them to do both the cultural and the administrative shift to get from five percent to 90 percent then obviously it will be for states who already have 30 percent of their voters voting absentee um so it's it's a it's a it's a good thing to think about all right i have john gannon then rob la claire and then a few others after them um thank you very much will for your testimony today um i don't envy you the task of having to make the decision that you're gonna have thank you with respect to the august and november um elections especially with not great information as to you know what the impact of COVID-19 will be on vermont at either of those times um i just had a couple questions about mail voting um are you confident that your supplier um is going to be able to produce enough um envelopes and ballots um for the august and november elections at this point yes do you have a backup yes okay and that that backup can also provide sufficient ballots and envelopes i will say i haven't i don't have a space specifically identified backup john but i have many resources in my elections community i could tap into if needed okay um and or are you gonna be printing more ballots um assuming an envelopes assuming that more people choose to mail yes okay thank you early because um in the normal course for the august primary we only print ballots equal to 50 or 60 percent of town's voter checklist based on the historic turnout for the august primary and we never come close to using those if we were to be mailing a ballot to every voter obviously we would need to print ballots equal to a hundred percent of the voters we do however do that for the general election already the clerks get a hundred ballots equal to a hundred percent of their checklist again if we're going to mail ballots to every voter you actually need to do more than that because you would in theory need to have enough to mail to everybody and then also have a supply for whatever polling place option you have on election day okay um are you going to make any recommendations about quarantining mailing ballots i've thought about that you're the you're the i think the second person to throw that out there and the first one was maybe 10 days ago um actually a doctor friend of mine and he said you should have him put the ballots in the ballot box and have him sit for three days it's an interesting thought yep thank you i have a lot of questions about polls but um i guess we can leave those for another day yeah and i i'll use that question john to mention something else which is that regardless of what we choose to do i think it's pretty obvious that we'll have a lot more activity by mail and we have to think about extending altering modifying the process by which clerks can take in those ballots coming back whether it's extended times before and or after election day okay thank you yep all right i've got rob leclerc and then mike marwicky i will um i guess one comment one question uh i hope that the printing that we have to have done will be a vermont based printer will be used and secondly is there any way to go through whether it be at the state level or at the town levels to i guess purge or update the voter checklists if we're going to end up mailing a lot of ballots is there any way that that can be um addressed between now and then we need to send some out two good questions especially the second one the first one first one was pretty good too actually yes um our big the the person who does the envelope printing right now is jet service envelope local right here in barry and um and uh we actually have our ballots printed by two printers been that way since before my time here it's a redundancy measure and one of those printers is here in vermont l brown printing and the other is um in the midwest actually the name of the company is midwest printing so i don't plan on changing um the print providers unless we need additional capacity like repgan and mention second question is a is a is a big one um and it goes to the administrative challenges that would be involved in mailing a ballot to every voter one of the big ones is the cleanliness varied cleanliness of the voter checklist across the state um the basic answer to your question is the big one the the the challenge with checklist is people moving for for the the most part people dying and other ways that they come off the list are more clear cut and the the process of removing a person for reason of changing residents is controlled by federal law that's the law that we've talked about so many times where if you believe that a person has moved out of state um or moved out of town you have to send them the notice the challenge letter under vermont law and if they don't reply to that they remain on the checklist for two years if they show up at an election or request an absentee ballot they're required to fill out the affidavit of domicile that says they still reside there that's the same essential language as the response to the challenge letter and notice so you either get that back and they stay on your rolls or you don't get that back and you wait for them to request a ballot or show up an election and have them sign that or if neither of those things happen we call it you've challenged them no responses come and no voting has happened for two federal elections they can then be purged and we've set up a an automatic process in the election management system that essentially tells the clerks after every general election here the voters you've challenged that haven't responded and that haven't voted in the last two general elections and allows them to purge that those voters so those in theory should have happened following the 18 general election but they simply are not allowed under federal law to do any removal other than by that process for reason of change of residence except if you hear directly from the voter so the clerks can should send emails to the voters they they think have moved and said can you can you write me an email back to remove me from the rolls that's the first step that me that can be taken the other major steps and that I've already communicated them and tried to communicate in a bulletin yesterday and a lot of them are taking action already is a big outreach campaign to their voters to update their records to go to the underlying voter record and put in a good physical address and a good mailing address and then to hop over and request an absentee ballot can all be done from the my voter page portal that we have that way you've got a standing absentee ballot request with a good mailing address for that particular request if we don't end up mailing a ballot to every voter and end up mailing it only to the requested ones it goes to that mailing address provided in the request if we were to mail a ballot to every voter for either election you'd be using the information in the file from the underlying voter records there that's how you would have to do it you pull the baseline information and so we really want to get solid mailing addresses also in the underlying voting record in case we're using that mailing address to blast mail ballots out robits and excuse me replic layer other than that it is the message to the clerks to do like I said sort of as much one-on-one outreach to voters they think maybe should be off the list because it's so hard to accomplish that quickly through the federal law very good thank you will last point on that though because I know that you probably have heard this we'll hear this and we need to consider it is whether we would limit the mailing of a ballot to only what are called active voters so those would be the ones who haven't been sent one of those challenge letters and I'm really thinking about that and to me I think it makes a lot of sense um the bigger question is the the our legal grounds to do it I think to me but I think we would be on solid footing given the authority we've been given under the new law and the circumstances to say we're only going to take the proactive step with the voters who are active and not challenged the issue is the challenged voters have every right to vote they have to sign that affirmation of domicile at either the polling place or in the absentee ballot materials that get sent to them so in normal circumstances my mantra and what I drive into the clerks heads is that these are eligible voters you shouldn't consider them any less than a than a standard eligible voter it's just one you've sent a notice to to ask them if they still live there because you had some indication they might not but other than signing this affidavit they're on equal footing with everybody else but I think again given the circumstances the rate of challenges of sending that ballot to every voter you can make a strong argument that we could pick a subset of the voters in our checklist to be proactive with while the challenge voters still maintain all the other rights they have to request an absentee ballot receive it sign the affidavit return it and or voted the polls very good thank you all right I have Mike Marwicky and then Hal Colston good morning thanks thanks for coming in well my question is on the other it's about the other side of the process the counting and I don't need an answer right now but I just want to hold up the concern uh that when it comes to counting the ballots the clerks and the jps that work with them may may need some special instructions and I don't know if that's being worked on statewide or among states to try and create some best practices on how to safely count votes especially coming in now if we need protocols within the people come and vote live so just a concern I'm holding up with the answer now but hopefully by the time we get around that we won't need it but maybe we will so let's think about it now uh certainly there that's extensive thought being put into how that process is going to look in the fall um really good I have a very strong all between my colleagues across the country as well so people are thinking it through some of the major languages and and Rep Colston um written translations done um Antonin Wunewski on if town clerks had the authority and many of people standing the intention and the common practice and they just put it through the tabulator and Rep gets correct and for 30 days leading a count of ballots get back on in the morning and it picks the count up rich arder uh even open up that 30 day window so that we're not requiring beating well that's good on that subject it's just my my brain trying to keep three done and the things we have yet to do that's gone by the by also the dates on which we can turn in those when does that start and when does it in talking about your house repetitions yep it's uh it's me is the end okay this time I'll write that down it's on our website too so what you just everyone or there is a surgeon and there's susceptibility to recruit um for cities and towns so that there's sufficient people who demand polling places yes it's a big part of the effort took a first step in that direct sent to the clerks a nonprofit that has a website where people can go and town name and if they're interested in being a poll and it information from that town can do it what the pay is or is their information into that web um we're thinking in all creative ways we can for people and younger people to volunteer I I've encouraged the clerks to reach out to the schools excuse me I'd note that we already have the provision that the 16 and 17 year olds can serve as poll workers under the supervision of another one suggestion you may want to look into is you know the governor's created online website for volunteers yeah um and you may want to see if there's I know I volunteered and got an email on Saturday which said too many people volunteered we don't need you um which have issues with us um and I would urge you to happen to that yeah and just one other quick question um I know you talked about funding for the primary and general election coming from the federal government as you know in in age 681 we're allowing towns to use Australian ballots um for voting um is there any available for municipal elections if they choose to hold them I know you're you're promoting delay but in case they do have to do Australian ballots is there funding to assist the towns in doing that um not from that federal funding because it is I believe tied directly to federal elections with a federal candidate um but let me explore any other options generally know John the towns fund their own elections and yeah those canceled meetings are most likely going to have to be held at some point of course in late May June um and that is just another huge challenge on my plate right now is to figure out how um we put out some guidance to safely do that in the next couple months okay thank you thank you for that I have Bob Hooper with his hand up uh thank you uh well you mentioned uh limited hours and availability of live voting sites I mean here in the great north end of Burlington combining words four and word seven would be a good thing easy if everybody in the entire city had to go to the flint of oath that would be a bad thing do you have any thoughts on what sort of form that might take I really don't yet okay except to say all the options are on the table okay and and and with that said that um particularly in terms of the in person voting and polling places it really would be my goal to be as close to the standard amount in the standard places as is safe but that's interesting we could have we could have all of Chittenden County vote at gutterson oh it's a hospital now so that sounds lovely all right so uh committee any other questions for will I don't see any hands raised at the moment so thank you and um will as to the the preface that you made about having a um a younger co-worker with you in the in the room or in the house today don't worry about it if uh if this young person decides to come and and sit on your lap instead of watching the movie I'm sure that this is like dry watching paint dry to a four-year-old so she probably won't last long but at any rate uh don't worry about it we won't uh we won't be the least bit offended thank you so I want to uh I want to ask bobby brimblecomb if she has some thoughts to share with us with respect to um elections contingency planning any red flags and concerns that uh that you're hearing from your colleagues and then also if you had anything you wanted to say about the notary issue please go ahead well as as far as elections go I think clerks are nervous um I I'm concerned I think representative gannon pointed out I don't have a poll worker or a volunteer or a bca member who's under the age of 60 and I don't I worry about them and I worry about how to how to do this without endangering anyone and I worry about counting votes that's usually a pretty close process um but I I feel pretty confident that working with will and his staff will figure it out will will make it work um there will be challenges budget challenges even with the secretary of state's office paying for postage we hadn't planned to use a tabulator for the primary I'm assuming we will just to reduce the face-to-face counting staff that's needed but we don't have a budget for that we'll just have to do it I share his concerns about how to handle voters who we know have moved but we can't remove them because of the federal law we have to keep them on the checklist for three years but I feel like like we'll work out those issues I'm sure that will and his team are going to send us clear direction about how to handle all of that we've had um some discussions among the clerks about maybe sending out letters or postcards or something now as both a check on addresses and a way to let people know a ballot will be coming or they should request a ballot now I think the the weakness in the system will be the postal service frankly we we don't have a a lot of faith in the postal service anymore we've had mail leave our office and not get postmarked for two weeks to say nothing of when it got delivered and if a ballot is sent to a bad address it might be six months before we get it back so there are some there will be some issues that are out of our control I also worry about just how to make the polling place safe we don't we can't buy hand sanitizer we can't buy bleach wipes we can't buy cleaning supplies can't find them it's not an issue right now because I think pretty much almost every town office and the state is closed we're not we're not in contact with the public right now but frankly it is scary to think of 400 people coming to my polling place and I haven't seen my assistant town clerk in weeks because we're working different shifts when she's there I'm home and when I'm there she's home just in case something happens to one of us but you know on election day every office staff member will be in the same room it's a frightening thought but we will figure it out did you have questions well there was a hand up but the hand has gone back down so I'm guessing that that maybe there there aren't any questions at the moment and I appreciate you bringing up the issues around additional budget impacts for contingency planning for the election and that's definitely something that we would like to to keep a close watch on to make sure that we are not not impacting some communities more than others in in moving to to these election contingencies and a flag in my mind is to make sure that as we approach August we have personal protective equipment for all of the poll workers but I do like that John Gannon brought up that that we should be putting putting those volunteer opportunities out right now I'm sure that it would ease town clerk's anxiety if they had a half a dozen or a dozen new poll workers come and volunteer who could be trained now while we're sort of in between busy times or or while we have some time to plan on how to how to make this happen Carol Dawes did you have anything that you wanted to add with respect to elections contingency planning I'm not able to hear you it says my mic is perfect I can hear you now okay perfect um I concur with everything that Bobby said everything that will said on as will mentioned he and I have had some conversations I've had some conversations with secretary condos I've been gathering we've been getting a lot of email traffic from the members of the municipal clerk and treasures association and I've been gathering a lot of their questions and concerns and forwarding them along to will so so that he knows what's being talked about in the field and I think we really trust that we'll be able to work through all the different details with the secretary of state's office one of the things I mentioned to him yesterday in the phone call that he and I had is that unfortunately I think that we need to we need to plan for the worst case scenario and so that means putting as as much protections as we possibly can into place I did have one comment about notaries if I may throw that in absolutely it's actually a comment for Chris I don't know whether there's any opportunity for um for the secretary of state's office or the office of professional regulation to perhaps have a list of people who are offering remote notarization services because that we get calls in our office all the time and it would be nice if we could actually send them to a specific place or specific people that's a good idea Carol I think we could we could manage that as long as people were willing to send their information to us we could find a place for it on our website and a place to point people to the secretary of state's office has been wonderful with since they have these master contact lists they've been really great about helping to put up information about what clerk's offices were open up until the time that that everybody closed and different circumstances for offering land record research and they they just are a great general resource for in sort of a clearinghouse for information and that's been very helpful great thank you so much Carol I appreciate that I have Jim Harrison with his hand up thank you madam chair Carol on behalf of the clerks association and I know that a lot of this is sort of guessing the future but as we've seen in the past month the world is a lot different today than it was a month ago hopefully the world is a lot different a month from now in a better way than it is today and it's really hard to know what August will be I mean things are just changing that quickly but having said all that the the elections division is absolutely right for making all the planning and putting the pieces in place not knowing what the future is going to be all we can do is look at today I'm curious as to you get the envelopes next month for all your registered voters when are you comfortable in saying we've got a mail uh when are you comfortable or one of your counterparts comfortable in saying when do we have when do we have to make that actual decision on mailing for everybody my ballots arrive the minute I have my ballots and my envelopes I want to start getting them in the mail if that's what the certainly that's our intention with regular under normal circumstances with requests for absentee ballots to get them out as soon as is humanly possible and I would think that if I was looking at I mean I have about 250 300 requests already for August and for November and we would put them out as soon as the ballots had arrived had arrived and if I had to do more than 10 times that number if I did my whole checklist obviously I'd want to get started as soon as possible when do you get those ballots um it's usually we get them maybe a week at the most before the the date when we have to start sending them out and as will mentioned that was June that's June 19th for the August primary um we it it uh the timeline is based on the deadline for submission of petitions or this year consent of candidate forms data entry of those names into the system and then sent off to the printer excuse me so that so that they can get the ballots printed and then the turnaround time for the secretary of state's office for getting those ballots back you know if if um if may 28th is the deadline for consent of candidate forms and ballots need to be available by the 19th of June that's a pretty narrow window to get ballots printed okay but assuming the ballots get printed as a contingency anyhow you need to know by the middle of June it sounds like um that we're going to mail them to everybody this is assuming you already have the envelopes and you're getting the ballots printed for everybody because that decision was already made is that fair i i i i guess i'm a little unclear of the question because it's you just said um because the decision's already been made which is why i have all my envelopes therefore there's no decision for me to make i i would just be mailing them out once they're available yeah no i'm sorry there's a couple decision points as i understand it um one would be yes we're going to print envelopes for everybody that doesn't mean we're going to use them for everybody um and then the second decision we're going to print ballots as if we were going to mail them to everybody again that doesn't mean the decision to actually send them has been made um because then you're incurring the postage cost and the labor cost of actually mailing them but it it sounds like if i'm understanding if all that's been done you need to know in the middle of June if you're mailing into everybody if you're actually putting those ballots in the envelopes and mailing them at the very latest yes okay thank you go ahead bobby i think the when we get the ballots we we will send them to everybody if that's what the plan is but we need to know we need will is correct we need to have that decision made much before mid-June because we need to educate our voters we need to contact them and let them know to expect a ballot or explain to them why they're getting a ballot we need time a lot of us i think will likely send a mailing to our voters to have them check their address clean up their address and we need time to plan the staff it's not a simple matter to just mail however many ballots are on the checklist for me it's only 1200 ballots but for carol it's many more she's not going to decide today to mail 10 000 ballots and have them in the mail tomorrow there does need to be some weeks of planning we have to adjust our staffing right now most clerks are on a skeleton staff and we need to educate the voters and that takes time you know that's bobby that's a good comment i'm i guess if i could go back to will i'm wondering if some kind of advanced notification has been contemplated even if it were sent out now saying there is the possibility we might be doing a mail i ballot election in august and we need your help to update your voter checklist that um could certainly be done i i just there are a lot of reasons why we need to make the decision as soon as possible um yesterday not on not in the middle of june um that's the first question is whether we're going to mail a ballot to all voters there are then a series of many questions that follow that about how that happens and deciding all of that will require my engagement with different companies different vendors possibly or not there are contracts to be put in place there are quantities to be determined it's it's hard for me to describe right now to you how much goes into making that decision um but all i can tell you is it needs to be made as soon as possible i will throw out there i will throw out there the concept of that mailing being done centrally from the secretary of state's office or not and that mailing the ballots being returned centrally or not when bobby was talking i want return to her testimony which thank you bobby i think was powerful and important the counting and processing of these ballots and the packaging and mailing of them at the beginning take a lot of human effort in small spaces together we're putting a lot of people at risk to say okay i'm going to send all your ballots registered voters and you have to take them back and open the the envelopes and count them all there are towns that count by hand lots of them so all of that i mean if you listen to bobby saying that and i hear other people saying that my reaction is i'd like to do it all centrally and take all of that activity out of the hands of these vulnerable poll workers um but there's a whole lot that goes into doing that and a whole lot of pushback against that as well so that's that's why the decisions need to be made now because there's a whole lot to think about after you make that decision as well okay well thank you this is this is actually helping for at least my education um couple quick thoughts though in relation to the issue of the voter checklist uh you can't mail the ballots today even if that decision had been made because we haven't been through the candidate filing and getting them printed and all that does it make any sense to send out something to voters ask them to clean up their checklist have they moved is it you know you got a forwarding address any does it make any sense at this point to do that whether it's done locally or done from the state or is that just not necessary and then the other question they would have given the suggestion that was made by someone earlier about not touching the ballots for a couple days when they come back in the office again maybe a non-issue in august we don't know that does it make sense to put a deadline say a week before for this year for absentee ballots which might be the majority of them i think it would it's probably more likely it would make more sense to do an extended processing period okay no another way to do it great yeah thank you and um on your point before that sorry rep Harrison it that certainly makes sense um and it is happening it's again i'm triaging and we're taking the local approach right now in the bulletin that i sent to the clerks yesterday all 246 clerks i encourage them to do their own reach out right now to all the voters in exactly the regard you're talking about i think carol will tell you she immediately put a message on front porch forum i got a email 10 minutes after i sent that bulletin from the clerk at brattle borough who had written up her paragraph to put on front porch forum and to start sending out so it's happening at least at the local level right now and potentially on a statewide level soon and our office it's happening at a statewide level also just not by email our office is putting out as much of that messaging as we can as well right thank you well um thanks jim for those good questions um so elections are uh are essentially contests between um candidates they are political contests and so i thought it would be important to hear from at least the the three major party um uh representatives uh what they're thinking and feeling about elections contingency um so the one of the three you get the prize terry for being um responsive and and answering the request to testify um would love to hear from the chair of the vermont democratic party terry anderson on any thoughts you have with respect to election contingency in the covet era welcome great great thank you chairwoman and thank you all the committee members for having me uh first i just want to praise the incredible work that will and the secretary of state's office are doing trying to plan for such complex contingencies um i think the the number of moving pieces it's just astonishing and i really give them credit for being ahead of this and and taking the steps that are needed now um i want to start out by actually calling your attention to somebody whose name you've probably never heard rivell berke rivell berke was a precinct election official in chicago where they had a primary election on march 17th a week later he showed up the emergency room april 1st he died when i think about the people who man the polling places that i go to i think about the risk that we're putting them at in chicago four different precincts now every voter who showed up has got a notification that one of the election judges at those polling places had tested for covid in the days following the primary and hundreds and hundreds of people are now having to worry about whether they were infected or not and i think that human element we heard it from bobby we've heard it from others of exactly what we're asking our poll workers to do tells us that we need to do everything we can to make this election as the light touch as possible to minimize if not eliminate the amount of face to face human contact that we're going to have to use to conduct the election and we may not be able to get there 100 but we do need to minimize that um many of you know i work in public health for 30 years before i retired did infectious disease policy management i've done contact tracing i've done all that i talked to my colleagues around the country i talked to people or deans of schools of public health everybody believes i'm going to see some kind of rebound during the fall even if we do see a leveling off or a really low level during this summer so i think we have to plan with the assumption that there's a lot of risk we saw in wisconsin what happens when those decisions are made too late so again for will and the team to be planning this ahead of time i think is really important i will say our preference as a party is if it is at all possible to move to sending every voter a ballot we believe that is the most effective way of minimizing the amount of face to face contact that will be happening uh we've talked about i've talked to my colleagues in states around the country that do this uh origan's been doing for more than 20 years now and there's a lot of lessons that they've learned about how you make it work and we're lucky that we've got a lot of things in place already that'll make it easier but i did want to highlight a couple of the take home messages that they that i've heard from other states one of them is to understand that when these ballots are sent out they are not forwarded if the address is bad the clerk receives them back and in the case of origan it's the county clerk and then they have to decide what kind of follow-up you do if you get an address correction you go to that person and say hey you moved can we can we fix that you still want this but people who do not receive a ballot have the ability to request one um one of the other things that one of the safeguards that's built in and we have it currently with our absentee ballots is will you have to sign that internal envelope and in origan they actually do signature matching and they've learned in other states around the country that have heavy absentee voting sometimes have high rates of rejection of ballots because signatures don't match and one of the lessons they said is we need to understand election officials are not forensic signature analysts and we need to make sure that that's not being done to throw out too many ballots in origan they have a policy if somebody's signature is rejected for not matching the clerk gets in touch with that voter to give them a chance to remedy it so what i just want to flag that as one of the potential challenging areas um obviously i am thrilled that will and the office are talking about postage paid envelopes for these origan saw a significant uptick in return initially when they implemented vote by mail the voter had to supply the stamp when they moved to postage paid it did increase the the response rate um one of the issues that does come up that i think we have to figure out how we plan for in origan they cut everything off 21 days before the election they do not have same-day voter registration here we have established same-day voter registration and so obviously we got to figure out how we make that job um you know i think the the reality is that um we've seen it work washington state was the first state in the country to have a significant significant covid-19 epidemic they managed to hold their successful primary during that period because they had this system in place um they had everybody getting a ballot they had election day where you could drive up in your car and drop it off without having to go into an office or a polling place and i think it's a lesson learned origan's going ahead with their main primary and they have no concerns i mean they're they're tightening up a few things here and there to to avoid some of the contact but their system is built for this i would love to see us move to this long term i think it's the effective way to increase voter participation to make voting easier to remove unnecessary barriers but certainly in this public health emergency i hope we can can find a way to do this uh and get a ballot in everyone's hand make it easy for everyone to vote protect everybody's health that's what election should be about not putting up barriers people died in the 1960s for the right to vote nobody should have to risk their life this year for the ability to go pass their ballot thank you terry um rob leclair has his hand up thank you madam chair i spoke with deb and told her that i would be on the call um i certainly can't uh elaborate any more than what terry had said the only um comments i'd gotten from her was one that it's pretty clear we're going to probably have to open that ballot and two the sooner that everybody recognizes that and the rules of the road are out there um the it'll be for everybody who will know how to react from there that's it thank you that was an excellent stand in any committee members do you do any of you have questions for terry anderson okay i am going to invite um pate lap to give us some remarks um on behalf of v perg so go ahead kate great thank you so much sarah um i just want to reiterate a lot of the concerns um that folks have been raising already um you know v perg along with a bunch of other coalition members including justice for all disability rights vermont the aclu and vermont conservation voters are pushing for every single registered voter in the state to get a ballot in the mail full stop the more barriers that folks may face in voting by mail um the more people are likely to be disenfranchised and particularly vulnerable populations are often the first ones kind of dropped off when we add steps to the voting process um so to that end we really urge the secretary and governor to make that decision and um the other piece that others have again mentioned is to make it quickly um i think there's no shortage of concern about the need for public outreach and education to make sure that addresses are updated properly um to give folks like the party like ourselves the opportunity to communicate with our own members about these critical changes um and again to communicate with the vulnerable and potentially marginalized populations you know we need to understand that not every registered voter in the state of vermont is on front porch forum or social media or reading press releases and we really need um ample time and opportunity to do everything we can to educate um our voters in preparation for 2020 we're very hopeful that a universal mail system will be implemented um in a timely way um i think we'll leave it at that we did put up a petition yesterday um calling for universal mail ballots and that does already have 500 signatures in the past 24 hours um and i'm happy to kind of answer any questions folks may have um yeah i think that's our our general update and bottom line on this we just really want to see the safest most transparent accessible elections we can in 2020 and have massive concerns about in-person feasibility um it's really going to be all about the mail this year and we want to see that as universally distributed as possible great thank you for being with us kate and i guess um since you since you mentioned a number of coalition members who are um who are all pulling for uh for the the broadest and and quickest move to universal balloting i guess i would uh encourage the coalition to uh to find among its members folks who are willing to contact their town clerk and volunteer to uh to work the polls because um that is a big anxiety for town clerks and it's not like they can just uh you know hang out at the transfer station on saturday morning and start signing people up for uh for for duties um in working elections so uh any help that you and your coalition can give on that front would be greatly appreciated yeah we'll certainly put out that call to action to our members you know respectively um and also just want to highlight that our coalition has also been um in touch with the secretary's office they've been really wonderful and supportive um and we have also been in touch with our federal delegations encouraging um mail stimulus being included in round four of covid response funding i'm sure it's no surprise to anyone here and i think um will put it very aptly in a senate gov ops call but the impact of us ps shutting down on our elections would be utterly cataclysmic um so i want to raise that as another kind of front that our coalition is working absolutely and rightly so thank you for doing that um so that is that is the end of our list of witnesses for today and so i would uh open this up for a little bit of committee dialogue or if anyone has a thought or a or a question that's not directed necessarily at any of the folks who are with us today um other other issues around elections contingency that you think we should explore um nagging worries open it up to the committee so go ahead jim harrison yeah thank you i'm just uh this has been very helpful to trying to understand you know the logistics of what's going on i haven't heard anything that would require us to tweak the bill 681 that we passed a few weeks ago um but maybe i'm wrong you know i guess if there's any ass from anybody then we need to you know consider it probably sooner than later but i haven't heard that yet that is correct thank you all right any other committee members um for committee discussion all right uh will or chris any uh any oh hold on i have mic for wiki with his hand up go ahead mic um thank you madam chair and and thanks to the committee um just a comment here that i want to um thank everybody for for getting ahead of this um i think looking back at what happened in wisconsin we saw that people are going to vote and and uh even when barriers are put up that um one might think would suppress a vote seems to inspire people to get out and even greater numbers and we saw that happen in wisconsin i don't doubt we would see it anywhere so i'm glad that we're looking to try and make this as accessible and an open an election coming up um because people are going to come out and we need to make sure they're safe and those counting votes are safe and um thanks for taking the leadership on this yes definitely thank you i feel like we're in good hands jim harrison yeah representative or rick reminded me there is one outstanding issue and that was the and i know there were some concerns and we didn't do it before and that was the amendment that uh mike offered that would limit the a candidate to running for one office and because that decision didn't need to be made and there was questions it was we we put it off but i would be curious if um when would will need to know that uh in terms of the the primary if we did try to find a work around for that issue so as it stands that um filing period starts may 14th so that's when somebody could come in on the 14th and file the petitions or the consent forms now for multiple offices so before that time okay so we have just under a month to figure that out or would you need something on your form that's posted now sooner the better okay thank you all right will do you have any other um any other parting thoughts you would like to share with us yeah one last point i want to go back to um bobby's most recent comments and just to make note that um the federal funding that we got for the covid response it isn't just limited to um postage it's um it can also be used for any increased costs at the local level for dealing with these federal elections so if they need to to ramp up um poll workers and pay more poll workers there's possible reimbursement for those kind of costs as well great super thank you so much okay so committee i believe that is all um we have time for today we have another um committee session again tomorrow so if you are pondering any of these conversations and um and you'd like to explore something more please reach out to me directly and andrea and i can try to get some time on the agenda and want to thank the folks at secretary states office and thank you so much to carol and bobby for being with us today to help us understand um how uh how a universal mail balloting would would um roll out and what we might need to do to help support that um and kate and terry thank you also for sharing your thoughts with us and uh so we will sign off now for today and um everyone stay safe out there