 So I just, there's nothing about what people's expectations are in terms of that. Because we're not asking people to do this, we're only asking the town, the legislative body, and the agencies. So this is not, we couldn't have done a castle to the foal before they closed, and it would have cost us a minimum of $25,000. What do you mean they're castles and foals? They're closed. They closed the ability to hire them to do a foal. They closed the foal. So the business there, the university's closed it. The castle then closed it down, because they, it was a drag out of resources. So you're in a budget of problems. Wow. So not a lot of people will engage in that. I guess. Well, it's more that the student population is not where it needs to be, but it didn't ever make money. That's really too bad. It was a very useful tool for lots of different things. But it would have cost us a minimum of $25,000. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, it's not. All right. Who wants to talk to us about age 625? We are at the point where we, 624. I don't know. All right. Do you have something new to say today? No. Okay. Of course you remember I was here last Thursday. I just identified yourself. Ron Martin, Monterey resident. So I was here last Thursday and I just voted in favor of a bill that would be as restrictive as possible. And in response, you mentioned something that I thought was interesting. You said that Vermont has a very high percentage of voter turnout, which was impressive. But after that, I thought, is there any empirical evidence, frankly, between that voter turnout in Monterey and the ability of political parties to reach their constituency with leaflets and with other information to try and get them to vote for their candidates? So to research that, I went on the internet. I could not find any studies that had been done about that. I also spoke with a sociologist who was a friend of mine. He said he wasn't aware of it. But to be sure, he researched it more thoroughly in terms of his expertise as a sociologist. He could not find any evidence, frankly, that there's any connection between the voter turnout, which is above average, admittedly, than other states. It's still pretty loud. Well, let's move. As far as I know, it is better than compared to a lot of other states. But he couldn't find any connection at all on the internet or any other talking with his colleagues or looking through his professional literature that there was any connection at all between that. So to make an argument that should be modified, that shouldn't be so restrictive, the accessibility to information on that basis from what I've seen, it's not really substantiated. Yeah. I guess I thought I characterized the argument differently, that the discussion had been about in other states, only parties, for instance, can have access to the full checklists. And my comment was that our voters routinely have the highest percentage of electing and voting outside of the two parties. We, of course, have an independent senator. We have more independents and more third party officials in this state than I believe every other state in the country. And so the concern I was expressing was not about voter turnout, but that we need to acknowledge, I believe, that the voters in Vermont are interested in more than Democrats and Republicans. So it was in that context, but it is something that just to be clear about it. Yeah. No, I understand that, but it's still, I mean, just as one person, I'm not sure that that would be of significant importance enough to modify this bill and make the accessibility still what it was, especially in today's world, what's going on. And then, yeah. Is there a point that we should further restrict the access to the checklist, and if so, who would you restrict it to? Who could have access to it? Well, actually, I got an email from somebody today, or I guess it was two days ago, and she made a very interesting observation, a very interesting suggestion, that it should be restricted to everyone except in criminal cases. No, I think I didn't state that right. We have a voter checklist. Who should have access to that voter checklist? That's a very good question. I'm not sure. Well, that's what you're saying, that we should restrict access to it. And so, who would you suggest should have access to it? Anybody who needs it for legal purposes only, one example would be in cases of criminal... Why would you have access to the voter checklist for criminal cases? If there's something that someone has committed a crime, and the police department needs more information about them, their address, for instance, and their... I think they probably could get it out of places in the voter checklist. Yeah. See, the person who wrote this did not really specify. She didn't go into detail about it. You're saying that we should restrict access to it. From everyone from the general public, I would think yes. And so, who would have access? That's my question. We'll get about that. Pardon me. Who would have access if you had your way? Who would have access to the checklist? Just authorities who need it for... Okay, I don't know specifically. I can't tell you who those authorities would be. What about the evidence? No, I don't think they should actually... Okay. As I said, I wondered about that until I did this research myself and couldn't find any results and then talked with a sociologist, a friend of mine who had also did research, and he didn't find, from the research that he did, that it would make any difference in how many people voted or who they voted for. Okay. Thank you. There was another thing that I wanted to pick up and relate it to that. Also, the political parties who are pushing this so much and they really feel they need access to all this information in order to promote their campaigns, et cetera, might keep in mind that an issue that's becoming more and more in the minds of the average voter, I would say, today is privacy, especially when a major credit bureau last year, I think, reported they had billions of people of their comfort. And this morning I was on the internet and something came up and there was billions of information of Yahoo, since garbage had been stolen. So I think political parties were so concerned that this would compromise their ability to influence voters, should keep that in mind also. There was a neighbor of mine a few years ago. We were getting leaflets for a full month before an election from one candidate every single day. He got so angry about it that he saved them all and despite the fact that he agreed with this particular candidate from what he told me and he was from the party that he would belong to, he put them in an envelope with a covering note saying, this is why I did not vote for you. So privacy is something that I think that should be taken into consideration equally by all these political parties who are so concerned about having access to voter information. If I can see anything that, in Vermont, anything that's generated in government business, any document that's generated is considered a public record. And a checklist is one of those. It is considered a public record and it's always been a public record and everybody has had access to it. So by restricting it, we are making dramatic changes. It's always been a public record. I know, but that's why we were coming up. Sorry. We get your point that you think it should be restricted. I think that we'll hear from others that it shouldn't be. The whole point is that the three conditions under which you can release them providing somebody assigns a form saying that they will not use those conditions. There are loopholes and this was discussed by you before I spoke last time. But there are so many ways to get around them. So I think that those conditions should be restricted dramatically or even eliminated. We get that. Thank you. And this time I put another thing on front porch form. I got five answers this time. One person said she would have been here but she's out of town. The other people couldn't come because it was on the lunch hour and they had to get back to work, et cetera. But they all were supportive of this. Thank you. Thank you. Will? No. Do you want? We'll got a haircut, too. Spring. Spring is on. All these men are getting on the haircut. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Good morning. I'm really grateful because I testified. We're at the point, I think, where we're either going to do something with this bill or not. Well, there was... I guess I wasn't sure we had fully gotten it. No, that's what I wanted. I want to make sure that everybody has their chance to weigh in on it and then we'll have a committee discussion and decide what we want to do. Well, setting director of elections for the record really briefly to just reiterate what I said last time. We do support this bill in its current form as a good first step. That was how I let off last time. So I want to reiterate that. And to Mr. Isitmerkin as well. So we, honestly, my office shares this concern that we think we could do more in terms of figuring out who should and should not have access to the bill. What I want to make clear to the committee and to everybody who's commented is that this bill really has a pretty limited scope that speaks to the federal government, right? Or a foreign government or its agencies. And those are the people to whom those purposes apply that Mr. Isitmerkin was referencing. So anybody who is not the federal government can still request this checklist with this bill passed for any other purpose besides a commercial one. Because they're not the federal government using it for one of those purposes. And the current existing restriction on commercial purposes stays, but that's it. And that's what your current law is. Anybody can have it, so I'm the affidavit of not using it for a commercial purpose. That remains the case for everyone requesting the checklist except the federal government under this bill. And that's why we supported, as it's limited in scope, the initial concepts we were throwing around in the House committee just to put it in your head because it's been discussed were ideas, for instance, limiting it the access to the checklist to candidates, PACs, and parties for campaign-related purposes. Either voter registration, voter outreach, walking lists, et cetera. That is the approach taken by a significant number of the states. When we're thinking about this going forward, in the context of this bill, or maybe next year, Betsy can provide you with a really nice summary of what the other states do, but together by NCSL, that's pretty common of restriction that only allows campaign-related purposes to campaign-related entities. One of the ones that sort of seems like is variable between states and that we thought about and is hard to define, I think, is the concept of also letting researchers, academic researchers have access to the checklist who do request it fairly often. But that's all, I think, to be considered in another bill in the next session, hopefully in my standard every two-year elections cleanup bill. And we see this bill as a good first small step, admittedly targeted toward the kind of request like we got this summer from the Presidential Commission. Is there anything, if we were to pass this language, that would permit the Secretary of State from sharing the list with the federal government or would your office also be banned from delivering to the federal government? We would be banned under the provisions in hand. So President Obama had formed a commission to enhance voter participation and tried to work with Secretaries of State to gather data to do a national survey of voters. And we have this and all of a sudden we like that mission and so then you've got to come and change the law so that we can comply with that. I mean, this is where I just get a humble word. Well, under your exact, that hypothetical, I would say we could, because it's not one of the restricted purposes. But it's the federal government that was doing it. That's why those purposes are in there. It's not just the point to get prohibition on the federal government. I can't use them for these three specific purposes. That was sort of, I think specifically, the concern of the AG's office in some prior drafts was sort of not restricted to legitimate use by the federal government. So what is number A under the purpose, registration of a voter based on his or her information maintained and the registration of what? It's not entirely as clearly worded as I would have liked it but that's the concept of creating a registry, a new registry of a certain process. Oh, when we were talking about the Muslim Registry. Oh, okay, got it. Because it says for the purpose of registration of a voter and I think that if you would have been prohibited from giving it, if the purpose for Obama asking for registration of a voter, if the commission had said we're going to try and increase voter registration, that sounds like it would have been prohibited. Yeah, no, it's a hypothetical, but we have passed down to probably the ultimate registration would still happen by the time clerk. It would be some kind of outreach to say go get registered. So how, my question is how important is this to do right now as opposed to really looking at it comprehensively in January? I guess that's my question. If we're going to look bit by bit or if we look comprehensively at who shouldn't have access? I think it's a fair good question, but I do think the secretary would support having this in place while we have that longer discussion. Anybody else? Brandon, did you want to weigh in? Sure, I mean, I... Wait, wait, before we close, I just have to hit something else. Sorry. You had, the last time we had this conversation, we had talked about having a D, a fourth thing, which was giving the secretary's date broader discretion. Do you remember that? Yes. Do you have language? No, I spoke with Ledge counsel this morning. You may want to hear her weigh in. I don't know about that. For the record, Brandon Batham, political director of the Democratic Party. Again, like Will, we don't really have much to add from what Connor Casey shared with you all last week. You know, the way that this bill is written would have minimal to no effect on our party operations. We, I think as Connor made mention, we don't receive phone numbers from the statewide voter checklist. It's just not what we get that information, so it really would not have much of an effect on us. In terms of future iterations of similar restrictions, it would be hesitant to say, let's use this as a small step to the next thing. I think there are very different priorities between the Secretary of State's office and the Democratic Party, but as it's written right now, it would not affect us. Josh, did you want to? Any questions for Brandon? I'm sure. And then while the Betsy tells us about this, about a D, a possible D movement. Good afternoon. This is the record, Joshua Dunn, Deputy Attorney General. The Attorney General's office supports H624 in its current form as a effectuating an important policy objective, which is protecting the privacy interests of Vermonters, which is a long-standing tradition in this state. And as I understand, this bill came out of the historic context, which I'm sure you're all aware of, the Presidential Commission on Voter Integrity. And as a way to address those concerns, our office got a number of calls raising the concern that very sensitive personal information might be shared with the federal government for questionable purposes, and we think this is a reasonable measure to address those concerns. It is interesting that we... I mean, in the telephone book, I know people don't have landlines anymore, but in the telephone book, you can look up everybody's address in the telephone numbers. And it's right on the grand list. Right, or on the grand list. But it's just a very interesting how we think about privacy, and I do understand. And if I may, the Attorney General's office is also looking at this on the commercial side of things as well. We're supporting a bill dealing with data brokers that collect this type of information from various sources and then sell it to others sometimes for good purposes, sometimes not for good purposes, and starting to get a handle on that so that people can have a sense of security and their identities is, I think, an important issue for the legislature to consider. Thank you. You're Betsy Amrass, Legislative Counsel. You had talked the last time you met about a potential deed in addition to those three stated purposes now for which the federal government or the government could be denied access to statewide voter checklist. And I'll just reiterate what I think I addressed last time is that when the General Assembly delegates authority to another entity, there has to be specified standards by which that entity will exercise that authority so that the General Assembly still has control over the state policy. So I don't think it could be an open-ended power for the Secretary of State to determine and in any other cases, the Secretary thinks advisable, for example. I think there needs to be some articulated standards under which the Secretary of State would exercise an option deed. So perhaps the one thing that just came to mind was anything substantially similar to A through C, which probably is not really helpful, but you have to articulate how the Secretary of State would exercise this decision-making authority to reject requests for the checklist by the federal government. I have a question on enforcement. What are our enforcement measures on this? We talked about it and I'm just curious what our enforcement measures are in on page three. We've talked about enforcement on your B, C, B, C1, B. So what happens if you do? What's enforcement? That is that if somebody wants to obtain a copy of the checklist, they have to swear or affirm under the penalties of perjury that they won't give the checklist to the federal government or a foreign government in circumvention of the prohibitions, the three reasons why it can't be used. Penalty for perjury, I always have to refer back to that language. 10 or 15, something like that, and a potential imprisonment as well. It's pretty high. Thank you, thank you, Director. And it would be, I believe it's been discussed before, complaint-driven. Complaint would have to be made. Yes, it probably would not be self-reported. It would not be self-reported. I'm pulling up the perjury statute. It's, yes, 15 years and $10,000 fine or both. I'm just curious if we have any instances of major concern about where the checklist has gone other than our most recent one-lip of presidential commission? Well, so now it's under current law now that the checklist can't be used for commercial purposes if a person wants to obtain a copy of the statewide voter checklist they currently have to fill out that. So we have any instances? No formal enforcement action taken. So you haven't had any formal enforcement action taken? In your writings, it's a difficult thing to enforce. Yes, it's hard to do things and not have real ways to enforce it. So... I think how it would play out now if it were to, would be that my office would somehow become aware of an entity using it for a purpose that had signed the affidavit to us and we would register a campaign. That's good. I mean, well, just the interplay here with our big data, our data portfolio is interesting because, you know, we have no notion really if these are being sold. I mean, if you've gotten the promise, they're not being used. I mean, we don't really have any clue. I can do a small Google investigation. Really, do we put a little tag on, like, we put a tag on my name to see where it goes in the dark magic of the Internet? In the dark web. I... Oh, my name is Sadling. All sorts of places. I know, I'm back just to... By the way, take off line. I unfortunately think we are so far past any protection of privacy at all that, I mean, everybody who wants to can know where every one of us is right now if we have a cell phone. And where we're going and where... I don't think you can turn your tracking off. I think that is a... That's a myth? It's a, what do you call it? A placebo. Yes. And they... We have gone so far beyond any idea of privacy. But you're not applying it. We should just give up, right? No, I'm not. We should just give up. Well, I mean, they'll think of more ways to find out if we did fight back what we should. Our idea of privacy has become an illusion. Maybe it needs re-identification. Maybe it needs re-identification. What's that? It compiles information from everywhere. Criminal records, on-the-records, addresses, anybody. Not all of us. It takes about four minutes for it to go through a cycle to get a full profile. Is that Cambridge Analytica? My life, Donna. My life, Donna. It's chilling. Oh my gosh, you don't even need to go to Cambridge Analytica to be chilling. No. My life, though. Anyway, I mean, I ordered one thing on line one time. You did? Sorry, Chris. I'm moving out. I ordered a CD that I couldn't get anywhere else. Right? And for years, I got things that say, if you like this CD, you might like this CD. That's right. That's big data at work. It is big data at work. Anyway, my apologies for being late. I'm not sure I have another meeting. No, not for you. So we are trying to figure out what to do with age 624. The Secretary of State would like us to pass it. We are deciding whether it's important to pass it now or not pass it and have a real in-depth look at I think that's what we're trying to figure out or put it off and have a real in-depth look at who actually should have access over the next year. Why can't we do both? Well, I suppose we could. Do you have some suggestions about then we can continue to take testimony on who should have access? Oh, I don't know about who should have access, but I understood this bill to authorize the Secretary of State not to share with the federal government. Right. So the larger question is who should we actually determine who should have access to it instead of who shouldn't have access and who shouldn't would just be the federal government and commercial. We like the way Betsy reframed it positively in our last discussion. Well, I don't see why they have to be done at the same time and we're worried about not getting anything done. That's just the question. Okay, I'm sorry. The Secretary of State wants us to do it now. Yes, Will. Just one comment on that exact point and I know you understand this but it's worth saying, yeah, that the reason that he wants it so that he supports it so much is because of the amount of calls that we got from Vermonters over the summer and fall who said, I don't want the federal government to have access to it. He's not just doing it out of the ruler. We realize that and we realize that there are ways of circumventing this and that if the federal government really wants it, they will get it. Well, they tried and they didn't. I mean, if they really wanted it, I mean, they backed off and that commission has been dissolved. No, it's been turned over to Homeland Security. Oh, I've heard it was dissolved. It was dissolved but the response to the duties have been turned over to Homeland Security and if they really wanted they're going to get it. I have to. They've already got it. They've already got it. They have yours. They use their phone. I'm happy to pass this now and hope it does something. Hope it does something or at least puts people's minds at ease a little bit which is probably the one thing that it will do. Just don't knock over the fruit. I think that's a good idea. I would add I would add I think the Attorney General supported this too that if the commission hadn't been disbanded if they continued to press us for a checklist and had taken us to court if Secretary Thomas continued to use the federal government that sued us to get the checklist we would be a much better legal standing with this bill. I think that is probably true. If I were the federal government and I wanted it I wouldn't do it that way. I would find a much more devious way to do it than to actually file a charge against the state of Vermont. I like the idea of you being devious in technology. No, not in technology. That's what it's saying. Anyway, if we're ready I'm ready to move H624 Betsy? There was one potential cleanup I believe that we discussed last time on the bill as passed the House. If you look starting at page 3 in regard to the Public Records Act and what is considered exempt and you're looking at C-31 and it describes this protected voter info and you turn over to the very last page and it says contained in an application to the statewide voter checklist and I believe we discussed to the Secretary of State's office that it seems like that is really supposed to be saying contained in a voter registration application or the statewide voter checklist. Is that Karen Richard's concern because I realize we forgot to address this. I believe that something the Director of Elections brought up or that we discussed is nobody applies to the statewide voter checklist. They apply to register to vote in a voter registration application. Yeah. We know. I don't know if it needs to happen. You don't apply to the statewide checklist. You apply to your town? You apply and that's what Karen Richards I think. No. Hers was on page the top of page so what would we need to do to clean this up? Contained in an application to the municipal voter checklist. You would say contained in a voter registration application or the statewide voter checklist. Does that make sense? Yeah. Contained in a voter okay you're going to do it. So then Karen... Where this thing is that you're fixing it up there. Karen Richards had one. It's on the top of page 3. Did you get that? No I didn't see that. C1 and it says any person wishing for a can of copy of the statewide voter checklist or of a municipality portion of the statewide voter checklist. Add that online too C1 Perhaps the director of elections wants to weigh in. I think that was discussed on the house side but isn't the issue being so she is requesting that it be in C1 isn't that issue then that every time a person wants to go to the town clerk they're going to have to start filling out the affidavit isn't that an issue and the clerks agree they do not want to have people fill out an affidavit every time they... And that's what Karen is asking people to have to do as well. This is from February 12th so she has changed her mind. I had to talk to Karen this morning they're happy with the bill as it is. Okay sorry we did not have a... Didn't know that this had been done. And they are because again the overlying protection is very good for the Betsy. Right. So can we make that a little... Yes it's very easy. Is there any possibility we can just vote on that today? I can definitely do that on the end of the day today. It will be short. So... What we want to do now is hear the Secretary the Attorney General's campaign buying in before. We all got copies of it. We do. Oh yes. Does the committee have an extra copy? No. Oh yeah. It's very... Did you post this? The report? No I know but it's a report so you're supposed to post it under reports. I don't... No. Is there by chance an extra paper copy? You can use mine. I'll take yours. If it's posted online too I can put it on each. We'll share. Chris I'll share. Thank you. Just a point of clarification. Go to our website or to your committee. Any time there's a report that goes to the General Assembly or a committee that's posted on the legislative website reports place. But then Gail posts it to our committee webpage. They can't post to our webpage. I think that's... If the AG's office wants to go on to the legislative website there's instructions on there on how to do that. There are many cool women out in this club. I would do that right now. Just in the middle of the street. TJ, Joshua, Bill... Are there women in here who are like that? So would you like to tell us about this report? I'm sure I'd be happy to do so. Okay. We will acknowledge that we have it on April 4th. April 4th just in time. Just in time for the session to end. I know we can't have read this. You need to look very carefully and have lots of friends. All right. Madam Chair, members of the committee, Joshua Dunham, Deputy Attorney General, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you all about the Committee on Campaign Finance Education Compliance and Reform in the report that they have published with regards to their efforts. If I may, just by giving a historical context and this report. In 2017, the Secretary of State's office and the Attorney General's office established this committee for the purpose of soliciting ideas, input, and concerns about Vermont's campaign finance laws. And hopefully to bring about potential solutions and reforms to improve the operation, transparency, and effectiveness of our campaign finance system. The committee has a pretty broad membership. It sought membership from all the political parties in the state of Vermont, the major political parties. And I want to give a special thanks to Jacob Perkinson who shared this committee and his efforts to convene and organize and guide discussion. Other folks that I'd like to just give a quick shout out and recognition, Brady Tenzing from the Vermont Republican Party, Josh D. Executive Director from the Vermont Progressive Party, Liz Blum, Windsor County Chair of the Progressive Party, Madeline Mata, Chair of the Vermont Ethics Commission, and then the staff of the Secretary of State's office, the Attorney General's Office. There were five public hearings that took place across Vermont ranging from Montpelier to Bennington, Hartford, Rutland, and Winooski. And there were, well attended and similar themes came up throughout those hearings. And we tried to collate those in the report. They're found at page two. And some of those themes that we heard from were the issue about penalties, that there were complaints about candidates who maybe not intentionally, but were negligently not filing their reports or not doing it in a timely way. And as we've come to learn that it's the publication of information, the disclosure of activities, which is so important to current campaign finance enforcement. And so we create a better penalty structure to address that concern. There were concerns raised about the dollar value of contribution limits, in particular in municipal elections that under Vermont law there's a thousand dollar per election contribution limit for municipal elections. And as you can imagine in some small communities for school board race or select board race, a few thousand dollar contributions can really impact those election cycles. There was a discussion about a desire for an independent ombuds to handle campaign finance complaints. There was a desire for additional disclosures, financial disclosures, so more frequent reporting. There were calls for moving the primary date off of August to increase voter participation, although as I understand it, that may be constrained by federal law. There was a desire for more clarity on the revolving door limits, religious rules, and things of that nature, which I believe the legislature addressed to some degree in its establishment of the ethics committee or the ethics commission last. Well, this is somewhat separate. I missed here, I was trying to figure out I was trying to get this copied to Allison and I. The printer is taking forever to print it. I don't know why. There are stories, Madam Chair. So, somewhat different. I was talking about the desire from an ombuds who could be an independent source for the investigation of campaign finance complaints, but separate and apart from that, folks at these hearings raised concern about a desire for more clarity both on financial reporting of campaign activities as well as moving the primary date from August, probably September to inspire more voter turnout. The concern I think was that folks were on vacation in August, but as I understand it and maybe the representative from the Secretary of State's office can speak to this, there are federal laws that are requiring that compliance. Do you know why what they meant by more frequent reporting we report every other day right now? So, I was not there for all of these hearings, and I'm not trying to convey the validity of the comments, but just sharing with you the concerns that we heard. But we don't know if they meant that local candidates should do more often. I think it was a broad desire for more reporting. Yes. Yes. You know, under enforcement you said that this came up at every meeting. There should be penalties. But these others, I have no idea how often they came up to one person say we should we should report more often and I want to know where he lives. I do. So, I don't have at the top of my head or my fingertips the granularity of that data. If that's of interest I can see whether we could go back and take a look at the minutes in the notes. So, can I I know you have the next three items under that bullet, under financial disclosure? Yes. I don't understand what they have to do with campaign finance at all. I agree. But those were issues that came up more than once at these at these hearings and so we're just sharing the input that the public was providing at these hearings. That really has nothing to do with campaign finance nor does the term limits. Correct. Correct. And then, I believe there were questions about whether the contributions to a county committee should count as a contribution to a county committee. The issue of public financing of elections was raised at these hearings. The equity, the ability for publicly financed candidates to equitably participate in the electoral process access to funds, the start date is a problem as well February 15th that if you declare as a candidate before February 15th you're exempt under the current statute from participating in the public financing and that puts those who wish to participate in public financing at a disadvantage. And then, while not directly related to campaign finance, I'm sorry sir. Another issue that was raised which was the governor's two-year term and that it would be more important to have our executive officials governing instead of running for office and therefore a desire for a four-year term for the governor. But we thought it was important to reflect the common comments that were generated during these sessions. So, after those public hearings the committee went to work on a number of occasions to talk about what might be some practical solutions to these issues and not just the issues raised by those but by the practitioners and those experienced in campaign running campaigns and a series of subject areas were identified for work and solution and I'm going to lump these into two different categories. One being what we would consider practical amendments to the existing campaign finance statute and then more structural, larger and they may not have been laid out in as logical order in the report but I'm going to edit a little bit for purposes of my comments. First of all, the definition of a candidate committee. Under current law it is arguably narrowly defined for purposes of the candidate and their staff and the concern was in this environment of coordinated contributions expenditures which we've seen as a potential problem there have been several cases through the AG's office over the years addressing this should that be expanded to a more broader definition consistent with agency concepts and as the committee began to dive into that what the committee realized is that while a good idea there could be complications because there's been a case law that's developed under the current definitions and how coordinated contributions and expenditures operate and so before we start tinkering with definitions we've got to make sure there aren't collateral consequences and we just the committee wasn't able to finish its work and come up with a concrete suggestion but it's an issue that they hope to continue to work on. The definition of electronic communications or excuse me I electioneering communications I should say as you all know election communication sorry requires a disclaimer about who funded that communication and their address in this era of new technologies on how we communicate we just wanted to make sure that that definition is as broad enough as it is to capture new forms of social media that may not have existed when the definition was first created exclusions from the definition of a contribution one thing folks identified was that the current statute is sometimes difficult to digest unless you're a lawyer practicing in this area and if we could reorganize those exclusions in a more digestible way that might help enforcement as well as some folks raised concerns that the parties under current law can contribute in unlimited amounts to the candidates that doesn't violate to put a restriction might violate the First Amendment and so do you really need exclusions from party activity I don't want to speak for the parties but if I was channeling their argument they might say there could be reporting complications if we had to mark every little thing and identify every little thing that's done for a candidate so those tensions hadn't yet been harmonized to provide yet a practical solution but again something that the committee hopes to be working on liquidated penalties for delayed filings so going back to that issue about complaints about folks who might not report or do on a timely basis a suggestion was I'm chair did you say liquidated something liquidated so my apologies that's my editorial in contracts you might see a place where if someone breaches the contract provides for a damage or a penalty without in a circumstance where you can't clearly see what that penalty or damage might be so if someone breaches your contract you can't measure that clearly so to create an incentive for compliance with that contract you create a liquidated set amount for a violation a dollar per day and so that exists already for lobbyists if lobbyists fail to report on their timely reporting requirements that's 25 dollars a day as a way to motivate compliance so the thought was not to use a heavy hammer but maybe create some incentive for those candidates who might absentmindedly forget to report because they only got a few hundred dollars in contributions to make timely comp filings and the thought was a 25 dollar per day amount contribution limits one of the biggest challenges is they're like no ticklers there's nobody who yes well you get a what do you mean two emails from the secretary I guess you do you get a reminder I get them in my treasury I get a reminder that's new is that new in the last couple years the ticklers, the reminders, it's a file we do not send providers to file I get a reminder I do I think you do we I can only speak to what the parties do send out from time to time reminders to candidates or local committees it's helpful I think it comes from the secretary of state's office I get a thing and it says your campaign finance report is due and it says a date and then when I file it I get a thing that says you have filed your campaign I'm going to check on one thing I think I get more than one let's clarify that because either the party or somebody because I am now no words, good questions contribution limits the committee discussed whether it would be possible to limit contribution limits in municipal elections bring down that number from a thousand maybe something like $500 as you all probably know the only justifiable explanation for contribution limits under the first amendment is to address quick corruption or the appearance thereof and so $1,000 we've looked at some case law since the Randell decision that was here in the state of Vermont that address contribution limits there's only been a few dealing with limits below $1,000 and the law does seem to be mixed so there may be some authority to support it the law goes in both directions did they talk about the difference between a local race in Halifax and in Burlington no, the cases and forgive me my memory may cases are in Alaska and Montana but I just wondered when they talked about lowering this amendment if they talked about what it cost to run a local race in Halifax as opposed to what it cost to run a local race in Burlington and so just drawing that analogy to the specific states let's say Anchorage versus Noam Alaska there wasn't that kind of discussion in those cases the committee the committee didn't surplus campaign fund finance funds did you just skip civil investigation because I wasn't so I'm going to talk about that in a minute the ombuds role surplus campaign finance funds there was a concern raised by the committee that it is possible under the current law that someone who has run statewide campaigns and got the $4,000 limits could amass a war chest and they don't spend everything and then decide they want to run for a local election maybe the house of representatives of the senate and have all this money that they obtain from $4,000 contributions and does that give them an unfair advantage in the local elections and was their language to address that and then finally campaign any examples of that there are two in the senate Anthony and Galbraith did Galbraith ever actually run for a lower office no for a lower office we're talking lower office that's right but you're talking about going for a lower office that is correct but Galbraith either was nominated for I mean after being in the senate he was talking with that Peter Galbraith was considered a nomination he never did I mean he ran for a number of offices but he didn't switch the money but that is a I think a very concrete example would be senator break who ran as a house member in 2010 in the primary then went on to run for the senate the following cycle did he roll over that's an example an example of whether he did it or not it ran I think the potential is there more than anything I think that that's true sorry which one and then there was a discussion about creating greater transparency on the source of funds from contributors who are not natural persons something I know that this committee has taken up in legislation this year so as far as some of the structural areas that we think are worth discussion or worth further consideration and work is the creation of an ombuds an independent position the discussion was within the current state ethics commission to oversee campaign finance compliance my understanding is that 48 states in the united states have a state ethics commission a fourth of those handle campaign finance through their operations and then another 11 states have independent administrative entities similar or analogous to the FEC that might address those issues and the purpose would be to educate issue advisory opinions and investigate violations of campaign finance with some degree of administrative enforcement authority certainly funding would be an issue that would have to be worked out another structural issue that was identified was how do we address the valuation of emails and contact lists I think there have been cases involving these questions there's probably some the committee recognized there are value to these lists but how to value them in a way that provides some bright lines so that people aren't guessing would be very helpful and the committee believes further time should be spent trying to come up with a solution to that public policy problem and then public financing well not unanimously supported by all the committee members I think there was certainly a majority of folks who felt that work is needed on public financing and need for reform to support the effectiveness of public financing in our electoral process there's a lack of funding there's underfunding is part of the problem the relationship of those who are publicly financed and belong to a major political party and how they might get assistance under current law unless it does fall into one of the named contribution exclusions those would be considered in kind contributions and potentially could accept someone from participating in public financing the issue of underutilization level the playing field if you will through encouraging folks to participate how do we get folks to participate and expand to other elections should just be limited to the top to executive offices in the state of Vermont as I'm sure you all can appreciate having worked with these issues over the years these are extremely complicated questions public policy of law the committee will continue its efforts to try to provide some solutions to the issues that we have addressed in this report in hopes of providing more concrete proposals to the legislature in the next planning struck me that when I was reading this that and I think some of these suggestions and areas for further study are great like the public financing and the value of emails and that kind of stuff but it struck me on here that the only two people on this list as far as I know that have ever run for anything are T.J. and Condos and it might be interesting to have a couple people on the committee who actually have had I mean somebody from maybe Chittenden County where it's very different than raised in a six-hour lead I mean just have a couple people on here who have actually been a candidate I don't know if she has I do, she's Windsor County she has run for the select board in Norwich and maybe even more to yeah she's the only other person I know here who has Madam Chair it's a fair critique although if I may say a lot of the members and candidates themselves have been very active in the political process of running elections so I think there was a broad array of expertise that was brought to the committee I get that it's just it's very different to be a candidate than to be it sure is I mean it's very different and how you look at these issues I think there may be extrapolate on some of the certainly two members there who probably had a very in-depth understanding of campaign finance rules Jay Perkinson the chair was the chair of the Vermont Democratic Party for some time Brady Tosing for everything we could say about him as vice-chair of the Republican Party knows a great deal about the law and campaign finance regulations he tries to swat us at every chance he gets so you know we certainly there's a very thorough understanding of practically how this works on the committee Madeline Mada another example of somebody who's who's kind of no it was just a suggestion that I think that having a real understanding of the campaign finance laws and how to live under them is very different than actually being a candidate and having to figure out how to do them and how to it was just a suggestion because when we it took us as you know six eight years to do our campaign finance law after it was struck down by the Supreme Court and two or three details I think and there are 108 people here who all had to live under those laws and there was a lot of variation of how they were applied and how they were what they meant in their areas and everything so it was just a suggestion but yeah I would hope actually you would make some pretty bold recommendations I mean and really trying I would look forward to actually putting you know a really bold suggestion on public financing because I think I think either we all do it or it's never going to be a level playing field so I would be thrilled if you came back to the legislature and said we actually recommend that everyone like them functions on public financing system and we're going to fund it and wouldn't you know wouldn't that be fabulous to take if we're really believe that we should take money out of this let's then let's actually put our money where our mouth is and establish what that would cost and really advocate for it so is that it all candidates use the main house and the senate they don't have to I don't know if it's fair to say they all do but they have very in-connected they have very strong voluntary use I just didn't know who could use it it's very liberating actually to focus on policy major issue with public financing is coming up with the money for it I think that that I don't know there probably are very few people around who would Bill Doyle tried his best to get us to adopt main system of public financing he was a big supporter we talked to people in Maine so much that I can't wait anyway so there are a lot of people who support it the problem is coming up with the money and I notice that you send here fees paid by the candidates and I don't think that would probably be constitutional and certainly not welcome particularly given how frequently we have to do it but also I would hope that as a former Ways and Means member I would hope that you not only come up with a bold suggestion but come up with way to finance it it's not enough to do it we need to buy that point of cost and how we're going to pay for it so I get the governor on board by the way so any more questions about this this report glad we could finally catch you in it was good to finally read it I would be happy to see a little more of a question on the public financing it's getting a little crazy I can't imagine how it would have come from outside the legislature and the legislature would have to respond to the public instead of trying to and it's sort of our assuming that the public would have an outcry I think the public are now very well educated about what money means in this system and they are sadly being ruled by weather cats and God and so I think that actually the public has never been better educated and poised to actually look at this in a way of talking they're just laughing they're laughing well thank you very much thank you alright we are going to move to something else disclosure is in campaign finance law yes we tried to put these in the same day because of the same people sit here with us all day it's in cast it's snowing outside everybody let me make sure Betsy S-44 did get put into law okay good I just want to make absolutely certain so we have had some testimony on this we were going to try to is this the one where you're going to have to put all your print on facebook all your print yeah text based oh on facebook ads that's a bad idea it's never gonna fit but we're not debating figure it out we heard from Brandon and Josh and Betsy and I think that was it oh and Eleanor keep getting all these elections well sending the record elections for the record and I can keep this one brief too in that my office supports this bill in its current form I forget the number right now 1828 it was not the brainchild of our office came from one of the House committee members but we support it I support it because in my mind under current law and this senator Clarkson I want to make sure it's clear you're right now required to put paid for by language on facebook ads the point of this bill as I understand it and from the committee was to make that easier in fact by allowing a person to put a link for something akin to a link on the ad instead of the full paid for by language that would take you to the paid for by language that was the concept in my understanding of the bill and reading of the bill it also clarifies that this kind of activity is an electioneering communication although again in my mind reading the current law that's what I would tell a candidate who asked me but it makes that clear I think and that's a positive step forward in this bill however I guess when I was I wasn't sick or I wasn't here because I was sick there were concerns raised about actually how some of the inner workings that I'm familiar with in all honesty I've never been on facebook what? don't know much about how it works I've never been on facebook I've tried to do it during my last campaign and I promised everybody that I would post it and I did it three times and then I forgot about it probably all these things there if it's not technically feasible that may be an issue the concept I think is one we should all support currently now my office is not police all of these ads or become aware of all of these ads but to the extent we are I think there's a compliance issue right now we see some of these ads run on this kind of media that don't contain the paid for by and I have a feeling if I was to talk to those campaigns they would say because it's difficult to squeeze it in in this context and so that again was the point of the bill was to make compliance easier but it doesn't make compliance easier to wish but it was easier to do there's a real technical limitation here I think we're setting ourselves up for real problems I mean I'll just say I've used a lot of facebook ads campaigns I report them as mass media so that triggers its own requirements but I don't know why I'm trying to remember our discussions in the campaign we just we tried it's tricky and making it a link usually your facebook ad is either if it's a link it's the whole point has to be a link to something that you know click here to volunteer or something so you would sort of suck up the value of that on the other hand the page that says I want to volunteer for Chris Pearson has a pay for by the very bottom but I just I completely support this concept I can just really worry that we're technical good technical well I just wonder if someone could explain to me what to a non-facebook user to do that when we have a lot of challenges how we fit all those words in a little teeny thing and those ads for cars at the end of the guy talks when he does the again you've seen on internet clear so you use e-mail and you have a server other than just a ledge council server you have an account with gmail and so you see the ads and you see the size of those ads well you may not look at them but you can appreciate how small they are e-mail you might get ads gmail sometimes sure you do well we got a anyway they're similar I mean it's a similar size the challenge is quite honest so just the size so the challenge is having them legible it's not putting them down it's just that they're not legible is that right sure so can I go to one other section of the build-in that isn't this on the second page it said it would require local candidates to also file a report four days before which is a new one and I guess the issue is that in some local races there's a lot of money spent at the end of it we don't have and so should we require that of local candidates I think it's a good idea and then we already know that local candidates who raise or spend less than 500 don't have to report at all so it's only those who are doing over 500 and it's only local candidates who have to do the four days well we already have to you have the Friday before and I had written down that the phrase unduly burdensome or whether that might raise constitutional issues we've got 30 days then 10 days then 4 days then 2 weeks after when does it become unduly burdensome it's worth considering I think I don't know how case law would come out one way or another on that what I can tell you in senate column where that's right it's 30, 10 and then 2 weeks after in practice I can tell you most of these candidates haven't hit the threshold by 30 days we see registrations usually a couple weeks before then they'll file the 10 day before a report and very often that's a no activity report because they haven't done much spending at that point then they spend a bunch in the last week this is pretty particular to the Burlington, South Burlington city races and that's where the concern came from I don't feel strongly one way or another are those races supported by the secretary of state campaign finance site I would say that filing on those things for a person is a ludic is just a piece of cake there's just another it's a piece of cake even for those of us who aren't yeah thank you I have to call about once a year and say well what was right case law I don't know I wrote down my password that I still can't remember don't keep it on a post at note right on your screen why not cybersecurity anyway anyway well at least password on Jeanette well but nobody from the outside would know that they wrote together I might be a smart thing yeah so I had three notes I had a note to clarify for some other reason the words promotes or supports a candidate we wanted to clarify that that needed clarification and also who paid for it is I think that I don't understand my own note here that's the whole thing we're trying to get it it's understanding who's paying for things but okay so I don't understand my second note but I do have this note and I'm not clear why we have to clarify further than it promotes or supports but I just had that note so at least I can talk about that that's a current law that's a current law and I think there was a request to that we further clarify that I would say that that is a totally different can of worms than the current bill and likely would raise legal implications that you'd want to check in with the AG and Ledge Council on that supports or opposes there's a whole lot of case law behind what amounts to electioneering communication and promoting a candidate and I believe that even in the current law the sentence that follows that says regardless of whether the communication expressly advocates a vote for or against the candidate and that's actually more clarity I think than you see in a lot of the electioneering communications so you guys have said we don't care whether expressly says vote for him or don't vote for him that you can promote a candidate without saying that without using that language in a way that would in this section and that's again there's a whole lot of case law out there behind that provision thank you yeah Jason Trump are there any other questions for Will? we have an issue about what text based means and we started on a conversation about that whole Facebook hyperlink thing oh I'm sorry before he went away and then go back to that okay any more questions for Will? yeah on page 4 I have that same note I would just say I can't imagine but Brandon's about to tell us why how shorter paid for by could be less doable than paid for by and a bunch of information about who paid for it well a bunch of information well we're gonna hear it yes that's why I just wanted to begin our question to you all right Brandon all right what can I confuse about today why is it impossible to do these? no to be very clear it's not impossible but I think you've got to look at digital advertisements in a couple of different ways we can look at social media and Sir Pearson had mentioned that he he's used Facebook advertisements before and has filed them as mass media expenditures we do that here we also are required to do that with the FTC and we are for paid content that we put out we do have a disclaimer that we have to do Sir Pearson I saw you drawing a little book four or something on the back of one of these sheets of paper so essentially the idea one of the things that Sir Pearson brought up about Facebook ad that he had put up he put up a a picture of his lawn sign and we all know lawn signs are usually the name the office you're running for and usually go for something like that paid for by it's usually usually a disclaimer if it didn't and there had to be text that was added to that Facebook's ad system uses very particular very rigid it was very difficult I didn't say that they were not easy to text any kind of ad that consists of but a certain percentage of the ad is text versus image that ad will not be approved to be a sponsored publication on Facebook so if I'm running for if I'm running for city council and I want to put a Facebook ad up let's say I want to put an image similar to Sir Pearson's ad of my logo or my campaign sign and I'm now expressly I need to do this I need to do a paid provide needs to be clear and legible to people if I'm doing that and Facebook determines that the bulk of depending on the size the bulk of the ad itself is text I will send them a request say I want to put $50 on the line for this ad to go out to a certain size audience I'll get a return I'll get a response to my request to put that up that other says yes this has been approved your ad is now performing here so you can see if I'm reaching out or no your ad was not approved for one of the following reasons and nine times out of ten with candidates as the couple here who can speak to digital ads on Facebook could attest to nine times out of ten it's because the advertisement of the image itself has too much text now you can certainly use Facebook advertisements to promote an event to promote a link is it by area or by characters it's by let's say your image is a box they take a grid if a certain number of boxes within that grid are filled with text exactly so they have a very rigid formula for determining whether or not your image has too much text so if you have a bigger ad might you make it under the line do you suppose that's what that's about so I I've been thinking about it a little bit and I'd be happy to put my computer up to monitor and route 10 or something we could I could show you but just to give you an example like if you had a little ad this would appear well you recognized him and he endorsed me so I wanted people to know that and it said here's why I'm voting for Senator Clapton Facebook would look at this and be like no this is too much text because this interrupts what we want Facebook wants a lot of imagery I don't know why it's not about reading it's about futures so this ad literally would not you couldn't use it and so the extent that we now are asking to add more text it just is some of these are I mean I know that when we do like an ad in the paper and stuff we can put paid for by Jeanette White for Senate postdoc or whatever the address is what if we what if you just put on these paid for by Jeanette White for Senate and didn't have to put the address and all that on there it would be less text but it would still say who had paid for it and if you really wanted to know who that was you'd go to the secretary's dates website and look up and that seems to be about the same as doing a link I mean you still have to go someplace else and look so how is this not a choice in the world of Facebook between the message you want to put out about yourself and the identifying information about the finances here so with Facebook ads when a sponsored Facebook post which is what a Facebook ad is when a sponsored Facebook post comes up it will typically show up as the image or whatever the thing that is being sponsored is put up the title of the page that is sponsoring it is a small not disclaimer but an italicized marking that says this is a sponsored poster just says sponsored so the average Facebook user maybe I should set this back it's possible the average Vermont Facebook user might not have as clear an understanding of that but if we're looking at just image based advertisements on Facebook even if we've got the paid for by disclaimer on there right now it does limit what you can actually put in an ad the bottom line is one letter could throw you off entirely it really is that small it does it does it typically will walk you through this ad has it will say it's got 20% too much text so it's like a word count so I couldn't tell you it's again and it really does very platform by platform Facebook has very different rules than Twitter which has very different rules from Instagram and I think one of the more to be very clear we are not opposing this bill we're I think just trying to make sure that everybody is aware of some of the questions that might need to be asked some of the bigger questions that we have are related to digital advertisements and as we picture them to you know when you visit a website and you see a banner for a candidate or you see a banner ad for an event or something digital advertisement buys are not something that most candidates in Vermont for public office for the legislature or the statewide office purchase directly and when we think of advertisements when we think of them with the newspaper I'll call up the Times Argus and I'll say I'd like to purchase you know a six inch you know one column with advertisement to run into tomorrow's paper or you know and you send them the image they make sure it'll fit and you're all set with digital ad buys are done through vendors they're not you know I'm not necessarily saying okay this is the exact layout of the ad it's gonna have this specific kind of attribute so the concept of rolling over an ad and having the text display automatically if a candidate or in our case a political party we're working with a digital advertisement vendor there is no way that we could guarantee that the product that they release and the advertisements that they purchase and the space on which they purchase it is gonna meet all of the requirements and qualifications for that are being set forth with this social media sorry why would I even pay for somebody to put an ad on there if I couldn't be guaranteed that they wouldn't do it right and do it the way they're supposed to I can't speak to life after this bill but you know digital advertisements are dirt cheap and they reach a pretty significant audience that's why I'm wondering if there's a I don't want to offer more examples of how complicated this is but there are more and they're also very elementary kind of options in Facebook for instance if I got a good story in a paper okay story in a paper Senator Pearson saves baby from falling in the river drowning baby so I would put that on Facebook clearly then you could put money behind a post it's called a promoting post that that you can manipulate that's just a post that exists and you either put money behind it or you don't so you don't have the option to redesign it and then promote it and so and that's an important option if you're interested in this arena at all maybe a solution is that any there's a lot of variety and they're not all images at all and you can do Google anyway maybe one solution is that whatever the ad is if you were to click on it and or if you were to interact with the ad in any way it needs to go for instance a Facebook ad that I would do would all go to my Facebook page which has my website link and it's clearly mine nobody would wonder who paid for that or if you did something different in a different arena it would you know in other words when anyone wanted to figure out who was behind it it would we would say that the next stop if you click on it or if you tried to investigate if you click on the ad itself or you hit yeah it goes to some place that is clearly owned by a campaign you know I mean so the option earlier of you go to a website and I said well yeah but if you're going to take me to a page that just said that ad you just clicked on was paid for by a percent and that's total waste of the ad of defeating the purpose but if it went to my website that would be the actual reason I was using that ad and then you would see the website it's no mystery who's paying for that it says so at the bottom you know what I mean so maybe like the way to handle all these and they are a lot of different options and I only understand a few of them what happens when you engage with the ad and does that pull us back to a place that I think reasonable people would understand the ownership I can't help but think about the parallel between PAC contributions and this I know you're really excited about hearing this but we with the whole idea of campaign financing and saying who paid for this who paid for this brochure who paid for this Facebook ad they understand it's from the candidate or it's from the Russians and we know that people don't investigate that stuff because we know about the Russians have a big part that they played in our last set of elections people aren't that curious people don't read this small print so I just wonder if it's worth it to try to figure out no matter what we do we have to make choices about how we're going to be transparent in this case it would be less text because you can only have 27 percent text or whatever it is to work around work within the piece that makes it clear and transparent to the uncurious or incurious server who's most easily influenced by just pictures I just rather than try to figure out a way to that makes it more complicated I just wonder if we if it makes it less if it makes it less transparent I guess by adding all these extra steps why can't we simplify the step that's there it'll be less useful from a lot of it's like our campaign finding our other our PAC contributions and so and it's not super useful the way we did it because it really doesn't tell you who actually put the money in that account that's paying you but it is an indication that's valuable so what Senator Pearson brought up is actually you know would be a very simple practical thing to be able to do and that was one of the questions that you may remember about what I had to discuss the last time of this year which is that a paid Facebook advertisement from say a first time candidate who has no universe that they that is already built into their social media might actually be worth less than a non-paid Facebook post put out by an established organization with a significant social media following like the Vermont Republican Party or the Vermont Democratic Party and the same way that valuation of emails would be helpful for everybody who deals with them at some point you may end up having a look at valuation of social media as well you know and we you know as an example one of the things that would be easy enough for us to do for sponsored or non-sponsored posts alike would be to disclaim on each of our social media platforms that this account is paid for and managed or operated by the Vermont Democratic Party or whatever and doing that on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram things like that we may actually already do that and in terms of hyperlink one of the things that is mentioned in this bill is a hyperlink from let's say there's a banner ad on the side of you go to the Times Hargis website and you've got you know it's a big black and white picture of Clareyre you know and they say you know stop raising my drug prices or whatever if I click on that it's going to take me to a website right now it'll take me to a website that's probably going to have a whole list of things against Senator Ayer or against Democrats or Republicans or whatever I'm thinking this is anywhere near the way I see it this is you doing that no no this is a website well and we have it's the reason it's a good call and that page you know we saw this in 2016 where both the Republican Governors Association and the Democratic Governors Association established local committees that were registered with the Secretary of State that were not the Democratic Governors Association or Republican Governors Association I did them as prosperity or harmonies for freedom and equality or whatever and so when websites like those go up and digital ads come up and then hyperlink back to them you know you're already you know some of these larger national to be very clear organizations big money rooted organizations they're going to find ways to make it difficult for an individual to find one step to another step the only way you'd be able to know that a certain ad like that was paid for by let's say the Republican State Legislative or Leadership Committee you'd go to the website you'd see the website was attributed to a specific committee that was established in Vermont you'd go to Vermont to see the Secretary of State's website to look at the disclosures for that committee and you might be able to find out that that was a group that was aligned with the Republican State Leadership Committee and then you'd have to go through the FEC to see okay who's funding them so it's it's a really they're you know digital ads are going to be really difficult especially for some of these national organizations it'll be difficult for even the most savvy of media and digital consumers to figure out who's paying for some of these ads if wanting to make sure that folks here in Vermont and Vermont based candidates are following the rules a simple thing like disclaiming all social media platforms and requiring I guess some of the digital advertisement stuff is easy enough to do hyperlinking directly to a site or to information about the committee that has put this out that's easy enough to do specifying certain requirements for what happens when you scroll over with a mouse over a digital ad or what certain qualities of that digital ad might need to have and I guess in the case with Facebook what specific text may need to be laid out or how legible or how clear or how large that text needs to be may it's you know you run the risk of making it impossible for candidates to comply 100% even with the best effort. I think it could work for us to say something like either the ad contains a clear pay for by 5% or is no more you know or the ownership or some like owning entity of the ad with you know no more than one click to be to something that identifies what the entity is. Absolutely on Facebook and Twitter I think. Yes I would imagine it would work just fine for Instagram if I'm on my phone if I'm on a computer and I see a sponsored ad and I want to see more about the organization or entity that sponsored it I click on the entity you know right at the top 9 to 10 there's you know you've got the picture, you've got the title but there's usually on the side some kind of bio or about this organization requiring that it be clear that one click away. Exactly it could certainly be one click and maybe a scroll of the mouse at most. I think it could because because it's not all graphics either like I ran once some Google ads I can't believe I'm going to give away the secret but I thought it was pretty good. Who are you going to give it to? Google ads? Are you kidding? Listen all the all the campaign products Isn't that Barney Google? Say you're a masseuse and you don't have many clients you can do a geographic based ad. I'm a masseuse and muscular so you could say to Google anytime anyone in Washington County searches for stress and shoulder you know aches and massage boom your ad will show up there that's not a graphic that's just text. Can I tell you what happened to me when I ran when Galbraith ran with me well not with me but he if you Googled my name his name came up first so that was not an image right because he paid for it I remember that I didn't even know you could do that so I did something similar trying to reach campus and I did it if you search for pizza in Burlington you would just vote Pearson and my strategy and because if they don't click on it it doesn't cost you anything so we encourage people to click on this all over and over thousands of times and those ads are really little like you get like 120 characters or something so it would be useless if we made them take up 80 characters of Clare Air Force Senate but there again boom if you click on the ad you have to go in other words so if the ad for whatever practical reason can't do what we all think should do then one engagement with it has to bring you to something that's a clear ownership maybe that I think that suits the needs of our transparency and it probably doesn't solve our Russian fraud problem but it's closer well this is totally unbelievable so you still have to do that you still have to click it sounds like a way but you have to put all the text in there to go there because you have to have a link they'll all be a link but do you have to have the HTTP blah blah blah I thought that what you were saying is that this little ad appears here and if I want to see who paid for it it doesn't say on anything on here I just click on it but this what this says is that you have to put the language on there and you're going to have to see who paid for this ad go to and you're going to have to use as many characters as you do and the link is a click so I mean it's still just the same function this bill is permissive right it's giving candidates an option if you do nothing to reject this bill the Facebook ad needs to pay for it this is letting you reduce the amount of language down to for instance, paid for by you can leave out the whole name and address there's three words that say paid for by that are a link you don't have to put in what the link is you just click on paid for by and that's the link itself the whole point of this is that you don't have to have the full disclosure on the ad itself you can reduce it down to a small little link but then has the full disclosure language on it these are a lot of great ideas for how to not have to require paid for by language on a Facebook ad right now that's required for better or worse and whether it's able to be complied with or not that's required I'm just focusing again on this bill I appreciate that but what you're asking for is not possible it's when the current law is asking for it's not what I'm asking for current law is not practicable so we have a problem and so the question is how do we fix it I agree with you I think you're right well it's what it's trying to be about it's trying to make it to give you another option to comply with that and the option it's giving us is also not workable I think you're hearing from people who all I heard in that discussion was that Facebook has a tax character women on their ads a certain percentage can't be this and my mind should make that easier to comply with because they can have less tax so and I think we're talking about image based ads on Facebook have limits with tax if I wanted to just sponsor a post that's a diet drive about healthcare and I could put at the end certainly pay for buy it would be a link I could do that image based Facebook ads if I click on the image I'm clicking on the image I'm not able to click on a hyperlink now and even if I put just paid for buy on Chris Pearson for state senate picture ad if I'm clicking on that paid for buy it's not going to take me to anything but a larger version of that picture or to the page itself or to the Facebook page itself can there be a different link this is really a Facebook question other than the ad link itself but I wasn't understanding that's right it's not that we're trying to weasel out it's that the solution you wanted it to do if you have to pay for buy a link you can have two links can we can we can we take about a four minute break and come back I'd like to do like five months because my back is killing me you're sorry can you stand it what time three am I am I going to be alright well maybe we're are we at a point right now where I would so I'd love to think about this slightly further because and come up with language that could be a substitute to what we have at the moment to I actually like the idea of going on and getting to some place that actually says something that was paid for by I think we can improve on the current situation in this language okay I'd like to I'd like to run it by the people who did buy also because we all face this issue it's curious did a lot of the House members on the committee have they done this I mean did they experience with this yeah did you find that hearing in the car okay so you're going to be on break no let's if we can go any farther with this today for what we need to do some thinking about it and come back to it next week next week we will we also have the 624 we'll have some language on that and it might be we had talked about doing some kind of language that would allow some kind of emergency the secretary of state to do some kind of emergency election change if there's if three days before the election they find out that our vendor has monkeyed around with all of the machines the readers that just give some emergency powers to we already give emergency powers to the secretary of state and the election officials to do things like change the place to another place because it's flooded or something like that so and 624 is probably the place where it should go so we can talk about both of these things next week but we have 624 and 828 and hopefully then next week we can come to some resolution about both of them so those of you who know anything about technology at fall should try to figure out some of the language here and how that might have other states tackle I mean do we have any other language like one click away I mean what what's legal is for a blood click away and see how what I'm not aware of other state laws on this that they could make surely other states are dealing with that they are they just have really good ethics commissions so