 Good morning. You are with the Vermont House Government Operations Committee. We are gathered here this morning with a professor and a group of students from Dartmouth who have been doing some research that I requested. And so hello and welcome Professor Schroeder. Thank you for being with us. This is the House Government Operations Committee. I am the chair, Sarah Copeland Hanses from Bradford. So just a little north of where Dartmouth is. And I would love to welcome you to go ahead and make your presentation. We all have a secondary device on which we can call up the document that you submitted to our committee assistant. So welcome and the floor is yours. Awesome. Thank you. I'll go ahead and share my screen and pull up our presentation here. So if you would like to walk us through the presentation, we all have a secondary device that we can look at the presentation on so that we can then also see each other. And I recognize that if you don't have two screens that may feel a little awkward to you, but I will use my voice to get your attention if I see anyone has a question that they would like to interrupt and ask you about. Sounds good. Sounds good. All right. All right. Hey, you want to want to kick us off here. Yeah, sure thing. Can everyone hear me okay. Yes, we can. Awesome. Yeah, so I don't know. So Hayden your audio is a little bit garbled so I may need to suggest that you try going off video and we'll see if that makes your, your audio come through clearer. Does this help at all. I can hear you now wanted to go ahead and try again and we'll, we'll let you know. Yeah, I mean so hi everyone. I'm Hayden along with my partners here Tina and Peter. We're going to be talking to you about minors and in app gaming purchases this morning or and essentially talking about is the process by which I don't know how many of you may have like an Apple phone or an Android phone, but in order to certain sort of access certain games certain buys and features. You can go on an app store and usually buy these apps for free. However, although most sort of gaming apps specifically are bought for you to pay model. Once you actually download the app and begin using it. There's tons of opportunities and actually sometimes even requirements to start using real life currency to buy in game currency to get you certain perks and that kind of thing. In fact, you know, one of the things that a lot of big gaming companies have been doing recently is drawing a lot of game theory and psychology to pray on young people to try and get them to spend a lot of money on games that are obsessively free but once you actually start to play them end up costing you quite a lot of money. So there are different things such as loot boxes, which is a term to use essentially like a mystery box and you buy it for a certain amount of real life or you know you use real life money to buy in game currency to buy a mystery box and it's like gambling you're sort of don't know what you're going to get. And these companies use these techniques because they're highly addictive, particularly for young people who don't really necessarily know what's going on so for example. On our slideshow we have the example of subway surfer which is a really popular iPhone game and on it you have to enter your age before buying a purchase which makes sense. If your age is 18 or older so let's say if you're on subway surfer and you enter 20, then you have a whole series of terms and conditions and other different things you need to agree to before actually being able to buy anything. But let's say you enter your age is five on the app. If you try and use your parents credit card which is sort of immediately hooked up to the phone because of how you know devices like Apple and Android work. There is no approval process. So essentially young people can be buying in game currency which is actually costing real life money and what can end up being hundreds if not thousands of dollars which naturally can make quite a dent and a normal families budget on things that they don't really know they're spending on the maybe not aware of and certainly not that the parent or the credit card owner is actually approving of which results in sort of a dubious legal situation. As for the problem we like to think of it sort of more generally is three pronged so the first pronged being what I've been describing so far which are that there's a sort of unmitigated access to, you know, abusing the real money which is in up in up games and there's also a high vulnerability for minors and certain affected populations. The other two problems of the problem prongs of the problem, my partners Tina and Peter will talk about, and they sort of involve a lack of federal regulation regarding this issue and technology more broadly, as well as sort of a more ambiguous role that the state government can play in protecting consumers and restricting these corporations from predatory tactics. So we just wanted to take a moment to break down kind of the key stakeholders that exist in this space and we've separated them into three key categories here. So we have the corporate side the consumer side and also the regulator side. On that corporate side we have app developers, these are kind of savvy tech designers who actually create these games and have installed these microtransactions into gameplay and moving on from them. We have the App Store providers which are your big tech conglomerates like Apple Amazon and Google that provide the exchanges on which apps are bought and sold. Finally we have the credit card companies whose customer accounts are where these unauthorized purchases are taking place. And then moving on from the corporate side we have the consumer side where we have players for our purposes today who are under 18, and then their parents who are the credit card holders and also the owners of the mobile devices like phones, or tablets as I was talking about earlier. And finally we have the regulator side to state government and federal government who are tasked with kind of regulating this ever evolving space. So with that I'll give it off to Christina and she'll give us a little bit of a background on the legal landscape here. Thank you for that introduction. So, the issue of unauthorized and at purchases made by minors has already gained some legal traction at the federal level. So, the Federal Trade Commission in 2014 pursued three individual cases in which they reached settlements with kind of the three major retailers of these free to play games and those are Apple, Amazon and Google. And all of them were required to pay full consumer refunds for the reported unauthorized or accidental and at purchases made by minors. But the main problem with this which is kind of a theme that we'll talk about throughout this presentation is that this is very reactionary, rather than creating any sweeping legislation that would prevent these purchases from happening in the first place. And even still, those impacted consumers are the ones who are responsible for seeking out their own refunds. And when on an individual basis, each of these purchases can be as little as you know $20 or even less. It's not necessarily a particularly strong incentive for a lot of consumers to seek out go through the trouble of filing report and seeking out the compensation, but all those little purchases aggregate to unfair profits for the app developers and distributors. Yes, is there a question now. Yes, Representative Claire has a question. Good morning Madam Chair and good morning folks. Just for clarification sake when you refer to minors, can you tell me what age you're using is it 21 is it 18. Is it 16. So it kind of depends on the legal case. Oftentimes, and I'll get into this when I talk about some of the Senate bills that have been introduced in the 116th Congress but those really refer to 16 and under. But in some instances they also refer to 18 and under when it comes to like credit card regulations with like, if a child is attached to a parent's credit card, if they're under the age of 18, then they're a minor so the parents responsible for their purchase. So it kind of depends which area that you're talking about. We're good thank you all wait and thank you. Thank you. So, yeah, so essentially with the FTC cases, it still places the responsibility on the consumer, rather than a preventative responsibility on the merchant companies. And then Republicans and Democrats in the 116th US Senate did begin legislative efforts to protect minors from these exploitative practices and gaming and entertainment apps. Senate bill 1629 was introduced in May, 2019 by Senator Holly, who's Republican of Missouri. It was co-sponsored by Democrat Senators Blumenthal of Connecticut and Markey of Massachusetts. And this bill declared it unlawful for a game publisher or any digital game distributor to publish any minor oriented game that included these pay to win transactions, or any loot boxes. So, this bill aimed to just completely outlaw those practices in this games. Now, Senate Senator Markey also spearheaded Senate bill 3411, which was titled the Kids Internet Design and Safety Act, or just the Kids Act for short. And he introduced that in March, 2020, so a little over a year ago. And it worked sought to prohibit design features in these games aimed at users 16 and under. And so that aimed to prohibit any design feature that unfairly encouraged a young user due to their age or just their inexperience making purchases, particularly online to make those purchases and ultimately that would be unfair. So, these bills were introduced within the past two years, which really tells us that it's currently pretty relevant, especially regarding concerns for minors. And although neither of these bills moved past their introductions, and they of course now need to be reintroduced to the 117th Congress. Technology related consumer protection and regulation are increasingly salient topics, and they're definitely going to grow more relevant in future years. Next, I'm going to touch on the legal landscape on the state level. So California, Vermont, and as well as 11 other states have already bolstered state level consumer protection laws. So in particular with California, they had a unique case in which Apple faced just a state level class action lawsuit that was led by parents who sued for reimbursement for these unauthorized purchases that their kids made. And basically, the grounds was that Apple violated to California consumer protection laws. Those were the Consumer Legal Remedies Act of California and the California unfair competition law. So the court in California ruled in favor of the class on both accounts, so they did get their refunds for these unauthorized purchases. But again, I want to emphasize that this kind of parallels what I discussed with the FTCs and the lawsuits in which these are very reactionary measures and the state was reacting to a violation of laws rather than and then providing the compensation as opposed to creating legislation that would prevent it from happening in the first place. So moving on to Vermont. Vermont has a good history of advocating for consumer protection, particularly with technology, and particularly for data privacy. I believe in 2019 Vermont was notably the first state to regulate data brokers and on the selling of consumer data. And Vermont also has a built-in statute that's designed to complement the FTC regulation that surrounds unfair or deceptive acts in commerce. So, while this particular statute does help protect consumers, it is still kind of a gray area and the broader legal question remains of, you know, does this motivation or any incentive or even advertisement for towards minors, young or just young users for making purchases in these gaming apps, does that count as unfair or deceptive? And moreover than what, if anything, can the state do to prevent unauthorized purchases from happening in the first place? So I'm going to pass it on now to my teammate, Peter, and he's going to discuss the possibilities and challenges with these preventative measures at the state level. Thank you. Thanks, Tina. So in order to really give a clear roadmap forward in this space, we first wanted to outline some of the constraints on effective policy as it stands, and we broke them down into two key categories. First, characteristics of these multinational technology companies and next the characteristics of the existing regulation itself. So starting with these multinational tech companies, I think it's important to keep in mind that their sheer size of revenue generation ensures that they can kind of price in any action taken against them by the FTC, while also maintaining a pretty strong lobbying presence in DC to ensure that there's no clear federal regulation in this space. The last characteristic to keep in mind is that the frictionless purchase business model, which is kind of demonstrated by the microtransaction model is built into everything that these companies do. So eliminating microtransactions as we know them might not fully kind of remedy this problem. So moving on to some of the constraints of effective policy as it stands. I kind of touched on the FTC is operating on a case by case basis, which means that policy is reactive and not comprehensive. And finally, I think it's important to note just the difficulty of regulating the space requires a good amount of funding to empower and educate regulators to not only punish these big tech companies but also to kind of alter their incentive structures and their movements in this space. So moving on, we'll take a look at some of the pillars of what an effective policy would look like kind of following from those constraints. And there are two key categories here as well. So first, an effective policy would be proactive. And second, it would prioritize consumer convenience. So on the proactive side, regulators would not just be able to punish companies who use microtransactions but actually disincentivize them from using that kind of a business model in the first place. And second, a proactive approach would educate the public on the harms of this model. So this would be, you know, an education program for children themselves who are playing these games and also parents on the controls that exist to kind of avoid some of these financial harms. And then in terms of prioritizing consumer convenience, as it stands, in order to seek protection, those who have been financially harmed have to further invest their money and their time to seek that repayment, which effectively prices some people out of the process. And so, so it's, we think it's necessary for a policy to come at minimal further costs so that the most amount of people can seek that that level of protection, which follows into this next point here that as it stands companies are, you know, essentially profiting off of unauthorized purchases that go either unnoticed, or, or, or un pursued by consumers who don't have the resources or time to seek that repayment. So one of those constraints, and some of the things that we think an effective policy would look like, here's some of the options that we've come up with. I think that we want to emphasize that the path forward here is not a clear one, given the complexity of the space given that it's kind of always changing. But following from our research here, some of the some of the key path forward that we've identified. So the first one is just outlawing micro transactions as they are. There are a variety of forms. But one of the ways that that Vermont could do this is to classify loot boxes as a form of gambling. So loot boxes are a form of micro transactions that Hayden touched on earlier, where, you know, you essentially pay in and get a result that is ambiguous at the outset, which is not dissimilar to gambling, which would effectively eliminate one of these micro transactions, which is beneficial. Moving on, rather than a corporate regulation approach, there could be a consumer empowerment approach. So some kind of an education campaign for children and their families. It could be integrated in the public school curriculum. I'm getting a message that says my internet connection is unstable. Hopefully I'm still here. Yep, we can still see you and hear you. Thank you. Where where children kind of understand the environment that they're entering into, and parents also are better educated on the parental controls that exist on smartphones and tablets to effectively prepare themselves for this space. So kind of a combination of consumer empowerment and corporate regulation would be a kind of tax and fund solution that would tax the use of micro transactions and the revenue generated would pay into a fund used to then repay those who have been financially harmed by them. So we think this would do two things. First, disincentivize the use of in-app purchases on the corporate side. And second, emphasize consumer convenience where they can go to a fund directly, rather than the process that exists currently. So once again, not a comprehensive list and given the ever evolving nature of this space, some combination would likely be necessary to fully kind of alleviate the harms of this problem. But with that, we want to say thank you so much for your time. And we look forward to hearing any questions that you might have. Great presentation and thank you so much for your comprehensive review of this landscape. It's fascinating and complex and probably utterly frustrating for the average consumer or parent with young kids who finds themselves stuck with an unwanted bill. So committee members, do you have any questions for these students on the work that they've done here? Representative Higley. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you folks for presenting this. As a parent whose kids are now out of the house, it was a much different issue a few years back. But what is it, is it only credit cards or is there PayPal issues, some of these other things? And I guess, is there a relatively easy solution for parents to protect their cards? So thank you very much for the question. It's a great one. It certainly is not limited to credit cards. As you said, I think payment options for consumers in the space are growing by the day. With PayPal, as you said, I think also with certain things like Bitcoin and there are many different ways to pay for things now, especially in a mobile gaming environment. So certainly not limited to credit cards. On the second point, I think that, I'm sorry, I'm forgetting the second part of your question. Just any way that parents can easily protect their credit card information, because I don't see how that can really, you know, unless they were actually using the parent's phone. Anyway, I'm not that savvy with technology. No, absolutely. And there are and there are credit card controls that a parent can place on their device, especially if they're giving it to their child. But I think, given the revenue structures of these big tech companies, those controls are difficult to access and difficult to understand, I think by design. So while they exist, I think the average parent does not necessarily know how to effectively use them, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, thank you. Yeah, I also just like to quickly add that it's to these companies benefit to get rid of all the barriers between your credit card and like the amount of money that you purchase. Recently, there's been a sort of a consistent effort to make sure that you have to approve less things when you buy stuff in these games. And so the options for protection are going away. Well, that's certainly frustrating. Representative Anthony. Thank you, team. It's been very challenging and enlightening. I guess I should think the fact that the FTC has not waited in in any kind of uniform way because it has obviously left the door open for the states to do just that on on the usual. What would you say authority absent Congress's ability to covet the field so to say, I want to zero in on what historically was a credit card service agreed to by most of the major card companies namely if you presented a convincing case that you did not exercise your control over the transaction, you don't know where the charge came from. They in essence had an internal way to either remove the charge or somehow settle up. And obviously it's costing them a bunch of money to do that. And I guess where I'm going with this is, have they figured out that they can no longer as they historically good, good. Take users word for it that this transaction was not theirs. And we'll slowly get out of the business of umpiring and filtering for legitimate as opposed to illegitimate claims of I didn't buy it. I could. I don't know the specific answer to that question but I from like like the things we've read. It definitely seems like the landscape of purchasing things on a tablet or on like any technology I think is very hard to necessarily prove that you weren't the one who made the purchase or specifically when it comes to minors making the purchases it's pretty hard to say like, oh they just like did it without my knowledge because it's like oh well where did they get the tablet from you know where did they get the phone from who gave them the access to that. And yeah and additionally all of the action most of the majority of the actions when people when consumers have been victims of this has been like seeking out refunds from the companies not going straight to the credit cards. I wonder if maybe going to the credit card companies would maybe be more efficient than than seeking compensation from the technology companies. But that's a great question I don't I don't really know. I mean it's tough to answer because of the responses are so varied. What I've read generally is that it's not 100% sure because it's tough to prove you did technically make the purchase as a credit card user even if it was a minor or it was without your consent. So it makes the, it's different where if you like see something else in your credit card you've never recognized before you don't know where it comes from, and that's a properly suspect transaction. Whereas in this case it is something you did buy but it's a little bit more of a gray area. I've heard and read things that sometimes credit card companies will approve a refund, like you're saying that's something I had to do myself with my own credit card right. I didn't see where a transaction came from and I got it sorted out with my own bank. You know that being said, I've also heard that because these these in game transactions tend to pop up over and over again for kids, particularly if they don't know what they're doing. Let's say I go to the credit card company or even if I go to a company like Microsoft or Apple and ask for refund, they might end up giving me the first refund and saying, Yeah, you may have accidentally done this, here's your $5 back. I would say, I'm not paying attention for the next month, and my child spends another $100. And the second time around, they'd stop believing you, which is fair for my company's perspective, but it makes it kind of difficult for consumers who have this sort of ongoing issue with protecting their phone and their security representative McCarthy. Thanks Madam chair I know we're running short on time. This is fascinating to me because my daughter is a third grader and is using lots of devices and we have to police all of our accounts to make sure that she's not able to use our credit cards for in app purchases and I was wondering if we run into commerce class issues or if you had taken a look at, you know, we, we did some for recurring subscriptions in Vermont set up the requirement that there, there be an active, you know, pop up box where you have to do dual confirmation. And I'm wondering if there are steps like that that we could take to actually get the the card holder and make, you know, force the folks who are doing these in app purchases to to really remind people that you're spending money and you have to double confirm. Or if we run into, you know, that being a federal issue. That's a great point. The, I don't know what like the states, if the states are actually able to enact this but I do know on a lot of these apps once it'll ask for a password if you're making like a purchase with money. Right now though it's it's iffy because at least like on my phone I have an iPhone and so it just does face ID. But once you once whatever it is if it's a password if it's a fingerprint if it's a face ID, once it's authorized, it will be, you can, there's like a 20 minute window right after, in which you can make any purchases. So, I think an option if it's possible, if it's possible to do it on the state level I do think that a good option would be any time a purchase is made with that costs any amount of money, even if it's just 99 cents. There should be some sort of authorization, which would be like a password or fingerprint or face ID of the parent. And really to get rid of that like 20 minute window which for adults as advertisers like using it's better for efficiency purposes, but it's easy to take advantage of when it comes to children using it. Fascinating. Let's see representative Colston has a question. Thank you madam chair, and thanks to the team for such a great report very very thorough. My question is, in your research, were you able to determine that there may be some demographics that are most impacted by enough purchases, or is it across the board affects all minors. I would have tough to get data, specifically as who's affected right because these companies don't really release that kind of breakdown. And I don't even know if even like Apple, I'm sure Apple must and Android must collect demographic data in terms of age and race and gender and that kind of thing but we are not aware of any breakdown like that aside from general company projections and most of the things we tried to infer statistically came from, you know data that did not have the breakdown of demographics and there's a limit of amount out there so it's tough to really tell to be honest with you. But generally it is well known that the people who are most affected are essentially young people who maybe don't have the wherewithal to make these informed decisions. Thank you. Well thank you again, folks for doing this great research and for coming and helping us understand the landscape. You know those of us who's who who don't have school age children at home anymore maybe don't have a daily reminder of the dangerous nature of some of these apps and how they could cause us extra extra charges on our credit card and and be pretty welcoming at times so I appreciate your review of the landscape and, and you know we're nearing the end of session right now, but, but I'm very happy to have this idea presented to folks and, and would welcome folks who have thoughts on on how to enhance our consumer to reach out to us and, and who knows maybe you'll see your work expressed in the form of a bill that gets introduced next year to try to protect Vermonters from unintended charges in their children's computer and and device use so thank you so much for your time this morning. Thank you so much for the opportunity. It was great speaking with everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yes, thank you so much for being here have a great day. You too. Shifting gears committee we are back to S 15. We've got a couple of couple of amendments to take a look at and understand and then we will. We have a couple of amendments to take a look at and then we will act on those amendments and it would be my intention that we would try to wrap up here before the noon hour, but with three amendments that I know of it may take us a few minutes to get through these so let's see representative McCarthy do you want to talk about the, the one good find that that that you are bringing in the form of an amendment. Is it frozen or is it someone out. Oh, wait a minute, all of a sudden you shifted and representative McCarthy is no longer with us. Okay, so he didn't hear my question let's give him a moment to get back in here. There we go on cue representative McCarthy are you with us. Thank you so much for being on zoom about how being on zoom is a little bit like being on a say ounce, you know you're sort of calling out to the spirits to ask if they can understand you. Representative McCarthy, are you with us now. I, but it appears that. Internet issues. Well, it seems to be a common theme because it's happened to me a little bit this morning as well so let's see what we can do here. Madam chair, can you hear me now. Oh yes I can. Here is that the folks in my internet service provider have let me down again today I apologize. But if you can hear me loud and clear I'd be happy to present this brief amendment. My amendment came out of some concern that we had missed one little process detail around the notification requirement and then the return of an affidavit in section 16 to cure some of those simple defects. So what this amendment would do would say that the if you're using the electronic affidavit that that has to be returned by the end of business on the day before Election Day. The logic there is that it would be pretty, it's possible that the clerks wouldn't have the ability to use the online management system, and I would defer to one of our Secretary of State election officials on through the ins and outs of that but this would make it clear that you can still do that curing by going in person or having the mailed affidavit returned on Election Day but that for the electronics to apply that that would really need to be done prior to the close of business the day before Election Day. So, thank you, Representative McCarthy director setting can you help us understand sort of the workflow of of the election official and how this, how this helps to make sure that our local elections officials aren't dropping any balls as they're juggling the day before in the day of the election. I'm not sure and I'll keep it brief but the underlying issue is lack of broadband access at many polling places so there simply isn't internet access of a lot of polling places. And so if these affidavits to cure defective ballot were allowed to be returned electronically through Election Day, there's the possibility that the clerk won't see them, the presiding officer because so the two modes that would be able to be answered returned electronically will be by email back to the clerk or through the VEM system. And so neither of those would be able to chat be checked without internet access. And so the amendment just says if you're going to cure, send your affidavit to cure the defective ballot return that electronically. It has to arrive to the clerk before the close of the business on the day before the election. The training would be you got to check your email in VEMs by the end of the day that on the Monday before the election, which I think 99% of them already do for any defective ballot curing that may have come back electronically before that time. And then if they haven't received one by email or by VEMs by the close of business, then they're not required to check those two modes of return on Election Day. And they are I would add to that note you see that it allows for return of the affidavit by mail or in person to the polling place on Election Day. And I would just remind the committee they're already required to check their mail on Election Day, as you're able to return an absentee ballot itself by mail on Election Day. And so that's part of the process they will just need to check that same mail for any affidavits coming back also. It was a good catch and I apologize that I did not catch it during the initial drafting. Thank you committee members any questions on this and how it fits into the process. All right. Representative Leclerc. Thank you madam chair. So, just so that I'm clear about this so we're saying that if somebody was returned was going to return the affidavit by mail that it would have to be there the day before the Election Day, or your muted will hold my coffee and I was muted. Sorry. No, those will be allowed to come back through the day of the election. The day. Okay, that's what I okay I just want to make sure about that. You want to show representative Anthony, if it should, shall we take a pause here so that director sending clean up the coffee. No to be precise it was actually just the hot water in my hot water boiler so it can just stay on the floor we can finish. Okay, it's it's cleaning the floor right now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Representative Anthony. Yeah, thank you. I think a clarification for well. I guess people would assume I'm just wondering whether you want to add something about normal business hours on the day prior to Election Day, because various clerks keep different hours. But still, I would not want to leave a door open for somebody to say, well I did email it, but it was two hours after the clerk's office actually closed on the Monday. I believe I was trying to look at the draft that the language is close of business on the day before the election, which would cover for that. That'll do it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I may be accused of being overly optimistic here, but if we were to come to a space I know we're making some pretty big investments in broadband where broadband wasn't an issue at any of our polling places with this be something that the secretary of state's office would be open to changing in the future. Certainly. Thank you. All right. I'm so formal and so I would entertain a motion to support this amendment that Rep McCarthy has presented. So moved. Right representative Colston when you're ready. I shall begin the roll call. Gannon. Yes. Ricky. Yes. Claire. Yes. Cooper. Yes. Colston. Yes. Anthony. Yes. Behovsky. Yes. Lefebvre. Yes. Higley. You're muted. Yes. Thank you. McCarthy. Yes. Copen-Hanses. Yes. The vote is 11-0-0. Excellent. All right. Representative Toof has an amendment and will give you the floor. I think folks can call up the amendment in today's document. So welcome, Representative. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Committee, for having me back today. I will be very brief because we spent some time on it yesterday. My amendment is very similar to what I had yesterday, except what it plans to do is it will push out, it'll have a trigger date of January 1st, 2024, for the implementation of mail-in voting for Town Meeting Day. What this will do is it'll give us time to plan, figure out funding and implement this on Town Meeting Day. Yesterday, we heard a lot of people in support of this amendment that just couldn't vote for it because it was 2022 was kind of too quick for us to implement. So what I try to do here is push it out far enough so it comes out after the study committee comes back with their report and it gives us almost three years to plan for this. Why I feel really passionate about this, we've done this before with other bills like the Global Warming Solutions Act and other similar things that deal with pollution and stuff like that. We give ourselves goals and we ask to meet those goals by the time those dates come by. So this is going to give us a goal in the future to get to a spot where I think that we as a body want to be like we mentioned yesterday and we talked about S-15 and the members that support it say it's great. Mail-in voting was a great success for the general election. I think that we can make this a great success to get better voter engagement for our Town Meeting Days and special elections. So with that said, I will hopefully look for your support and I can answer any questions anyone has. Thank you. Any members? Any questions? Representative Anthony. Is this sufficiently different, different by pushing out the day to avoid any of the nation's rules problems about reintroducing the same thing twice or more than once in a session? That's a good question. I don't know if I can answer that one. This is effectively different because it has a different date on it. The language stays the same from from the original bill. It just adds that extra date. So I don't know. That's a good question, maybe for the council. I think that's more likely a question for the clerk and the speaker to make a termination. Yeah, the clerk could tell you in a heartbeat. Representative McCarthy. Yeah, thanks, Representative Toof. As we discussed yesterday, there were some both funding questions that we wanted to answer before heading in this direction and then also logistical concerns that that clerk's, including, you know, our own Saint Almond City clerk in our district, had brought up. So I'm wondering if your amendment seeks to address either those funding or timeline concerns at all, or if it's simply just saying, you know, for the 2024 election, we're doing this. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the question, Rep. McCarthy. The this will give us time to to look at this down the down the road. It doesn't have any implications on how we're going to fund it or how we're going to implement it. That's what we will be doing over the next almost three years that will give us till January 1st, 2024 to plan for this. Like I said, we've done this on many other bills where we've given ourselves goals and to meet those goals. We just gave ourselves the date in those bills. And I think this is this is the start. And this is kind of what I heard from people's floor speeches. I heard from members of this committee yesterday. And I was like thinking to myself why I got done. I was like, why didn't I try to implement this later on? It seemed like a really tall goal to get off the to get off the floor in less than a year. So I should, you know, hindsight, I should have thought about this yesterday. But no, it doesn't have any funding, but it allows us to think about that funding and it kind of puts pressure on us as a body to come up with the to reach the school. Thank you. So if I could just follow up really quickly, Madam Chair, I guess I want to ask Representative to if if there's a deficiency in the report on this issue that's toward the end of the bill. I think it's in section 21 or 22. Sorry, that was one of Madam Chair's sections that she reported. But, you know, it's clear that we're headed in the direction of trying to increase universal mailing. But I think, you know, this would be a very different way of getting at it than sort of continuing to look at that issue. And I'm wondering what the what you believe the advantages of setting a date certain that we're going to do this in statute now, as opposed to just doing the report and continuing to work on this. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that, Red McCarthy. And, you know, we we jumped right in. The pandemic forced us to jump into the November of 2020 to do this. And it forced us to to really look at I mean, the success of it said, we should keep doing this. This is this is great for for 2022. And I really think that if we give ourselves a goal, we'll have to stick to it. And and I think that, you know, it's great to have the report and to hear back from that report. But I think putting the pressure on ourselves to say, hey, we really, we really have to get to this goal by 2024 because I'm I'm hearing from a lot of people that this is a great mail in voting is a great way to get people engaged. And like I mentioned yesterday, 20, 15 to 20 percent turnout, deciding on our our budgets that are spent over $2 billion a year. It's a third of our our funding or our spending goes to education. And we only have 15 to 20 percent turnout. And I think this will put the pressure on us as a legislature to get that to get those dates in place. And it will also we'll have better represented government by by a more majority of the people coming out to vote. So I mean, that's kind of where I'm thinking. I think that the study group is it's a great that that report we're going to get is going to be great. And it may change our mind on on down the road. But I think setting a date is very important for us to get real on it. Thanks, representatives of the player. Thank you, Madam Chair. And this is more of a statement than a question. Part of this discussion is around who's going to drive this train? Are we always going to wait for the Secretary of State's office to come in and make these suggestions? Or is we as a legislature looking to have some proactive involvement in this? And I think like the representative and most of us have said that we all are looking for more voter involvement and to make it easier for sure. So I totally agree with a date certain. This body does seem to need a number to work towards. If we leave it too open ended and things don't get done. And then, of course, the Secretary's office states office would agree with this. And that with all the additional staff that they're going to get, they've got all sorts of capacity to do these type of things. So. Do either of the folks from the Secretary of State's office want to help us understand what is involved in understanding the details of implementing a universal vote by mail for Australian ballot local elections? Happy to, Madam Chair. Thank you. Good morning, Chris Winters, Deputy Secretary of State. I can't disagree with a lot of what's being said about moving to vote by mail for local elections, the importance of it, the way that it could possibly increase participation, which would be wonderful. But there are, as you know, a lot of logistical and operational and even philosophical things that we need to think about in moving to vote by mail for local elections, fiscal being among them is a really important one. This is a decision that I don't think you need to make right now. I think our report back in January of 2023 is the right timing for you to have that discussion and make that decision after we have more mail voting elections under our belts. We have more data. We have more evidence. We have more experiences from the locals as to how it works well or does not work well for them. And you are, of course, free to do as you please as a legislature. You don't have to wait for us. But it seems to us that that's a decision best made in an off year in 2023 after getting the report back and having some experience under our belts. Any other questions from committee members? All right. Any committee discussion? Representative Anthony. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to try and parse out two questions. One is whether or not we're shifting essentially elections on mass to the Secretaries of States office independently of the strategy of voting. You know, I have not satisfied myself nor have I heard from sufficient constituents whether or not transferring essentially the organization of local elections to the Secretary of State's office is a good idea anyway. As Will Sending and Chris Winters have pointed out, many communities are on different timelines and the movement to transfer the oversight and the execution to the Secretary of State's office goes down towards a road towards uniformity that I'm not sure I have explored with constituents. I guess that's I'm trying to distinguish between mail in and then who's doing the mail in and who sets the timing, which are inextricably entwined. But I don't think I have not had a clear discussion on each of those two aspects of the implication of Representative Toof's amendment. Thanks. Who's got a thought on that? Would you like me to respond to that, Madam Chair? Sure. I mean, I can defer to the Secretary's State's office on this one if they'd like to. I would just I would just mention that within the S15 we are allowing we are allowing this to happen up until well with S15 we are allowing municipalities to vote by mail if they so choose. And I think that we jumped into it pretty heavily when we decided 2020, which understandably for the pandemic's sake, we jumped into mail-in voting. And I think that with the success we saw in the voter turnout, I think my goal here is better voter engagement. And I guess I would just say that I don't see the need from the Secretary State's office perspective to lock into a mandatory vote by mail for local elections until you have all of the data and evidence that you can have and make a more informed decision, which might be to go to this very point in 2024, or it might be to delay it for a bit if we're not ready, or it might even be that it's not appropriate for local elections for a variety of reasons. But we have yet to really study the issue. Representative Vihopsky. I really just have a statement. I am all for making voting as accessible as possible as as we know from our committee discussion. You know, I would like to see this in the primaries. I'd like to see this in as many towns as possible. And I believe that we have to move forward with information. And I just don't feel like in this moment, we have the information to know what it's what it's going to take. Is it reasonable that we'll be able to do it in a year? Once we have the information from the 2022 or 2023 report. So I really feel like, well, I absolutely agree with the spirit of this and want to see us move in this direction. I don't think we have the information to know the feasibility and the timeline that it would take to be able to set that now. So it feels a little bit like it's the car before the horse. Thanks, Rep. Vihopsky. Representative O'Clair. Thank you, Chair. Maybe I'm missing it, but the member from Barrie made the comment about the like the responsibility shifting to the Secretary State's office based on this amendment. And I don't see that in this. It's still rests with the local election officials. As far as the when and where we're just talking about the mailing of ballots. Am I missing something someplace here? According to, thank you, Rep. O'Clair. Yeah, according, you're absolutely right with this amendment. It doesn't change anything from the underlying bill. As far as how the ballots will be sent out. Will, can you clarify just a little bit there too? Sure. I don't read anything in the amendment that would require the Secretary of State's office to take part in the mailing. But it does mandate it across all municipalities, town cities, school districts, fire districts, water districts, sewer districts. And I think the capacity of those various municipalities to actually administer mailing is one issue we really want to look into. And the answer to that will inform whether there is any particular role that the Secretary of State's office may or may not play in facilitating these local mail-in ballot elections. I've got one of the important things to look at before we move forward. But no, as it's written right now, it doesn't expand any of that role to my office. That's only for the mailing of ballots in the general election. Right. And just for clarification's sake, this is only stipulating those communities that already vote by Australian ballot already. Correct. Okay. Representative Merwicky. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I feel like this is really the same amendment we saw yesterday. And the bill we've tentatively passed or passed on second reading yesterday provides for study, which is going to do what we want. And I don't agree that this is an improvement or different from that. So I'm going to move that we find this amendment unfavorable. Any other committee discussion? All right. Representative Colston, when you're ready. I shall begin the roll call. Point of order, Madam Speaker. Chair, it's a yes means that you're finding it unfavorable. No means that you are not, correct? Yes means no. No means yes. I know that that's really helping to clarify things, but yes means no thank you, representative too. And you notice how you got elevated in statute there too. Yes, thanks. Appreciate the nod and the extra workload. All right. Representative Colston, when you're ready. I shall begin the roll call. Gannon. Yes. Marike. Yes. McClare. No. Cooper. Yes. Colston. Yes. Anthony. Yes. Bihopsky. Yes. Clefave. No. Egglake. No. McCarthy. Yes. Copeland-Hanses. Yes. The vote is eight three zero. We find the amendment unfavorable. Representative Tooth. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to again thank the committee for their consideration for this. I will reach out to the clerk today to see if this has any issues with Robert's rules of order, if that's okay with you. I just want to make sure that because it's very similar, but it is, it does have a different in it, but I are a different intent to it. So I do appreciate your time and I know we spent a considerable amount of time yesterday, both on the floor and in committee on this. So I do thank you, your committee. Thank you. Thanks for stopping by Representative Tooth. Now we have Representative Strong with an amendment that members can find on our committee page. Welcome, Representative Strong. Thank you so much. Do you want me to go ahead? Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I want to apologize. I was so busy typing out emails this morning. I noticed I typed your name as Amanda. And the way our emails work, sometimes they think ahead of us. So my apologies on that and my thanks to you for letting me come in. Short notice and thanks to your vice chair and others on the committee and also to the Ledge Council who took time with me on the phone this morning. So I'm going to briefly just sum up what this amendment is. When you look at amendments, sometimes they're, to me, they're kind of complicated, but really it's very simple. And it's basically changing the sections of the bill that are particularly about the universal mail-in ballot voting, changing that section of effective date until after the study can be done. That's going to basically look into types of security measures for this voting process, this absentee voting process in Vermont. So that we can have some safeguards and protocol that will ensure that the voter integrity, that these elections, and by the way, I totally agree with mail-in voting. I think it's the way of the future. And I think that this is a great bill overall as far as getting us on this road for accessibility. But there needs to be a balance between accessibility and security. And for many of my constituents and through some polls that have actually been done not only across the country, but in Vermont, over 70% of Vermonters and folks in the country in general want safeguards. They approve of the mail-in type of balloting, but they also want to see safeguards. And that's all parties, not any particular party that those polls weren't taken, just a specific party. And as we look at other states, all other states that do elections primarily by mail have some sort of security in the form of voter ID provision for these absentee ballots. So I'd like to see us have this form of voting, but to see the safeguards in place. And that's what this amendment is asking for, for the study committee to do some research of what will work in Vermont. Maybe we're not like Colorado or Hawaii or California, but what will work so that voter confidence is high. I really do believe that the integrity of our elections is vital. I think that we as Americans want that and have fought for that and want to have pride in that. And I believe that when we have that integrity, the confidence of our voters will increase. And we'll see more people using this process, either coming to the polls or using the absentee ballots, and we'll see higher voter turnouts, but it's really connected. I believe the integrity of elections, the security goes with voter turnout and confidence. So that's it. And I'm glad to take any questions you may have. Thank you. All right. I will open this up for questions from committee members. Representative Lefebvre. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to take this time to thank you, Representative Strong, and welcome to government operations. I don't think we've worked with you yet this year. So you have voiced a lot of the concerns that I know at least I had coming through. So I really appreciate you taking the time to bring this amendment forward. And I hope that this was something that the committee can look at moving forward. I do believe that you will see that we will have a stronger voter hope and integrity with this and that they will feel that their voices are being heard if there can be a safeguard put into place. So thank you for bringing this to our attention. Representative McCarthy. Hi. Thanks for coming in, Representative Strong. So I just wanted to have a couple of questions. So to be clear, the vast majority of what is in S15 under your amendment would be pushed off until the 2024 election at the earliest. So I guess, Mike. Yes. Great. Thanks. I saw you nodding. Yes. Didn't mean to go over you moving forward. So I guess my question is I really understand and support the desire for voters feeling confident in the system. We took pretty extensive testimony from Secretary of State's office, from clerks about just how successful we really were in the 2020 election, this first election where we did a universal mailing. I mean, to the point that there was literally one person who tried to vote twice where the checklist caught them and they were literally testing the system. I think there were six other instances where there was some question about was there somebody trying to cast a ballot and it turned out to be an administrative issue. Like John Smith Jr. and John Smith Sr. both voted and Sr. got checked off when Jr. voted accidentally and that kind of thing. So I just wanted to know is there a specific concern about integrity that we haven't heard that is inspiring this bill or that we should be responding to? Or is it your hope more generally or an opinion that if we wait and do something else later on than the work that we've been doing over the past months on S15? I guess I'm just wondering what specific concern we're trying to address here with this amendment. Thank you, Representative McCarthy. It does address just long term when we're looking at implementing a bill. Our election last, this last election cycle was based on a lot of the COVID restrictions and securities and safety measures. But as we look forward to upcoming elections for generations to come, we still want to build into our system that feeling of confidence, whatever we've set in motion here has to be surrounded by is that voter connected to their vote? Is that truly the person who voted? And throughout the election cycle, what we made, what you said, heard one instance, we don't really know who might have filled out a ballot for somebody else and mailed it in. We don't really know. And how can we know if there isn't a way to track that? So it's really a measure to say we believe in the voting process. We are proud of our voting process. And we want to secure that voting process for all generations and for all elections to come. Representative Leclerc. Good morning, Representative Strong. Um, just do you have any suggestions as to what the measures might look like that we could put in place? We had a robust and fairly in-depth discussion around signature verification. Do you have any other examples that you could give us that might meet that criteria? Thank you for the question. And yes, I do. When we look at some of the other states that have implemented this, and I believe done so successfully, particularly, I'll mention California, Hawaii, Colorado, Oregon. These are states we can mirror their legislation. And we have, in a lot of ways, mirrored maybe, let's say Colorado, but we've left out those safeguards they have, and they have implemented about 16 types of voter ID. It doesn't have to be necessarily signature, but it's a voter ID. And it can be any number of things, a government issue type of ID. It could be your employment ID. It could be your own social security last for digit source or a driver's license. And even other things, birth certificates, etc. They allow a long list so that really everybody can be covered without discriminating against anybody in any way. It's just basically saying, yes, this person and this vote are connected. So it's really not that complicated, I don't think. And of course, a study group would really dig into that way more time and attention than I've been able to have with it. But there's many, many ways to do it. And I think without infringing upon anybody's right to vote or even making it particularly inconvenient in any way to vote. Representative Higley. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Representative Strong, for bringing this forward. I certainly support this. Was outspoken throughout the whole process and testimony coming up to the final vote on this bill. I had mentioned it. I'll mention it again that in the fall of 2018, there was a Pew study again. This was prior to all the voter questioning in the 2020 election. So there was a Pew study that went out that found that 76% of Americans favored requiring everyone to show some form of identification for voting. So that's one example 34 states require some form of ID. I know it's been talked about time and time again about how there wasn't any voter fraud or very little voter fraud in Vermont. But I've mentioned it before as well that regardless, the atmosphere out there is volatile around voting right now. And I think one way to stymie that volatility is to make sure that we have some form of voter identification. You know, it's funny. We just we just heard from a group of Middlebury College students talking about an issue around underage kids purchasing gaming products on their parents' credit cards. And some of the safeguards are around that even, whether it's facial recognition, fingerprinting, passwords, it's out there, folks. And it's going to it's going to come down to it. But again, I certainly just for the perception alone to, you know, bring this back around to make sure that folks have a real secure feeling about election going forward. I certainly support this and thank you for bringing forward. Representative Bihovsky. Thank you. I'm not sure if you're aware, but the Brennan Center has done significant research into voter fraud and they did a 14 year study specifically on the kind of thing we're talking about where the wrong where the wrong person returns a ballot and found after counting over a billion ballots that there were 31 instances of this kind of problem. And so I'm curious if we think we're going to find anything significantly different by looking at Vermont voters and if rather than buying into and feeding this divisive hysteria about a problem that we have shown time and time again doesn't exist. If it makes more sense to counter that with the facts that are out there. Thank you. Representative McCarthy. Yeah, I really appreciate this robust discussion. I guess I'm a little taken aback hearing some of the thoughts of folks on the committee that have supported the work that we've done wanting to set aside so much of our good work for a couple of years, especially given the overwhelming support that Vermonters have for universal vote by mail and the success that we had last year. I want to take a second to talk about how we're constantly, as we consider the decision points in this bill, weighing the desire for us to make sure that we have integrity, which I believe we really do with the system we put in place under s 15, the voter checklist, the local administration of elections. You know, when I think about how we compare to states like Oregon, who when they mail out their ballots, they have central processing. They don't have the individual town clerks in their small towns, doing the processing of those mail in ballots, and we have that, which gives so much more integrity to our local elections. So I really just, I am concerned after everything that we've heard that we might wait to improve access to the ballot and to expand the participation in our next general election because of what, you know, without trying to assign any motive or describe any opinions to other folks. I just think what is out there and what we saw in testimony from the Secretary of State around the rampant misinformation. I believe that the misinformation that some have called the big lie about voter fraud in the 2020 election has a lot more to do with those concerns that people have about the integrity of our elections than any real actual event that we can see that was, you know, part of the complaint driven process that we have with our election integrity now. So I really appreciate the effort to make sure that Vermonters feel that their elections have integrity and that their votes count, but I'm really concerned that supporting this amendment would feed into an idea that there is this voter fraud out there that we just know the facts just do not say it exists. And so I just, I won't be supporting this amendment. Thanks. Representative Lefebvre. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, well, there was that. So I wanted to just reiterate to Representative McCarthy, I guess that he said that he was saying that he was surprised by hearing from other committee members. I have said all along, from the very beginning, that was not the biggest fan of this bill. And I do appreciate all the work that we did and that we did hear from one town clerk and her perspective of what the other town clerks would feel. And we are now hearing back that some people aren't really that happy with what we have done in somewhat we we have heard other town clerks have submitted that into us. And so I, you know, we just heard that we would need to have more stuff looked into with a couple amendments that have been presented to us that maybe this something we're not ready for primetime. And so I do again know that we did a lot of work on this, but I am just, I do support this amendment and asking that something does get put into place. And I had one question for Representative Strong. When you say study study committee, do you mean the ask in the language of the bill that the Secretary of State, when they look into this, is that who you're referring to as a committee? Yes, I'm sorry. So many bills with study committees, commissions and boards. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. And if I may say one other thing, you know, the data, the data shows that other states are not having problems because they have something implemented, you know, where I have asked and I have asked other witnesses that have came into our committee to show me another state that has the accessibility that we do without the safeguards that we lack. And no one was able to provide it to me. So I, again, I'm just asking that we have some, you know, I thought we support this that, you know, it's that's asking for something to come in. Thank you. Representative Marwicky. Thank you, Madam Chair. And there's a lot I could say to this right now, but I think I'm going to save most of it for the floor. But I'm not going to, I'm not going to challenge opinions right now because I respect that everybody has their right to their own opinion. But I've yet to see facts around this. And the ongoing rise in, in factless opinions that are continued to challenge the last election have given rise to around the country, the spate of laws that can only be described as voter suppression, most especially at minorities. I'm just going to quote former acting Attorney General of the US, Jeffrey Rosen, who's going to be testifying the Congress today with these words that the Justice Department has been presented with no evidence of widespread voter fraud at a scale sufficient to change the outcome of the 2020 election. And yet here we are continuing to push this. I'm just going to close with I have a friend that was visiting Texas and had the unfortunate episode of putting on his shoes where a scorpion had gotten into and the scorpion stung him. He said it felt like a cinder block had been dropped on his foot and he saw this was a little tiny scorpion. Can't imagine what a big one would have done. Reality is they have scorpions in Texas and lots of other places, but not in Vermont. And I'm not ready to start passing laws to make sure we don't have scorpions crawling into people's shoes because it's not a problem here. And this idea that we need to solve a problem before it shows up doesn't speak well to what the trust that I feel both in Vermont voters and the systems and the town clerks and the Secretary of State's office that already does a fine job in establishing the integrity of our elections here. Thank you. Deputy Secretary Winters, can you for the benefit of folks who may not have been here for the last many days and weeks as we've been reviewing this bill share some thoughts with us about election integrity in Vermont. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. As Representative Strong pointed out, we're not the first state to move to vote by mail. There are five others and we spent a lot of time in 2020 learning about how those other states do elections and we took best practices from them and we also took worst practices that we saw happening in other states that were trying to do vote by mail for the first time. And as Will Sending can tell you, as we crafted our approach, we wanted to do what was right for Vermont and what's good for California and what's good for Colorado might not make sense in Vermont. And I will say that even though we have this study language in S15 about improving ways to better secure our elections, we don't think we have a problem right now. Our elections are very secure. Our elections are very safe. We have not seen any evidence of voter fraud, of widespread voter fraud. It really bothers us, the folks who work in elections for a living, that we see this constant talk of widespread voter fraud that leads to people's shaken confidence in our elections and it's a tragedy. It's not based in evidence. So we had extensive testimony in this committee about what we do to maintain the voter checklist, about ways we're going to get even better at maintaining the voter checklist, about the security measures we have through local elections, through our systems. Our systems can tell if you're registered in more than one place. And we just didn't see it. We had record turnout in 2020. That's the other piece of this is that I can understand the concerns. I can understand the fears that there may be some voter fraud happening out there. We now have 2020 under our belts really were forced into that choice to do a completely vote by mail election. 75% of Vermonters voted early voted by mail. That's multiple hundreds of thousands of mail in ballots. Yet we had seven alleged complaints of something going wrong with voter fraud, with someone voting twice, with someone voting in the name of someone else. Of those six were investigated and found to be administrative error, as I think Brett McCarthy pointed out. One was a person who was trying to test the system and he got caught. If there was any sort of widespread voter fraud in the state of Vermont, we would hear about it. Our local clerks would know about it. Our systems would catch it. So we're very confident in the system that we have. But this study language is a reflection of us saying we're not going to rest on our laurels. There may be other things we can do. There may be other ways to verify the identity of voters. But you have to look at that trade off. We had a lot of testimony about signature matching. We've heard some about voter ID. And you want to be careful about putting systems in place for a problem that doesn't exist that we don't have evidence of because it may actually cause more of a problem than it would be to find a solution. You may end up actually blocking eligible voters from being able to vote through the imperfect signature matching and voter ID approaches that other states have. And again, we want a solution that's right for Vermont. We want it to address the evidence and what we actually see. And we just have not seen voter fraud exist in the state of Vermont. Only a couple of instances in the 10 years that Will and I can remember administering elections here. It really is extremely rare. So putting something else in place in search, a solution in search of a problem really isn't the approach that we would take. Thank you. Representative Leclerc. Thank you, Madam Chair. I heard a couple comments that I guess I take exception to. One of them is that those of us that are looking at this a bit differently and agree that we haven't had any issues with fraud before but are heading in a different direction or just looking to put some safeguards into place are being motivated by some sort of hysteria. I take exception to that. I think it's an inappropriate comment to make because you're now questioning somebody's motivation. And yes, we are heading in a different direction. We have got elections to be very proud of and we all want to be proud of them going forward. But to think if we're going to make a significant course change here and that the guardrails that we put around them shouldn't be considered, I think is naive. And for us to, the comments to be made where there's no problem, you're right, there isn't. And I think it's a great thing that we can point to. But that's what we do in this body is we put guardrails around things and we try to anticipate the unanticipated. So I don't think this is inappropriate and that we're being premature and trying to put a process in place to make sure that we continue to maintain the very high level of election integrity that we have. And I don't think it's inappropriate for our body to ask the Secretary of State's office to do some things preemptively. We don't always have to wait for them to come to us with suggestions. It can be a two-way street here. Thank you. Representative Deputy Secretary Winters, did you want to comment on that? I did. I just, I do want to apologize to Representative LeClaire. My comment was not directed at the motivation of anyone on this committee. I was talking about voter confidence in general being shaken by the constant, constant barrage of talk of widespread we see nationally, we see on the news. For the record, you're not the one that made that comment and use that statement. Okay. Thank you. Representative Hooper. Thanks Madam Chair. It seems to have mostly been said, but I'd comment, Representative Higley brought up a very valid point from our presentation before with children doing things which would, if done by ballot, would be voter fraud. But in the presentation, we also found that there's a check built into that system. When a parent gets the bill, they realize something's happened. If somebody takes my ballot and files it for me, when I try to file mine, the town clerk is going to say, well, there's a problem here. We got it. There's an issue. So there are controls at this point. Basically, Representative Strong mentioned national and Vermont studies that have said voter confidence is not high. And I would like to see the Vermont studies at least because I have yet to find that information readily available. And the last elections participation rate would hopefully prove to us that confidence in our ballot is extremely high. I have a tendency to trust the motivation of Vermonters. So I will not be moving in favor of this. Thank you. Representative Gannon. Thank you. I think, you know, you know, Representative LaFave raised the point that some clerks had concerns about the bill. I think with the exception of one email that I received, those concerns dealt with ballot curing and had nothing to do with the security of our elections. So I think it's very important to distinguish between those two. I think there are procedural issues that Representative McCarthy and the chair have fixed through amendments with respect to ballot curing, but that's a totally separate issue from issues with respect to election security. And the one clerk that did raise that asked us to do exactly what we were doing in this bill, which is to study the issue and come back with recommendations of how we can enhance, if necessary, the security of our elections. Thank you. Representative Vihotsky. I did just want to clarify that my statement as Mr. Winters was pointing to was not aimed at anyone in this committee, but the larger conversation around voter fraud. So committee members, we are now into the noon hour and Representative Strong has raised her hand. Thank you, Madam Chair, and it is the noon hour and lunchtime. I just wanted to make a closing comment if that would be all right with you. Okay, thank you. I just want to reiterate that this isn't to me about fraud. It's about confidence in the voting process. And even if, let's say, one town, I'm going to say my little town here, we had 10 people who just for some reason didn't vote appropriately. I won't say what it's called, but it can really change an election outcome in small towns and small communities. And so I just want to reiterate the confidence is at stake and all other states have some form of safety measures. And I think we can do it appropriately in Vermont. We're a small state, we're close. And one other comment is in some of our bigger cities or communities where the town clerks aren't as in close touch with their constituencies, it can be harder to know who's really a resident here and who's not. And we need to verify that and make sure that confidence is raised in this whole process. And that's the intent of my amendment. It's not to say there's hysteria or that there's any something not right is to say we want to move forward and do it with those safety features that provide the greatest amount of confidence in the future elections. So that's my motive. I appreciate all of your attention and time this morning. I know it's tiring, but I thank you very much. Deputy Secretary Winters, can you remind the committee there were seven reported suspicions of voter irregularity and there was one that was determined to be somebody testing the system? Can you remind us what municipality that one case was in? I cannot, but perhaps Director Sending remembers. That was in Burlington, City of Burlington. Thank you. Representative Higley. Thank you, Madam Chair. And with that, I would make a motion that we approve Representative Strong's and Representative Strong and others amendment. Any other committee discussion? All right, Representative Colston, when you're ready, this is a motion to approve. So yes means yes, no means no, right? That's right. We're back to the straight up yes means yes, no means no. Gannon. No. Mariki. No. Baclar. I believe he stepped out of the meeting. Hooper. No. Colston. No. Anthony. No. Pihovsky. No. Lefebvre. Yes. Higley. Yes. McCarthy. No. Copeland-Hanses. No. Should we hold the vote open for a short while for representatives of Claire? I think it would be a good idea since he was here for most of the discussion. I believe he had a noon meeting he needed to go to. So let's hold that open, see if we can get that final vote. Thank you, Representatives Strong and Tooth, and thank you to the Secretary of State's elections folks for being with us. Thank you, Amron, for your trusty drafting of all of these various amendments and committee. I will see you all on the floor at 1.15.