 morning thank you for fitting this in I know it's a busy time this this bill came about when constituent discovered that the she's on the school board and she their town treasurer is retiring she's assistant treasurer she wanted to run for town treasurer discovered that those are incompatible offices which I think historically is appropriate but the school structure with that 46 the school structure has changed such that it's an independent union school with a totally independent financial office outside auditors and no longer has that close connection that schools traditionally have with their towns so I believe that that this is a an outdated incompatibility and this is the only one that I'm addressing in this bill it could be that the whole concept needs to be reevaluated updated but my request is is merely to remove this in compatibility and partly in light of I think we all have experiences of getting people the difficulty of getting people to run for a municipal office and so I don't think we should throw up for their roadblocks when they're not necessary I did speak with Karen Horne about this and I mean to be honest I had to remind her several times and I think it was not high on her agenda and then her response was we in general we oppose it without really looking at it and I think it was a you know a super abundance of caution and the sort of if it ain't broke don't fix it response but I would argue that it is broken but I'm trying to understand so you're talking about town treasure okay versus school director which is totally separate correct okay I guess I'm trying to understand the conflict if it was all in one one I mean a school director in a school treasure I get it so I think it's historically when it was a village school and the finances were also handled within the village potentially the town treasurer could write it cut a check to the school and it could be handled by spouse or even that person but now there's a and I got that prior tax 60 it was all local and today maybe there are places where it's different but I think virtually everyone on where the school so so I my belief is that the LCT's opposition was so more reflexive rather than really considered the situation now yeah well my town they see the treasure holds positions help the school treasure plus town treasure and a lot of times people mistake that as being a single treasure for both for the whole when in reality they wear two hats but the treasure is the school district of the town and I do basically work for the school and do the treasury work with that I just don't I think it's it's integrated because of all the mess put a sex and it needs to be changed because you can't get anybody to run thank you some of this may not be very ancient history because it was only last by any we dealt with the happenings up in Coventry and that really was the impetus for making a lot of these offices incompatible whether whether this does seem so separate that you wonder why the law prohibits it I'm just saying that some of some of it's fairly new and we may not have gotten it entirely right when we looked at that this looks like something that we should look at I'm sorry Karen had the reflex that she had but she'll come around and certainly you want to hear from her yeah thank you Jim more of a question of process if I may sure I think we have a miscellaneous elections bill coming over from the Senate I don't know if this fits within that if we wanted to take testimony and amend it on to that I mean we need to learn more about any potential conflicts but boy I don't want to I don't want to be the one that puts up any more barriers to finding people to run for office I know in the case of our town we're pleading could someone please come in for an appointment to be auditor I mean we just you know we don't want to put more barriers if they need to be there then from the Senate no it's a house bill we introduced it last week moving town agent from elected position to an appointed position right I'm thinking crossover okay any other questions well thank you very much thank you for your time and it's certainly if you do have any questions where I feel free are you in the basketball I'm not in eighth grade I went out for the basketball team and since then I've tried to avoid any remote connection experience so you got you all the committee has asked me to come in and speak to the proposed charter change in my pillar that would allow for non-citizens to vote in their local elections and it might be disappointed to you all this morning because I think it would be fairly boring and brief just trying to stay away from policy standpoint from a broad perspective I spoke with the secretary this morning of course I've talked with him since this proposal came out to and he pretty strongly feels that this is a decision to be made at the local level and is remaining neutral at this point on the concept of non-citizen voting obviously it's clear to us to him that non-citizens are not qualified to vote in state or federal elections we see that is extremely clear in both constitutions of the state federal level but we see no indication in this proposal if there's any suggestion that they would the proposal is pretty clearly written to only allow for the non-citizens to take part in the local multilayer elections and as such the secretary really feels that it's a decision for the locality and the legislature via the charter process and I assume and that when I was going to lean over and ask what your council were asked was whether you all have been provided the opinion on the constitutionality of the proposal yet that's in his walk this through the constitutionality issue yes I just forgot that it happened yet with respect this issue and the issue of 16 and 17 year olds Jim so most of us consider JPs the local elected office but my understanding is because it's in the constitution we can't change the voting requirements for that now even though they're local elected they think I remember last fall they were on the general election ballot so what kind of issues and costs with that meaning for your office in terms of separating I don't see any issues or costs for our office in my mind so those you're correct well some towns print their justice candidates on the back general election ballot okay who prints them the town or they're put on the state office with the state candidates our office okay prison and provides them to the town okay so the town would have to do a separate ballot and couldn't put them on the general election right yes that would be my advice to the city clerk then I think it would be potentially a separate legal question whether those local non-citizen voters can vote that JP ballot were not and I'm looking at Betsy and she's shaking her head and that was my understanding that they could and so if that's the clear case yeah my pillar could probably still print them on the back of the general election because then only those non-citizen voters would be receiving that so along with that process well so would that mean that these folks would have to be on their own separate border checklist and then how would you go about developing that I mean would you have to have a separate border checklist for every single municipality or town that say if the other communities decided to do this that's a good question this proposal particular a mob pillar it's written in such a way that's totally the responsibility of the mob pillar in the city clerk and speaking with him it's I know that that's his intention and I'm happy that it's really clearly set out that way in the charter also one by one if towns were to do so that would be the approach that I would prefer would be that it's the town's responsibility to keep it completely independent separate local checklist that's separate from my system which is what mob pillar intends to do so that no non- citizens are ever included in the statewide voter database if it were to pass in a way that applied to all towns I would probably at that point consider whether we develop in our software a separate local checklist feature that could include these people but I wouldn't take that step until the legislature decided they want to do this thank you well we had the binary like discussions on either that or the 16 17 year old including in a statewide that inappropriate from you know that's doable that would be that's essentially a matter of changing the parameters on what dates get accepted when the system is assessing age by a birthday and then any other town charter that wanted to include it would not need to go through here to do so they have a town they didn't want it to include non- citizens or 16 17 year olds I think every town would have any way that would be constructed it would either be automatic or subject only local vote yes the 16 and 17 year old proposal is for statewide for an amendment to state law we also have a Brattleboro Charter amendment which would just go to 16 and 17 years folk 16 yeah voting in local elections there so will with this supplemental voter registry be protected under the voter checklist protections we put in place last year because I mean one of the concerns I have is all the summer creating a list of non-citizens and I would not want that to get used in an inappropriate manner yes I thought about that as well and I believe and we can potentially wrap in Ledge Council here as well but I read the language on page 2 line 12 starting there to address that issue where it says the supplemental voter registry shall be treated and maintained in the same manner as a voter checklist under the SA 43 sub 2 I believe that that includes the language about who can have access to the checklist although that section seems to me to be pretty particularly directed at the statewide voter checklist so it's not clear to me whether this local month would have those same protections or not and it seems as if no yes the very first line on line for page 2 the person may register to vote a month earlier who on election day is a legal resident of the United States so this that fact alone would give them I would hope adequate protection from ice as of for instance they're a legal resident they're a legal resident yeah I understand me too but you know I mean I would assume that a person who is a legal resident can prove that they are a legal resident and in order to register them under this scheme I think they have to I do know what it's what representative again it's getting up there's there's significant concern among the non-citizen community and immigrant community about access to lists but ultimately of course they have a choice as to whether they want to register under this sure I see three different protections of the choice and do I want to register for this second can I prove that I am legal and third am I protected by the the one that you mentioned and how the checklist will be treated there's a dreamer steward stewardess someplace now that doesn't have their opinion didn't we have conversations with somebody either here or maybe in my head that led us to believe that the statewide list is protected but individual town lists can still be gone after that's the end yeah that's the end rest legislative council and it's just what you were saying I think that protection in the statewide voter checklist it's in 17 BSA 2154 C is that it's the whole statewide voter checklist that's protected by last biennium's act so that the whole voter checklist can't be given to the federal government or a foreign government but individual town checklists are not part of that protection a person may still obtain an individual town checklist those have to get posted for example at the town clerk's offices so those still are public documents and are not protected by the act was passed last by any I agree with that I think you also would get into a situation arguably where because before this provision in the notion that this charter puts out there of a separate supplemental local checklist that's a kind of new creation by this language right that language to me was referring to that town's portion of the statewide voter checklist because that's all that's doing over checklist they have they go into the system and say run my town names that are a subset of the larger statewide checklist so it may come down to an issue of how the request is phrased and that somebody would have to know to be particular in their request that I want your supplemental local Montpelier checklist and I don't know whether there may be an argument that that's not covered at all by this provision any of the protections in this provision since it's totally separate entity from the state it's not a portion of the statewide list it's a separate checklist yeah I mean just to get back to my question I mean they may be legal residents but but there are many instances of ICE going after people entertaining them who are legal residents who then you know lose many of their due process rights once they're in ice detention so we need to be careful here because we don't want to provide a list of people for us to go after even if they are illegal I mean maybe there's a way to address that we address that in 2020 more over I think I'm not sure if that's that team was making this distinction or not to remember when we were working on this that C sub C there in 2154 is about requires a person to sign an affidavit to get the whole statewide checklist and we consciously decided that that's affidavit requirement wouldn't occur at the town level but the prohibition on the town official giving it to a federal agency does apply to the individual town checklists that's in v2 it's a kind of minor distinction but there is there is still that protection again for the town's portion of the statewide checklist that directs the public agency not to provide it to any federal agency so do we know how other states handled this particular Maryland which has a number of towns and cities that allows I don't specifically I would assume that they are handling it in much the same way it's a completely separate separate piece so no I guess my only question I mean one way or another whether it's a prohibition on sharing with the federal it's a public list so whether you took the state list and cross-checked it with the town list you're still gonna identify be able to identify the non-citizen I think so that I mean it makes sense to me that you would get you could get both into a comparison just going to point out for the director for example 17 gets a 2141 a is the requirement for a town clerk to post at least 30 days before any local election copies of the voter checklist and a couple of different places in the town so that that seems that all voters in a local election including the non-citizen voters under this bill what have their names posted again without doubt the question I have is do you talk about the state election in the local election for time you have to have two checklists this whole for these checklists get posted and did they get posted separately or do you get well until this bill they were the same thing and so I think just one gets posted generally in the lead up to the election then it's that's been actually a learning process since I've been director over the last four or five years to train the towns that really even though they're being held on the same day they're two separate elections local in a statewide one they're warned separately they really should be administered separately just at the same place on the same day some clerks actually print out two physical lists and have one place to check in for the local ballot in one place for the statewide ballot others will do a single print out with two columns indicating which ballot the way I try to explain it to them is the person could come in and choose to vote in one about the other election and when you're doing a participation report a turnout report for that election you want that distinction to show and that's why I like to see if they're holding the same one on the same two elections on the same day one local one state for them to have to list the two columns or two physical less in this this would of course even further necessitate that since there's a different ways so I'm not familiar with ever having read this but from your discussion this is a bar for transfer of the information to federal request is that yes does that then cover coochier incorporated a private agency working on contracts in the government to come and make a request and be granted or is it a bigger blanket then it's just federal the federal government most of the federal states formed up some private agency there's a prohibition if I remember right also on transferring it to any federal agency so you wouldn't transfer the list just transfer it to people that so Kushner and Kushner Inc. in your hypothetical could request it but they'd sign an affidavit saying they're not going to provide it to have a federal agency I think I don't think the secretary but he's saying it's a goal of mine I will just tell the committee to do further work on the issue of access to the statewide checklist I still think that there should be more conditions and more restrictions on we actually call that out to so not only the transfer provision but it says or independent contractor of a public agency in the first place although that's about who's providing it shall not knowing the disclose that's saying an independent contractor of us when provided to many foreign government or to a federal agency or commission or person acting on behalf of such federal entity then you see under to see where they have to sign an affidavit but it's clear that which seem on any person wishing to obtain a copy of all of the statewide or checklist from my office the new languages under Big B we've always had the commercial purpose restriction and the federal agency was the bill that passed was it last year to be dancing it is well could you could you play out force how this would look say if you had a non-resident that wanted to do the same day will the registration I think there are requests their application they would still be allowed to work under the same deadlines and process that everyone else is my understanding so it'd be a matter of the presiding officer typically the clerk and the BCA members present evaluating the eligibility of the person as filled out on the application I don't think there are any provisions in this bill about the application process for non-citizens it for instance any additional documentation that would be required so it's my understanding to fill out the form like everyone else says this was chance to talk or Tucker Anderson legislative council in section 1502 which is on page 2 the line 14 sentence the city clerk shall develop all necessary forms and procedures for implementation of so those procedures would be developed by me and I suppose that would involve a new registration form that included the questions about legal residency and it be a situation where you either check the system box for that box and if you can do either here other questions for anything else you'd like to flag for us great well I appreciate it committee we have a little a little bit of time here so I would open it up for discussion on the bill introduction that you heard at 845 and compatible local offices as well first as some others might be this certainly seems like as changing and sometimes it gets harder to find people to fill out the positions this might be something we look could look at especially if it helped increase getting more people to run for local offices concerns about that Jim no I mean Robin had mentioned that we good cities and towns might have some concerns I mean I'm sure it's like that here but I agree with Mike that we need to is if there's not a real conflict today and as I said before I don't know many school districts that are part of the town are separate think we need to put up barriers from people who want to have multiple offices in town absolutely great long as there's you know not a conflict we have any idea how many how many towns actually a higher order auto turns auto turn firm I should say to do all the work the LCT might have answers I just just curious I would make the superintendent's association or that I mean most of those organizations are pretty good size and I my suspect is most if not all have outside orders it's usually part of the town work press notice Nelson well your town elected auditors responsible the town report right and the odd but usually most towns will have auditors that do but they all in most cases the 173 years of every year they'll have an outside order to do the onwards but the schools it because of the sizes today and a lot of just about every year it's started as part of the process because the client what they have to handle yeah but does a lot require a town to have an elected auditor if they use a private order during auditor firm or is optional to have an election answer to that that's the answer it's clear in this statue from where I see an order that they have to do is town report you don't have a town auditor who does the town report point who does that piece that's where I would see in my town in the local elections chapter every town is required to elect an auditor unless they have voted to eliminate that office and its place if they do have a town does vote to eliminate the office of auditor then they would need to appoint a public accountant they have to contract the public license in the state to perform an annual financial audit of all funds of the town and that's exactly my understanding because that's what we do my talent and the auditor in front prepares the report about the report of course that goes to the town report as well thank you best so if there's interest in moving 378 we should ask for some testimony from VLCT and with respect to school districts maybe the superintendent's association that makes sense Jim so my question earlier was if we were interested in showing this bill could we consider amending it on to the miscellaneous elections bill that came over from the Senate or is coming over I don't know if we have it over yesterday so as to keep it moving this year if we collectively we're interested in doing it I don't know how much doesn't sound like it's a difficult obviously needs some testimony but if it can be done immediately maybe right for doing it makes perfect sense let's let's get that additional testimony and see where we are anything else on 378 excellent so what what more would you like in the way of testimony on the Montpelier non-citizen voting charter more I'm a sponsor the pill I'd be ready to vote on this now I think we've had a good testimony it seems it seems to me like there are two underlying issues here one having to do with constitutionality as much as I respect Betsy and abilities and recommendations we also have the Vermont law school professor who saw absolutely no issue to constitutionality so two respected voices in opposition and I'm not sure that we'll ever figure it out until somebody challenges it in court the other issue is to what extent are we putting some people who might register under this scheme at risk from immigration officials or however you know it's the whole checklist issue again I don't think we'll know that until until we try but my fundamental underlying thing is this past Montpelier by a good solid two-to-one margin voters of Montpelier clearly wanted this this was not an issue that was decided by a hundred votes it was dumped that's pretty good pretty good pretty solid both Betsy and I'm just to re-confirm my testimony of February 28th to summarize the short answer was that Office of Legislative Council can't say with absolute certainty this is constitutional because we don't have case law educating this question of your current voting qualification standards but I reviewed with this committee that there's been at least three Vermont Supreme Court cases that have indicated that the question of voting qualifications is a matter of legislative control not constitutional control so to re-confirm it appears from that case law that this is a policy question not a constitutional question and it's up for the general assembly to decide Jim I understand the access of information and potentially in an indirect way being a potential issue with ICE but I keep coming back these are legal residents so if that's the case there shouldn't be anybody on the list that is an illegal immigrant am I correct if we go down this path you have to assume that everyone's following the law and that the only ones people are on here are legal legal residents non-us citizens and that part of it shouldn't matter to to the bill I mean or to disclosure to any third party agencies that shouldn't matter to me so unless I'm missing something I agree more I think for enough however I don't think that the legal resident thing is casting concrete as it may have been we wish a while ago I think we have a tendency to think of people who have just sort of coming to town and decided you're gonna live here but my next work two doors down neighbor has been here 35 years has two kids works and yeah yeah and she just wants to go on her school but completely appropriate so I'm comfortable moving forward that I mean the dreamers think they're here legally too but I mean my only concern is making sure that we have adequate protection for this supplemental checklist I mean I just want to make sure that we've done a homework in that area and it might be good just to check in with I think it's Tacoma Park in Maryland and see what they have done if anything with respect to this issue you're a lot closer to DC than we are and so they may have some helpful or useful information for us I mean I totally support this it just I don't want to cause anyone to get in trouble with ice and there are plenty of stories out there about ice-napping legal residents so it is not a non-issue and I just want to make sure we're not putting anybody in harm's way but I think you know that we could put protections into this bill that would protect the people that are on the list I just want to make sure we do our homework there we don't exactly know how many people this may affect at first I know that it was being talked about around the city as well maybe 12 to 15 people I think there's a reasonably good chance that it may be substantially more could double that number potentially triple that number but still it's a small number I was very swayed by the woman who testified who's the Norwegian citizen married an American guy moved over here you know she's been here for what 40 years did she say a very a very long time she'd like to be able to do this but there's something inside her that's just so proud of her Norwegian heritage she can't give up her Norwegian citizenship and so it's a it's a real conflict an emotional conflict for her when every time she can't go to the polls and she's a wonderful addition to our town I'm sure I see no problem in allowing her to register and vote in those small number of local elections that she'd be allowed to vote and she's the she's the person who to me represents the people that I want to advocate in favor of allowing this to happen she's the example I would use I know there are more like her without naming any names I know of one fortunate couple who and they emigrated here the citizenship from their home country should have evaporated but somehow in the exchange of paperwork it didn't and they now hold two passports and their native country passport is probably illegal if that ever got caught therefore they didn't want to come testify but you know if if this Norwegian woman's husband had moved with her to Norway he could have gained Norwegian citizenship and he could have held dual citizenship and I'm just really sorry that the United States doesn't allow dual citizenship I have two nieces who did hold dual citizenship US and Canada they were both born in Canada and they had until I forget when their 25th or 30th birthday to make up their mind which one they wanted to keep I'm not really sure but I think both of them decided to keep their American citizenship rather than their Canadian but that was a conflict for them I don't see any problem with this small number of people holding dual citizenship but since this is not a constitutionally protected but a matter of policy is it indeed then a matter that would fall under the same restrictions that a legitimate constitutionally protected statewide voter checklist requirement would fall under anyway since this is basically a town driven item that we could place restrictions upon it to supersede anything that falls over the statewide checklist and still not run afoul of disclosure or anything else this is the statewide voter checklist statute again so I as the director of elections had pointed out under this B2 says that a public agency which is all-encompassing you include a town clerk's office shall not knowingly disclose a copy of all of the statewide voter checklist which is the whole thing or municipalities portion of the statewide voter checklist to a foreign government or federal agency so we have not breached the statewide voter checklist at this point and I'm down into the weeds of the 1617 or resident alien population well so at this undercurrent law correct but if the charter or to be enacted in a lot or these 418 reading active in the law that allows 16 and 17 year olds to vote statewide and local elections those voters would be placed on a local voter checklist because they would be entitled to vote in a local election so it's this language here and I would defer to the director on how this might be administered in practice for office would direct town clerks to administer this law in practice doesn't make sense that a town clerk could not give its own municipal checklist to a federal government or federal or foreign government under this law that's what I was saying isn't clear to me right now so this morning is the first time I considered that distinction but if some if a requester would say I want Montpelier's portion of the statewide voter checklist like that language I would tell John to run the Montpelier portion of the statewide voter checklist that didn't include the non-citizens but I don't see where there's a distinction well it says any non-citizen voters shall be placed on a separate supplemental voter registry I I don't know whether somebody would consider that Montpelier's portion of the statewide voter checklist or not well it's not statewide if it's delivered to the local by right this refers to a portion so in other towns for requests made pursuant to this I have them run their portion of the checklist but it's portion of a turn pie isn't it yes we're talking about a cupcake that the city maintains itself not to buy the state that's the question but the way it's written I would lean toward saying that this separate supplemental checklist isn't covered by those is Montpelier part of any union school district yes we are in a union school district with the town of Roxbury and that means that people who registered under this proposed scheme would not be able to vote on school budgets or school directors or would not because we can't we can't impose our decision on the town of Roxbury so it would be only those things that are strictly Montpelier mayor city council planning commission recreation board just as a piece ballot items shall we but we can't do justice to the piece oh okay well I'm not just this is a piece I mean it is a strictly limited group for which they would be able to vote okay I for some reason I thought when we first talked about it we were talking about the school districts as well well maybe they're talking statewide Burlington you should be able to do because it's the same thank you represent Harrison going to your point a school district election is a local election and therefore it's not a constitutional office it's not subject to constitutional voting qualifications but I think the language as representative Kismiller was referring to the language of the two of them thanks thank you and the language is set up here and as Tucker pointed out in section 1503 that if it involves something other than a city question or city office the legal resident non-citizen voters would only get the city question candidate questions so not not the mixed Roxbury election but they could if the school district if you enacted a law to allow non-citizen residents to vote in all local elections for example then they would be able to vote in school district election okay but right now the language of the charter as it's set up is really just focusing yeah thank you for clarifying that I'm confused because we had some discussion about doing this statewide correct and in that ways it would apply yes thank you but madam chair if I can just go back to this checklist issue this was the other statue that we discussed earlier which is that this is the requirement at least 30 days before any local lecture any local election or primary general election for the town clerk to post copies of the checklist so here they're posted in town I think in practice you can they can get swiped but otherwise it says the town clerk makes available copy of the checklist to different people however I think I defer back to the director and how this law will be administered although this provides the list can be the town checklist can be provided to people upon request here in subsection C then my next question though is how does that work with our statewide voter checklist statute with the prohibition on public agencies being prohibited from giving a portion of the municipal portion of the statewide voter checklist to foreign governments or federal agencies they're still not how those two work in practice oh yes I think that the language in 2154 when it's that one thanks so anybody else can request it but not federal agencies a federal agency could come sneak it off the bulletin board at the supermarket but we can't stop that not one that made a whole lot of sense so we have another topic to take up at 10 o'clock I think what we should do is see whether we can either get the Tacoma Park Maryland representative on the phone or perhaps exchange emails and and ask the question of what they've done to ensure the ballot security or the checklist security and we can come back to this a little bit later so for now I would suggest that we'll take a quick stride down the hallway and be back here by 10 for another bill introduction brief introduction of your bill great thank you my name is Emily Cornhiser I'm a representative from Brattleboro and I appreciate you taking the time to hear about this bill in the midst of everything else that's been going on this week and how people are having to be done. I hope everyone in the room can agree that voting is important that's why most of us are here I think and we have unparalleled access here in Vermont to voting we've very few restrictions on how people can vote who can vote what voting ID looks like and we also have an incredibly long period of time available to us to vote we have some of the earliest voting in the country so I was really surprised to see that while we've had an increase in absentee ballots we haven't actually seen an increase in voting rates and so when I was first looking at this data in Vermont I was assuming that this was because you know Vermont had managed to not turn the curve but at least stayed flat while the rest of the country's voting rate had probably gone down that was just sort of the assumption I was having because we've done all this great work to expand voting access but in fact we've actually stayed slightly above but pretty much on the same rhythm as national voting which really surprised me I'm not sure how many other people that would surprise so while in Vermont we see sort of a low of 41% folks voting and high of 69.8 it really seems to not have much of a rhythm beyond you know presidential and non-presidential and that's how you'll see those spikes there so I would like to increase voting participation I hope that many of you here would like to do that and so I think that over the last 50 years despite the many efforts at both voter access and voter suppression little has changed and I have a hypothesis based on the door knocking that I did in the last election that many Vermonters have no idea an election is happening that people's lives are very busy trying to just make ends meet take care of their kids the old day-to-day life that it just goes right over or under the radar and so I think by making an election day a state holiday which this bill asks us to do we can test the hypothesis that perhaps if people just knew that election day was happening we'd have more people voting and the way you do that I think generally brings attention to something is for some celebration as a holiday gives so this bill asks us to take the next step for awareness and celebration but our values clearly on the table Vermont I think loves democracy maybe even more than other states and so we can have the kind of school that we have we have a state's holiday maybe we can have autumn barbecues but people would have a chance to pay more attention to it I know the next step that people are probably asking about is a day off connected to this it was not my intent in this bill to interfere with the collective bargaining process and it is my understanding as I was advised by legislative counsel and the VSEA that a state holiday does not immediately and automatically create a day after state employees however what and that means that this bill if passed would not cost anything substantial in terms of you know days off for employees but it would bring necessary attention to this important day and it's my hope that by enacting this bill we would give sort of a material object to bargain in units to talk about as well as folks who are not part of the union to have a negotiation or conversation with their employers about what a day off would look like on this really important day and maybe people wouldn't have a day off but because it was a state holiday they would have a party at lunch to talk about it you know or it would just be part of the conversation so first bill no I'm not supposed to say a simple one but really just hoping to bring more attention to this very important day is tell me isn't town meeting today sort of a holiday in March how do you explain that on town meeting we might get 23% turn up and it's a holiday if that was really what helped so what I would say is many time meetings don't happen on mine and many folks are still working the difference between town meeting day and the general or primary election is that you have extensive time to vote in advance so I think people don't go to town meeting often because they don't have time to go to town meeting on town meeting day at the time town meeting is but by knowing about an election you have the time meeting up to a vote so it's not certainly for me about bringing people to polls on election day it's about people knowing about election day well enough to vote at another time yeah and I appreciate that but I mean I voted early on town meeting because I had to be at another town yeah where I can't vote so I'm just I mean I look at your chart and it's we've done a lot of things I mean today there's actually no excuse for not voting because you've got 45 days you can vote early we don't have to have a look from your doctor that you can't get out of your home you can just vote early so I mean I think there are other reasons why people don't vote I think a lot of people have seen elections come and go and their lives don't change so they think none of it matters I think people don't vote because we don't have really like exciting primary elections a lot of cases that's a lot of people are brought into the process early enough I think mine is the primary election Me against me I mean but I think of a lot of state holidays schools bring in an element of education to a state holiday and I think by maybe if this was sort of integrated into curriculum because it was a state holiday then maybe we'd be building voters earlier like I said it really is a hypothesis thanks for coming in and thanks for the idea I agree it's important to help create this stuff I wonder you'd be amenable to putting that holiday on the weekend changing elections I think that would be confusing given when national because I think it's important that we stay within the national conversation and that's on changing the whole yeah yeah it's an interesting idea other questions well I I initially had a couple few for you but you explained those fairly well and lining my big concern or was the actual cost of the state if the state was to give state employees the day off would be the day off most likely would pay how would be thousands of dollars the same same goes for individual businesses that could be thousands of dollars and I think I didn't like complete the junior contract but you very clearly took care of that I'm just wondering I personally would perform and support your your bill where you're trying to get recognition for the election that's fine that's that's a very good idea I like that but I just wonder if maybe the bill could include something saying that this this is not necessarily a day off with pay if that's a possibility I'm saying because I just think a lot of people see that they're gonna say they're gonna think the same thing I did when I first read it going oh my god there's another state holiday what's that cost or business can now I gotta let all my employees off there's no thousands of dollars are going to lose and again unions are jump right on it do as well so I'm just great can I ask you a question I'm sorry can I ask you a question about your question absolutely are you concerned about that sort of how it would play out on the floor here or how it would look to the average citizen because I don't personally don't think that people read our laws very often you're probably and I think these if that was explained on a house floor that would play up fine with them for the house for we went machine of course but I just wondered if people see that every time we have a holiday and they're gonna think the same thing and that might might be your day a lot of people just just proof about the word remember so just looking at state holidays and employees do get off the list is exactly consistent with the list of legal holidays so if we did add this there might be an effort to bargain for this being additional holidays so there could be a potential cost to the state yes my understanding is that when this has happened previously holidays were swapped and I'm not in any way interested in getting into which holidays should be swapped that is a morass that should be left for someone else but that is my understanding that generally holidays are swapped and as a former state employee Bennington battle day was my favorite thing that happened well I'm glad you brought it forward I think anything that you can do to get more voters involved is a great thing and creating another holiday might be the way to do this but I don't know if there's a holiday just about for everything about every day that goes on so how do you plan to promote this because you're right we do important work here people usually don't read our bills how would you get that message out and actually so people assess the goal is you have a method two ideas one the Secretary of State was interested in this especially if we sort of disregard the union conversation from it and has done tremendous work to increase voting access here and so I think would probably promote this and you know maybe work with the grossers Association to figure out like what the like food for voting day is you know like they have the avocados out for the Super Bowl and the chicken wings and like so what is what is this voting food is it cider donuts I don't know and they'll have a little display and I would be like oh look the cider donuts are on sale I'm going to go vote tomorrow other questions thank you for bringing that forward thank you very much we have one more Jim you're so ahead of the I see start lobbying these things back and forth across the table yeah did you hear about my morning I was juggling my cup of coffee and my bag down the stairs to get in my car this morning and coffee went straight down yeah all over all the things I was carrying you know it could be worse it could have been a cream filled it could have been and I could have been already here in which case I wouldn't have been able to go back and change so yeah I seem to have every excuse in the book for running late morning this morning it was a great choice for what's the news for four four four four four you just have to keep tapping up for we want the bill or do you want to section leave it leave it up there and they can decide but there's three people coming our three people have been invited are they all confirmed where should I go no time to wait you got Laura Sibylia Robin was here earlier he's not coming back well they're both in the same committee so we could and Randall's just across the hallway no I'm not first haha so thank you manager we have how many minutes well we have judicial retention will your spells ringing okay great if we might start first with this one minute video just kind of frame where we're at that would be helpful your top three everybody's votes it's not enough just to get the most you need a majority more than 50% of the votes it means at least 11 to win so we eliminate color in last place sorry or chance we're going to your second choice one for purple still no majority bye bye perfect green and we have a winner the right choice voting way so instructor who's number one and number two and over to read okay so I'm not sure which one of us is gonna start so you want to start like why well I thought I was going last but I can start you want to go into the water yes yes as you can see the proceed process needs to be ironed out so I'll start with for the record representative Robin chestnut tantrum and I did not say that this morning so I'll say it again represented Robin chestnut tantrum and the you just saw a brief demonstration of how ranked choice voting works but I want to just talk a little bit about why and the the first presidential election that I voted in was 1980 Reagan Carter John Anderson and that's when I first came aware of the issue with one my grandfather said to me I'm gonna cast my vote in a way that I can't defend logically he wanted to go for Anderson vote what it meant to him was he was wasting his vote and at that point I started thinking there has to be a better way to do this because I mean what why do we vote we go to express the will of the body politic and so the question I ask is is the way that we practice that really the most reflective of what the will of people is and I believe that it's not because we've all been in situation before of having of not being able to vote for the person that we really want to vote for because we feel like we are throwing away our vote and so we settle for choosing the least offensive of the remaining candidates and to me ranked choice voting results that problem where you really can vote for the person you want and if that person is eliminated early your vote still counts toward the eventual winning candidate and I think the reason I think that it's important is because with multiple candidates the winning margins get smaller and smaller and smaller and so when somebody can win an election with a plurality of 35% that is not anywhere close to the majority of voters and I think if your vote if the votes are retabulated to reflect second and third choices it actually builds a greater consensus behind the winning candidate rather than then fostering more division I think it actually builds support for the winning candidate interest of time yes interest of time so we have a bill that we have brought forward to H444 which is modeled after it is modeled after mains legislation that was passed and actually used in the last election there was cause for using instant runoff voting in one of their congressional elections the candidate had not won a majority of the vote they did run through this and the actual result at the end of the day because the candidate who had not run won the majority of the vote when you went through actually did not end up getting the majority so we won that most votes but when you do instant runoff voting and then see who has them you then retali dropping your bottom person so that was litigated and the system was upheld one of the things that we want to make sure to talk with you all about is on April 4th and we've been talking with your chair and also government operations downstairs we are posting a public info session and we will have Kyle Bailey from Maine who is a national consultant on range choice voting but had been heavily involved has been heavily involved in that system coming to do a public info session 530 downstairs and we're hoping that there will be some time to have him come in and talk with the committee and talk about how this has kind of laid out and so we've posted an overview of the bill on your on your website as well. So for the record Randall Sock from Barnard so range choice voting the way that I look at it is another aspect of voter and franchisement so I see it is connected to the same piece that voter registration drives voter voter bills automatic voter registration how you feel about it pushing back against voter ID laws depending on your point of view there early voting absentee voting all of these are means for making our elections as inclusive and fair as possible and trying to get the best read on the electorate that we can get and the more people you bring in the better representation you have of what the will of the people is. Range choice voting I hear I'm already on the bell. Range choice voting is just another another piece of that because it says you have three different choices and these are really ridiculous when it bagels right there's people who really love everything bagels there's some people who really don't like them there's some people who really like obviously bagels but some people may not really like them but everybody's kind of okay with playing bagel and so if everybody's okay with that that's the consensus point of view that we reveal itself in range choice voting and one of the big arguments that people make great choice voters it tends to moderate discussion as well because when you're competing against someone whose votes might be yours in second place you're not going to serve yourself very well to trash them during the election because you want their votes and so it's a way again of just getting the best articulation of where the election is at. So again I myself for the record Laura Sebelia do over for the record that this bill at a high level right now requires range choice voting for all primary elections except the presidential primary and general elections for the office of US senator and US House certainly that could be expanded but that's what passed in Maine and I would call the committee's attention to a pretty healthy effort underway in Massachusetts and really in a number of places throughout throughout the country there's been discussion about the presidential primary and there are all different different discussions that we could follow in this path. For me I think that this is so important in terms of the tenor of campaign's and reflecting that actual will of the voters so as Randall was articulating really having folks focus on the issues and having to compete for a first or second place really I think pushes more on focusing on the issues as opposed to being able to stand on your side and just trash the other side you really just talk about what you believe in and how you're going to help constituents. And if I may add that although presidential primaries are not included in this bill I think they're really a great illustration that in the last election there were only Republican candidates 17 like that and so in the primaries winning margins were very small, winning primary was 20%. This time around it's going to be the Democrats in the same boat. So it's nonpartisan in that way and I think again it's best reflective of rather than winning with 20% it keeps recalculating until somebody has a majority of voters. Rob, Bob, Jim, Jake, Pete. Well this may be a longer question to answer but what's the downside to this in that there's for instance like I know there's communities that I try that they don't now like Burlington there feels at least initially at first glance that there's something about this could be manipulated and it just feels what could be the downsides. So honestly I don't see any downsides I think the education folks feel like this is really difficult to understand it's really not part of the reason that we came forward with just the main proposals right now it's because we have something that actually has been enacted that we can look to that we can point to and say here's how it works we're completely aware of the Burlington situation we know that this legislation passed both the House and the Senate previously it was vetoed by the governor and then enacted in Burlington it worked in Burlington people do not like the candidate after the fact but it actually did work so I will actually point out it downside but it's a little counterintuitive I mean the way that we've conducted elections in a lot of ways it's a little counterintuitive because you say oh this is the person that got the most votes and we sort of become sort of used to that and so for some people you have to sort of you have to get past this idea of like this is this is the way that we've always done it however there are other instances where people have done right choice voting like when you go out to buy donuts for your friends you essentially engage in the kind of right choice about me anyway so you just have to kind of shift the frame of reference sorry this is my joke with Chris B. Green we're going to move over as a man and we have right choice. Bob, Jim, Jay, Paisley. Is there any downside cost wise in terms of hardware? We actually met with the Secretary of State and they're actually the proposal it's possible that this aligns very well with land replacement and enhancement of voting machines in the state. And also something I think this committee would be interested in represented Kelly Paella who is a town clerk is engaged in this we expect that town clerks would be deeply involved in this legislation. In response to the cost question right now printing ballots for the elections costs about $80,000 per party you would still print ballots but if there's a runoff you don't have to print the ballots so potential cost status. And I agree with your assessment of early to experience. One minute, Jim. So we're all concerned about voter turnout and I guess what you're doing I know we've done it a certain way so anytime you change that kind of raises a lot of questions but we're certainly handicapped by the state constitution in that you know the governor's office, the county governor's office, they don't get a majority, has to come to their instant runoff as us. So and then you can't you're not doing the presidential. Are you worried about having different systems for different offices and therefore are we confusing people more than we seem to do sometimes and there will that have an impact on voter turnout. So sometimes we do things that hold a whole shebang and sometimes we do things incrementally. So what we've proposed is an incremental change and it's easy to get our heads around. And in Maine does it the same way they didn't have problems and there's also Minnesota say we're in Minneapolis where municipally they do elections that way with the state level they don't and so their voters are able to manage in San Francisco same thing they at the municipal level they do ring choice voting they don't do it statewide. So it is 10.30 we're going to head down to the floor now.