 Okay, hello. This is Senate government operations. It is Wednesday, February 10th. And today we're going to continue our discussion on elections issues. And what I have on the list is the talking about candidates, the candidates requirements. There is a suggestion that we limit the number of JPs that the party can nominate. Then talking about the primary and then the general election and then the mail out of ballot. So is that where everybody else is on this day with this. Good. Thank you. All right. So, and we've had, I have to say we've had some spirited discussions up to this point and some differences of opinions. And I'm happy that we've had them some of them have ended up in agreement with everybody and some of them have not. And when we get further on, I'm going to, I want to start on these issues now, but when we get further on and talking to Amron about what to draft up for us. I'm going to bring up a topic that we had talked about before, but I think that there might be some changes in the P in our committee. Understanding of them and support or non support for them. So I'm going to just bring them up later, but for right now I'd like to get started. And the first thing we have on our list is the requirement that candidates have to run for office have got to have voted in all elections, for which they were qualified. What was the suggestion that was given to us and will would you share with us what we have right now as require residency requirements for candidates other than the. We know that in the Constitution for House and Senate members you have to have lived for two years in the state of Vermont, and for the one year proceeding the election in the district, which you hope to represent. And for governor and lieutenant governor. And I believe treasure, you have to have lived in the state for four years, preceding the election that it, it says resided in it doesn't say what resided means. So, Will, can you share with us what we think resided means at this point. Sure, you asked me two different questions. First, you asked me if I'd know about any residency requirements other than those. And that answer that answers no, those are the requirements I'm aware of. Okay. Aside from I would note that candidates for local offices have to be registered voters in the municipality. As far as residency you asked what you all think is the residency requirement and I'm not sure what I would say is. That term is just using the Constitution that they have to be a resident for that long. It's not defined any further in the Constitution. As far as I'm aware, there's no direct further definition of that in statute that's directly tied to res the residency requirements in the Constitution for people serving in those offices. I think that if this matter were to come before a court. It is more likely than not that the residency definition that a court would turn to would be the residency definition in title 17 for purposes of voter registration. It's the most closely related. As far as subject matter there are other residency definitions like we've said scattered throughout the statutes. I would think they would turn to the one in title 17 that I provided to you this morning so they're right. Do you want to remind me what Jeff what that where that is 17 vsa 2122. Yes, that that's what I was asking you to share with us. Sure. So, did everybody get that. No, I haven't looked at it but isn't it to I thought for the legislature it was for two years you had to live in Vermont for two years and one year in the district you're running. That's what that's what I said. Yeah, I'm sorry I didn't hear you. Yeah. But what is what is it for statewide and it's nothing for people who are running for Congress right there's no residency requirement is there. The Constitution, we don't control federal offices anyway so I realize but it's just good for us while we're thinking about these to know what they all are. I have no idea what the federal one is. For statewide than will can you just it is that I'm just looking at 2121. No, it's in the Constitution, and it's page 15 of the little Constitution, number 15 section 15 says two years for House and Senate. One, the most recent year has to have been in the, in the district with who they want to represent. And on and section 23 says, Governor and Lieutenant Governor for years and I'm not sure where it says treasure and the other statewide. There's none. It's just those right answer your question. Yeah. I just couldn't remember if the four years required any specific time in any specific district and I don't think it does. Well, because you're living in the whole state is their district right, right, right. Yeah. So are there any questions about where we think we are right now. Committee vacation, Senator Rom. Senator Polina's hand was up first. I didn't I'm sorry I didn't see you Anthony. Raise your left hand when you raise your hand because your right hand is out of my picture. Thank you. I just want to make sure you don't have to be a quiet and peaceable behavior to run for office. Right, you do. Well, you have to be a quiet and peaceable behavior to be to be able to vote. Right. Yeah. So you think it goes to running for office as well. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Okay, so something to consider. Senator Ram. So it looks like we don't have someone from the attorney general's office. Yes, the attorney general's office is not going to weigh in because this is not an issue for them. They will not tell us whether it would be constitutional or unconstitutional to require voting. It wouldn't and they would, they are reluctant to advise us on how a court would deal with it. Because they, if we passed something, they would be put in the position of defending what we passed. Okay, got it. If we don't, if we don't pass anything, they're not in a position. Because they are defending nothing at the court case would be between the person who was being challenged and the person who was challenging. Okay, that was, I was curious when they were going to come in because I was wondering if it's up to the individual parties to be privately represented in this kind of court case. Yes. Okay, and I was going to ask whichever lawyer, you know, was was sort of present with us what the pros and cons are of having that determined by a private court case. You know, I would just name name the ones that that I see which are, you know, someone may not have the means to be well represented in that kind of case they might may not be as popular of a candidate. You know, I'm, I, I saw it, I've been thinking a lot about what it means for it to go to court. Has it gone to court before? Can anyone remember a time that it has gone to court? Not that I know of. Well, Chris, I don't think so. If they had gone to court there probably would have been a resolution by the court and there would have been. There's no court cases. Okay. I, I have to say I don't really want to prolong this conversation very much, because we've, we've had it before for such a long time and the decision at that time. So unless anybody has any other suggestions, the decision at that time was that short of defining what it meant. You had to live here. You had to be physically present for 183 days. You had to have, you don't even have to be on the checklist to run for, you don't have to be a voter I don't think to run for office you do for local office but you have to own property. You have to have paid Vermont taxes. You have to have children in school, what whatever we put in there would was problematic. So I, I, I at this point I can't think of anything we could put in there that would not be problematic. So if anybody has any good suggestions just throw them out. I mean throw them out at us. In other words, share them. Yes, share them, share them. Well, so, you know, as I scan and I don't see anybody sort of wanting to throw another idea out, you know, I'll just say as someone who I have learned today has been accused of causing World War three here with my suggestion. I was in attempt to not require someone to be property owning, or, you know, have other things that are kind of a class marker that would demonstrate that they are a resident here I'm just dealt with a young person, you know, at UVM who came back from military service and had to fight with UVM about, you know, in state tuition, etc. So I was trying to find an alternative to kind of a property ownership model. I see some issues with waiting for the courts to be the ones to hash this out, and whether or not it came up after the last time the committee took extensive testimony on this. I know we're not taking up constitutional changes this year, but I would actually say if we don't further see an ability to define it, I would actually be more in favor of taking it out. I even said to, to, you know, Dave Graham I was the one who said maybe it should just be naming the, you know, 10 of the Vermont towns and getting it right. You know, I'll offer a title but you know at this point, I just worry more about someone who's either an unpopular candidate or doesn't have the ability to well represent themselves being taken out of a race or even a popular candidate being taken out of a race, because this challenge goes to court rather than us having a clear definition. So at some point in the future, you know, I would actually recommend we, we don't have a residency requirement rather than waiting for the courts to determine what it is. Okay, well that that would be something for the next biennium, because that's when you can introduce constitutional amendments. So does anybody else, Senator Clarkson. I'm trying to find where the land ownership thing is identified. I can't find that I didn't know I didn't say, there is land ownership. Okay, so there is, you don't know. Okay, Senator Clarkson, that was my fault. I said short of defund when we talked about it before. Short of defining it in some way, how do you do it and land ownership was one of the ways you could define being resident. Thank goodness we don't. Yes, we don't. So I'm happy to leave it as it is. And I, and I think it is an ongoing issue we dealt with it, you know, two years ago, pretty fully. And I don't if nobody has a better idea, I would keep it as it is. Okay. So, let's move on to the suggestion to limit the number of JPs that a party can nominate and I suspect that that came from probably a town where in Putney, for example, I will say that we used to we have 12 JPs. The parties used to the Democrats would nominate six and the Republicans would nominate six. And that just kind of wasn't an understanding. We can't get any Republicans to be nominated now. I don't know that we have a Republican caucus in town. So the 12 candidates tend to be either Democrats or progressives or combination. And, and so I suspect that this suggestion came from a similar town, where you, it's hard to get people nominated from the minority party or non party so the will do you want to comment on this at all and I'm not sure if this would even be constitutional. I have a few comments, Senator White that I hope will help. I think you've probably identified one potential reason that this issue would be raised. Also, I think may have come from the fact that so everything you said is correct there each town has a set number of justices of the piece that they can elect. It's based on their population, I believe. Every time there has been gentlemen's agreements traditions in a lot of towns, where each individual party committee in that town only nominates one half of that number, the numbers are odd. So every two years cycle it will flip back and forth between the two parties where say you have five justices of the piece the Democrats do three one year the Republicans do two than the next cycle the Republicans do three and the Democrats do two. So things like I said are gentlemen agreements that I'm aware of just anecdotally in my position and hearing from people with questions about these that have, I don't want to say broken down but gone away in a number of places. And so now I think there are some instances where there are people of one party or the other who were used to that gentlemen's agreement, and it has is now not being followed and the other party is say, nominating enough people for the whole year. And so then the reaction is can we limit the number of candidates that party would nominate. Maybe you would say proactively every other year you nominate one half minus one. I don't think that's a good idea and not sure whether that's constitutional either and I wanted to point out that it's interesting and we give this advice of course when asked but I don't think we're always asked. There's a provision in the statute already title 17 section 2143 political representation on the board of civil authority I won't read the whole thing because of time but essentially it says, if one or another party is underrepresented. The board of civil authority of any public political does not contain at least three of each major party, the legislative body can appoint additional justice is the piece from that underrepresented party at the request of either the party town party committee or even three voters in the town. And then it's interesting it's a good provision it says that those justices of the piece can only serve elections functions where that balance is needed they can't then hear property tax appeals for instance. So there is already a provision in there that that would let the underrepresented party correct that balance for purposes of representation on collections business on the DC. Otherwise I think it's a matter of kind of people sorting out the fact that those were gentlemen's agreements that didn't have a basis in the law and nominate an equal slate to run against each other and may the best man win, or woman, or woman person. So, I am. I don't know that I've ever had opportunity to disagree with you before. But I am going to correct you on something. Okay. They, the towns can elect up to. And it's 5710 and 12. Thank you. So it's not all odd numbers. 5710, you're right. You've disagree with me many times before though and then right but I've never corrected you. Anybody else have anything that would like to weigh in on this. And I do think that provision was put in there. I mean, I think there is that provision for having non elected JPs to balance it out and also if if you don't have them, even serving as BCA members I think that when there's election issues, you have to try and make sure that you have a balance between the parties. And that's that's entitled 17. So anybody else cared away in on that one. So how big is this issue, how big is this problem. My guess is that there are people in a lot of towns where there isn't a balance that probably feel left out of the process I have no idea how big it is. I mean, maybe when or somebody could weigh in. I mean, who brought it. Was this brought by a large crowd. I mean, was this brought to us by the LCT or. No, no, it was, it was not but, but regardless of how many towns are in that situation I don't know that there's much we can do about it. I mean, if. Yeah, no, that's what. I don't want to weigh in on it at all. This is the first I hear of this being an issue this is not and it's a statewide I mean this is not a municipal office. Yes, this is the JP. Yes, this is Jamie. Oh, you, but it's not a municipal office. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. But. Okay, it's not right. But it is. It's not serving municipal functions is what I write. Yes. Yes. Okay, anybody else have anything that they'd like to weigh in on this one. No. Okay. Let's move to the primary then. So here's the issue that John has brought up Carol has brought up and will has brought up. The issue of the timing of local balance with the primary local. Okay. Do you want to, who wants to weigh in on that to. Set the stage for us. Is that a will issue. It may be. Although I think. From our perspective, the more important thing was the general election. Not the primary. Okay. Is that the case? Carol and John. It's the general rather than the primary Carol. Okay. Mainly because of the difference between local election timelines for, for warnings for having ballots available. And trying to have an opportunity to perhaps print local questions on, on the, again, the general ballot in that case, you know, So the timelines change so that you can mail all your ballots at one time. So that you're not, you know, because the, for the primary and the general election, they go out 47 days before for local elections. It's 20 and you're doing two mailings. And so if there's a way to. If there's a way that you can also be beneficial to have that, that expanded window for all local elections. Not just for the ones that are held in conjunction with the primary and the general. John. Absolutely. My concern is because I'm in the middle of it. Is the town meeting. The town meeting day. So not, not simply to sync them with the, the, the primary and the general, but you know, we have no margin for error under such a short turnaround. Folks do expect their ballots earlier than we can actually provide them. But I've had some difficulties and I've already used up the few days of margin for error. I have. So it would be, it would be a good thing to eventually that's going to cause problems. But I think it has in terms of misprinted balance and a couple other towns in recent years. And if there were a little more breathing space there to, to get those filing deadlines and to deal with that, you, I think you'd see those problems largely, largely fade away. And I'm knocking on one when I say that. I think there might, might be two, two separate coordination here. One is this coordination of that. And the other is the coordination between town and school. And I think the, the coordination between town and school might be a larger conversation. Because it has to involve. Clearly the agency of education. But. It can, are, are they two separate issues here? Well, or can they be dealt with in. Separately or together. Those are definitely two separate issues. And I think you. Are right that the coordination between school and. Town votes will take longer. Then. A small issue would. But there. I think I heard three issues there. If you're bringing in coordination with school districts, because what I heard from John and Carol, is one, the issue of coordinating with statewide elections. If you want to hold an election on that same date, get those voters and send your local election ballots out with your statewide election ballots. How we can facilitate that better. And then I, what I heard from John was a very general statement about. Simply moving the deadlines back related to local elections. And creation of ballots. And candidate filings. Am I right, John? I mean. Yes. And I think it would be something that would need to be held in mind anyway, because. You'd want consistency between, you know, special. You know, essentially special town or city meetings, which would be not on town meeting day. And then the town meeting day once having two separate, you know, sets of filing deadlines on a different type of. Or length of calendar, I think could create issues. I think it would need to be uniform. So whatever you all decide for, I would say for, for August and November. You know, if you think in terms of consistency to applying it. At least to an extent as much as possible. Carol. Just wanted to give an example. A couple of years ago, Barry city wanted to add a question to the November general ballot in 2018. And the deadline for getting the language to the secretary of state's office is about 55 days or so before the election, because the, the ballots have to be available 47 days before. Well, for a local election, you can't approve your warning more than 40 days in advance. And so we were outside of that 30 to 40 day window to approve the warning for the special election. I managed to talk my city council into approving the language early enough that we could put it on the ballot. But then said to them, you can't change it when we go to approve the warning because we've already printed the ballot. So it's, you know, you're, you're running into those really gray areas. If you do that kind of stuff. Right. So is this something that kids. Are that these timing issues. It would be really nice to get them. At least the, some of them in place for the next election. Is that something that can happen. Between the secretary of state's office and the clerks. Within a short period of time. Senator Rom, did you have a question? Oh, okay. Carol. I can see. The clerks and the secretary of state's office coming up with some language. I can also see some potential pushback. From, um, from select boards who want to have that extra time to develop the budgets they want to vote on, develop the questions they want to vote on. And so I can see there being, um, Pushback. Um, in, in, uh, in that direction. Um, for widening the window. Just playing devil's advocate. Yeah. I was just thinking back to my select board days and. It's hard enough to get things done in the timeline that I mean. Yeah. To lengthen it would be. Problematic for a lot of towns. I would think. Gwen, do you have an opinion on that? Finding the mute button. Um, I, I think that's probably why a lot of this hasn't changed just because of finding the right numbers that work for everybody. So yeah, I would definitely agree. Well, committee. What do you, what do you think? Oh, well, I'm sorry. Just one follow-up. I think I appreciate Carol bringing that up because that is. A consideration. That to me speaks more to, and I understand. John Odum's. Desire to have some consistency. Across the local elections. But that really would become more of an issue if you were trying to do that. If you were trying to do it as a general matter for all local elections, including annual meetings, and I feel like it may have the biggest pushback around annual meeting item. I'm speaking a little bit out off the top of my head, but where you have a lot to develop in January in a short timeframe when you're back from holidays and. Are thinking about the new year. But I think that. You could potentially. Not. Not invoke that entire discussion. With some more specific language toward the primary and the general about special elections. Where I would imagine that section starting something to the effect of. If a town or city desires to hold a special election as the November general or August primary. Yada, yada. Here are your deadlines to get. I'm not saying that specific circumstance, but not for the rest of your local elections throughout the year. Oh, and I'd be willing to work on that kind of more targeted language with Carol. If. She agrees that that might be possible. Oh. Okay. And then Senator. Just to be clear, you're saying it would be an option, essentially. Yes. I mean, it's always an option whether they want to hold a special election or not. Sure. With our statewide elections. Cause I could, I could envision a lot of pushback on that other question. Otherwise without having a whole lot of hearings and hearing from a lot of town clerks and select board members and whatnot. I think making an option. Might actually get people used to the idea. And they might end up maybe a couple of years down the road. I may end up making it. It may make it more formal. But, but this is you're talking about just if they wanted to. They wanted to hold a special election. That that day. So they could mail it out together. But there is no. There is no. State. Election. In March. Anyway, so. That, that's less of an issue, isn't it? Because. They don't have to coordinate with the state. March elections. Yep. Okay. All right. So can committee, does anybody else have any questions or comments about that? And. Should we just let them go and see if they can come up with something. Well, can I just ask again. You're using the word election, special election, but I presume it would relate to anything, meaning a. A ballot question. We don't mean an election of a person to an office. I mean, any question that they might bring forward. Yeah. That's what I thought. Sorry. I didn't mean that. Yeah. Yeah. John. You know, I realized, realized I was tilting at windmills a bit there, but maybe if, if, uh, if Will and Carol, with the blessing of the council might look at, at least moving back the candidate filing deadline. A bit that shouldn't interfere. With, uh, I don't know, I don't know. The, you know, the select boards and city councils and their. Uh, budget. Uh, you know, creation process, but it would potentially allow us another week or so. To, uh, to deal with, with the ballots. I mean, one week would make a huge difference. Um, on those March elections. John, do you, do you know that I assume when you said with the approval of. when you said with the approval of you're talking about us and you said the council. Sorry, I'm used to that. I figured you were. And I've got a council meeting tonight. It's just all of the committee. Yes. I know it's just fine. It's just fine. I knew what you meant and I'm sure everybody else did too. I should have said all y'all. All y'all. I'm from Kentucky, so there you go. Anybody have any concerns about seeing if we can come up with something? That would allow towns to do that and the state to combine on those two elections? Okay, good. So let's see if we can come up with something. Okay, so the next question on the list was alternatives to sending out three ballots in the primary. And one of the suggestions was letting people request a ballot. I'm not sure if that would that would save on postage. It wouldn't probably save on printing, but any committee members have anything they'd like to throw into this conversation and then we'll ask Will if he has some suggestions and the town clerks and VLCT and anybody else. I don't see any hands. All right, Will, do you want to talk a little bit about that issue? Sure. This is a, I think it's a large issue with a lot of implications. The suggestion would be, I guess, one potential suggestion would be requiring voters to request, when they request their absentee ballot for the primary to indicate which party's ballot they want. Seems reasonable and like it would make total sense and it would be easy to implement and would save on postage. My knowledge of the history of that is that people do not want that choice recorded and available for people to request public records on and have more information about what your party affiliation is. Further steps down that road would be actually registering by party in Vermont. That would be a fundamental change and I see Madam Chair's immediate reaction to that is like most Vermonters that I speak with. So short of that, in order to avoid sending all three primary ballots out to every voter, you would need to have them request which one they want, election by election and that choice is going to be a public record unless you all somehow exempt it from being. That's what I was going to ask, would it have to be a public record? And that's a good question for somebody other than me. Senator Clarkson. Nothing else about our ballots? Well, yes it is. There is, yes I was going to say it, right. I think I've told you. There's one time when you, when it's marked, which you request, they used to mark on the checklist which ballot you take when you're in person voting, they would mark which one you took. That was, I think that was probably illegal for them to do because they are supposed to hand you all three ballots that are not in person. That was, that's relatively new I feel like because we used to be able to have the checklist copied in those days and you would see who requested what? In the presidential, in the presidential, right? Yes, only. So that is the only time your ballot choice is made public. Yes. And any indication of your party preference is made public whatsoever. Yeah, so. And that's another way, I've given you guys the brief history on that before that that was a push and pull where my understanding is the national parties were trying to strip Ferman of its primary right so that we wouldn't have that part in the primary process. The pushback for what they wanted is they said do party registration or we're stripping your primary because they want that information on people's party preferences. The pushback was no we're not going to do party registration and the compromise was that every four years at the presidential primary they would record your choice and that choice would be public. And so that's, you know, after every presidential primary we get umpteen requests for the participation report from that primary because it's where they get a sense of party affiliation. And so you'd be creating a second opportunity at that if you went this direction. Yeah. Would be available every two years in August. And I will say I uh I probably probably people know that I'm a Democrat. But I believe it was the national Democratic Party that was responsible for that. Senator Rom. So I would say there's probably a lot of people who agree we're just extremely proud of our system and don't want to require a party registration. I will speak for myself. I wonder if there's been thought given to kind of behavioral nudges like a user experience design of this and picking a color for each one and making it really clear somehow. I mean I think if we wanted to limit confusion we might have kind of a behavioral psychologist or user experience designer look at this and say here are some options just to make sure that confusion is not as prominent for people. That's the only thing I can think of that would get at this issue without making a major change to how we run our uh how we do not require people to register by party. I have to admit I did not understand a word you said. Right. I have no idea how having red and blue and green and you request a red ballot as if that's still public knowledge. Everybody knows what a red ballot is. Andre wants to say something maybe there's something. Okay. Okay. Andre. I am certainly not a legal expert on anything that has to do with what you have to notify in Vermont. But I do I think Senator Rump brought up an interesting piece that there are some behavioral pieces that I know in my organization the voted home institute has worked with groups like ideas 42 and the Center for Civic Design as to how are you communicating with voters to encourage them to sort of complete a ballot correctly. And I actually I keep an example here on my desk. This is this is what my wife's ballot looks like here in Colorado. This is the one she didn't use in the primary. And you can usually design aspects to these sorts of things can really be useful. And I know Chris and Will have I think they've mentioned to me before that they've talked with the Center for Civic Design but we would be so pleased to work with them but also some of the other behavioral like social science work that is that is behind all of this. So there are ways to do it that don't actually require law too. Oh I think that I completely misunderstood that because we're not talking about the getting people to do the right ballot and send in the right ballot and return the other ballots. That's that's a different issue. This is are there alternatives to mailing out three ballots to begin with. Right that and the question I think Will is asking us for at this very moment. I saw them as related because they all look exactly the same. Yeah and I think that's a problem that's basically trying to bring up. They look exactly the same. You have to just look really closely at the party and that might confuse people. Yeah no I think and I think that Will has already told us that he's working with some people on the design of the envelope and the design of the ballot and stuff. So that was this what I wanted to get at here was are there alternatives to sending them all out. Senator Clarkson. So Will how often is the primary ballot for any one of the parties longer than one page? Very rarely. So would it not be possible to print both sides of one so that you only have two pieces of paper rather than three? Wouldn't that cut down cost? Whose ballots are you going to print back to back? So they could alternate year to year like we alternate chairs for our joint committees. It could be very very democratic. It could be you know just rotated. It just like does not need to be a big deal. It strikes me that you know we have a front and a back that we are not using efficiently and that anyway that strikes me as one way to get rid of at least one ballot. I mean piece of paper. Will. Carol. It's the first time I've heard the first time I've heard that suggestion. So how would you how would you keep a voter from voting both sides of the ballot? Just the same way we keep them from doing other things like signing their names on it. You might ask them to you could mark it in a different color on the top. I mean it isn't difficult to be pretty clear and again your instructions could be clear. And then it would be a spoiled ballot if they did. But then we're going to give them a chance to cure. No that isn't a curable. That's a spoiled ballot. Right. But I think. John. Just that I feel that would be far more confusing for people and would very much possibly dramatically increase the number of spoiled ballots. People are going to get a ballot. They're going to vote all over three distinct ones. At least makes them stop and think for a minute. What makes them distinct if they're not color differentiated? They're three different pieces of paper. I realize that. But to go to Casey's point. So I don't want us to talk about whether they look alike or how you distinguish. Right now you get three pieces of paper. Three ballots. You can vote on one and return two in a in a different way. You only can vote on one. If you had them back to back. In many town elections or elections you turn it over and then you keep voting. That's why I asked. That's why I prefaced it by asking Will how long the primary ballots usually are. I know. Okay. But I would just turn it over and keep voting. Maybe not if it said something else on the top. Okay. Does anybody else have an opinion about this? Senator Collamore? Just to leave it the way it is. Very. Thank you. Senator Polina? I agree with Senator Collamore. I mean I understand it's an expense issue and I'm sympathetic to that. I really am. But I don't think we're going to come up with a solution anytime soon. I think it's something to think about down the road because I think it is an expense that a lot of people feel is not quite worth it. But I think it's part of the process and I don't think we're going to be able to fix it right now. Yes. I think you're right. And actually I think that a way of fixing it would be to have the parties run their own primaries. Because it is a party issue. The primary is not a state election issue. It's a party issue. And if each party ran their own elections. That's what we were. So we used to do it that way. Lila. I'm sorry. What did you say? We used to do it that way. In Vermont. We had caucuses. Lila, I have a question, Jeanette. Lila. Yes. Lila Richardson with the League of Women Voters. I'm sure you said that you were going to address the issue of having to return all three ballots separately. But I just wanted to make sure it's true because I wasn't sure where it would fit on the agenda. It's one of the things that caused this defective ballots. And why the, my understanding is the primary rate of defective ballots was much higher because we have to return the two unvoted ballots and people were confused by that. So this would be related to that in my mind that if you could only, could request just one ballot, it would simplify that process. Yeah. Well, but I think that we, it would simplify the process, but I think that we had that conversation that people do not want to be identified as requesting a ballot, a party ballot. No, I think, I think it's part of the same issue. But yes, it would be one other piece of the three ballot process is whether all three have to be returned even if they're sent out. That is a different question. Yes. And John, I saw your hand up and then will. Yeah, I just, I was just going the same place. There's no reason, you know, we get a ballot, one envelope, one ballot for the other elections and anonymity is held. So no reason why they would have to send back all three if they just sent back the one they voted on envelope. You have the same guarantee of anonymity and we don't know which one they voted on. And I saw that, I will call on you, but I saw that Audrey just held up her spouses unused ballots. So clearly in Colorado, they don't mail back the unused ones. Exactly. I, we noted the same thing. I was going there too. And I appreciate it from Lila though she's correct, because the point I want to make was the discussion about whether you're, whether you could request just one ballot. Yes, it's related to printing and giving us the ability to print fewer of the ones we know are requested less. But it's also related to the issue of defective rates in the primary and just trying to make that less difficult returning the unvoted ballots. And so another way you could address that is what Lila was suggesting, which is that the unvoted don't come back. I'll just put it out there. I mean, the concern with that that I know will be raised is the existence of those live ballots, as we heard a lot talked about in November, which are, you know, unvoted official ballots being out there. But our standard refrain and I think it's what John was getting at is one voter, one ballot comes back. And it doesn't matter how many other blank ballots there are out in people's houses and on their kitchen tables. You only get to return one. And if you try and vote, let's say you return it and then try to vote in person with the other one, you would have already been checked off the checklist. So you couldn't use that so that there isn't much power in an unvoted ballot if you used one already. So it's right to be they could recycle them and it would be done. We'd be done with it. So does Senator Collomer. Thank you Madam Chair. So I'm just trying to walk this through in my mind. So you mail out three, the voter fills one out and mails it back, keeps the other two. How are you saving any money? You aren't okay. And I don't know what the advantage of that is. That was only that was for the reducing the fact that a lot of the reason it's defective in the primary is they haven't returned those or they've returned them outside of the unvoted ballot envelope. And the return envelope is cheaper. Why? Because it weighs less. I think that when you get into that size envelope that that's not a huge issue. But I think that I would almost because I think that there's going to be a lot of questions about those ballots hanging around out there. I would almost say let's see what happens with a redesign of the ballots and the envelopes themselves and see in the next primary if we have the same defective rate or if that goes down because we have a new design. And if it doesn't go down then let's address it again. But if it goes down considerably because we've approached it in a better way then there's no need to because I do think you're right well that that is going to cause a lot of concern by people who are concerned about election fraud. Anybody else? I thought I saw Carol's hand but I'm not sure. All right so we'll leave it the way it is for now. All right I think that we I will just we'll take just a couple minutes of to look at this issue but I think that we just simply do not have the time to be able to do this and I think there's more can would cause more confusion was the two suggestions around rank choice voting. One was to let the parties each party decide if they wanted to use rank choice voting in their primary and I if people want to weigh in I think it would be a little confusing if some parties didn't some parties didn't but anybody want to weigh in on that suggestion. Paul. Thank you Madam Chair for the record Paul Burns executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group. We did not suggest this this as a standalone question the rank choice voting in primaries though it kind of goes to the broader question of rank choice voting which my organization and many others are supportive of I recognize that I believe that this is not the time to certainly to shoehorn this into another bill or that you don't have the time probably right now to take this up so I while I want to say I think that this has merit as an idea and is worthy of consideration by the committee at some point I recognize that this this may not be the time in broad strokes though we have supported and continue to support the idea that this could be useful in state elections particularly in federal elections and when you use it there you could look at the presidential primary or other other primaries as well as the general election I know at least five states used rank choice voting for their presidential primary elections in 2020 I'm sure Audrey knows more about that but but you know there's a Burlington question on the ballot in town meeting day that will be instructive and you may have a chance to consider this issue if if that passes and you were to look at the request for a change to the charter there for instance and that might be the next reasonable opportunity to to look at this issue from our perspective so strongly supportive of the idea but if this isn't the time I don't I don't feel the need to press it further now so uh Anthony Senator Polina I was just gonna somewhat say similar to what Paul said I I believe frank choice voting is an important issue it's important one that we take out but I honestly think it'd be hard to take it up in this in the context of the way we're going through these ideas right now I think it's deserving of its own hearing and a lot of input from the parties and whatnot I think it's something that I'm supportive of in general but I don't think we can give it the time that any attention that it really would take to do it now maybe we could do it later on in this I'm not saying we should put it off for years but I think we should put it off for this for this discussion thank you so unless anybody has any different thoughts on that I'm going to just cross off that one and the first question under the general elections which is to use ranked choice voting in the federal elections and just leave that whole discussion for later is that a unless anybody okay thank you thank you because I think I think the committee has gotten bills on that anyway on our committee correct we may we may have one yeah and we do okay so we can look at that later all right so this I know that the Secretary of State's office said they didn't know what the issue was here but you were the ones that brought it to us the issue of the presidential nominating process it was on your list so unless you if you don't want to pursue it I'm happy to drop it I don't think we need to pursue it at this time given what we're trying to do with everything else going on okay anybody really want to talk about that of anything Senator White just to put drop the idea in your heads it was it was thinking one one element of it was whether we may want to raise the filing fee for independent candidates but honestly we can move on okay great she just got hot tea I did I had my tea angel deliver isn't that the best okay so um I'm going to skip to the skip over one here and go to the coordination of school and municipal and general elections and say that that is probably a conversation that needs to be held but it is not going to be resolved in this bill and it's more I think we already talked about that so can we cross it off unless anybody has really wants to talk about this Senator Clarkson I would just like to clarify what what the problem is because I know it's a problem but I haven't experienced it so much so I'd appreciate at least an articulation of and I know we're facing it now as we look at the Australian ballots in this COVID year I know COVID has kind of exacerbated this problem um could someone summarize the problem so that we know what we're putting off we'll do on it sure really quickly that's that's um well put Senator Clarkson in that COVID certainly did elevate this issue um and what the reason that it did is because of the authority that the legislature rightfully granted school boards to say they wanted to mail a ballot to all the voters in the school district I think the best way for me to describe the fundamental issue here it's it's a little bit less about coordination between schools and towns than it is just defining the administration of elections in union school districts yeah I think I've said to you guys before there's no equivalent entity in those districts for example to a board of civil authority they don't have election officials so they rely traditionally on the town clerks and under normal circumstances they've been conducting their meetings in a certain way over time for a long time for for instance they're using Australian ballot but they do it by request so when the town clerks get a request for their town ballot they ask if the person also wants a school ballot put them in the same envelope and send them out and it's not a big deal it's a much bigger deal when you have as is this year school districts that have typically done their business from the floor or just on a request-based Australian ballot system now saying I want to mail ballots to every voter in my district and and us saying who are you asking to do that um not my office but just the ether because there's no direction in the law who actually performs those duties I mean there's references to Australian ballot elections throughout the union school district statutes without any language about how absentee ballots are administered that's that's crazy um and so it leaves you at a point saying who's responsible for these duties um whether they're lined up with the town elections or not and that's a bigger project for me and the agency of education to work on and bring proposals to you guys about yes and just a minute carol and that's why we put the thing in the ability for the municipalities to mail out their ballots this year we put language in there encouraging cooperation between the towns and the schools carol it would be a big enough problem if it was a one-on-one issue one school district one municipality but it's exacerbated by the fact that we now have so many merged school districts and so you know five six seven different school districts are our towns are part of one school district and trying to coordinate all those different ballots and some that have multiple school districts you know their elementary their high school all over happen sorry yeah john i would just say you know you've got cases now where it's not working you've got cases now where it is working and the cases where it is working is when there's uh unanimity there's agreement between all the towns in the school district and then the individual towns the municipalities within it so they allowed to coordinate it i don't see why you couldn't just uh put in even just a line into the bills allowing authorizing school districts to do this too if member towns all also choose to mail out their own municipal ballots as well i mean just toss a line like that in there and then you can you would allow a town like Montpelier uh to to keep doing what we're doing that's going to work fine now as long as Roxbury the other town in in our school district went along with the two it would give Roxbury veto power over the whole process but then it would also allow us all to have a consensus if we wanted to do it if you just linked those two things together and i think you could do that in a sense uh will to clarify and that john and i spoke about this a little bit he john's referring back to the provision that we already talked about about um allowing municipalities to mail out ballots and over the course of that discussion i pointed out that i thought it would make more sense to only allow that for towns and cities and not school districts because of this gaping hole in the administration of school district collections and what john's saying which i think we could at least consider and i could try working on with them i don't know if it's as simple as he thinks it is but it may be um to say that a school district could also vote to mail out all of their ballots it should be their decision you shouldn't be having towns on an individual basis making decisions about what they do with the school district ballots um if the school district were to decide to do that they could they could and they could only do so if they have the agreement of the towns within their district is i believe what john's suggesting so it'd be school board checks in with two select boards those select boards say yes we want to send out the school ballot with our town ballots we're doing that with our town ballots this year so yeah we're going to move forward um i jumped a little on that i apologize i just don't the idea of putting all those eggs into that basket unnecessarily that you know the concerns the structural concerns that will is talking about i think it's not uh you know it's not necessary and could even step us back a little bit well if you can come up with some language i it won't certainly won't do anything for this year because this isn't even going to be passed until well after that and and i think that there are so many other issues around i mean there's still the issue of who administers the school elections and and um we now have um when we had buhs district i guess they did it um we now have a separate elementary school district that has seven towns in it and um the town clerks i i think that that has to be worked out so um um if you can come up with some simple language here um that would be great but i think that this is a larger question so okay great now the next one on our list is to declare election day a holiday and does anybody want to weigh in on this i can i'm going to start this i'm sorry i'm talking so much but so we when um we've had this discussion a number of times and first of all i'm not sure if we're talking about general election day uh primary election day or town meeting election day and when i was on the select board in putney we thought maybe if we had the our um uh it shouldn't be a holiday well if you have a holiday only state employees get the day off anyway nobody else gets that holiday just because it's a holiday doesn't mean people get it off so we had our town meeting on a saturday because more people could come right they weren't working and the risk we had far fewer people there and the response was i'll give up a weekday but i'm not going to give up a saturday and if you have a holiday if it's a holiday i'm going to go skiing i'm not so weigh in here what you think committee members and others senator colomar thank you madam chair i agree with you i don't think it would necessarily make uh any more likely that a voter would would turn out the vote than it does now so i would oppose this and only state employee if we declared it a state holiday only state employees would get the day off if they bargained for it and nobody else the place that i that most place most places private um give between five and seven or eight maybe paid holidays a year but i doubt that they'd give election day as one so anybody else cared away in senator palina i can't i hate to come out against the holiday it seems so counterintuitive but i i think you're right in terms of i don't think it would necessarily increase attendance or participation but i i think the idea of a holiday is always kind of nice but i think you know you make a good point that it's not going to make a difference so i guess i'd say i'm leaning in your direction i would be glad to put a bill in they're calling it palina day if you're interested in having a holiday that's good and i'll thank you is senator clarkson you're muted you're muted senator clarkson we had that we had that holiday and we changed the name of it um the thank you for those of you yeah thank you um i i would agree we have data uh because we have it both as a holiday and not as a holiday many of our towns change it to saturday to try and get more attendance i think we have a lot of internal work at our towns to boost attendance there are some and i don't think it's related to whether or not it's a holiday um i i the pleasure of going to heartland every year is that it's on a tuesday and it is packed it's packed and then you go to the next town and there are you know a hundred people it is i think an internal marketing challenge for each town and i think that sadly i wish making it a holiday would affect attendance but i don't think it would senator palina also if we're thinking about for the general election the statewide general elections mail-in voting seems to have boosted participation quite a bit so maybe exactly progress there right and that was a much more effective way of of engaging voters and having them participate so i senator rum so i as usual i this might be a slight tangent but i think what has come up um and especially this year is there we have only people who are generally a bit tired who can participate in the the administration of our elections um and i know there's a lot of people who want to be able to volunteer whether it's for part of the day for a candidate for some part of tuesday they want to participate and they feel penalized by their workplace and i don't know that there's a law that we can pass but you know maybe there's something in the secretary of state's office where they they give like a gold star to businesses that let their employees go volunteer on election day you know some kind of compact to create more civic participation that's my thought for the day i think that's something like that is a good idea but if it was a holiday they wouldn't necessarily get it off especially if they worked in private business sorry you're i mean i yeah i would just completely agree that holidays don't usually help working people yeah that's where i am with that but you know maybe we can increase civic participation for those who really want to participate in tuesday as an important day in the country and there are great idea there are companies that um give their like browbra savings and loan bank down here gives their all their employees a certain number of hours per month to participate in community activities so something like that so i will say uh allison to your senator clarkson to your point about internal marketing to get people at town meeting according to frank bryan to have real participation you have to have a real issue you have to have the discussion and you have to have a vote and the biggest problem that we have with town meeting is we don't allow them to have real issues we tell them what they can do and what they can't do there's my little speech for the day and and senator white i respectfully disagree i think that the the pleasure of a community gathering in the towns that have robust attendance uh it doesn't matter that the the discussion is always rich and uh the yes i think it often helps having a big issue but that also skews it sometimes and has people just coming for one thing and then leaving uh you know i think that the building community around town meeting is a challenge for every town and i wish more towns would take it on as an opportunity yeah i didn't mean to say we should have they should have one big issue every issue we we should give them the ability to make decisions on their own which we don't do at the state level we dictate everything that they can do almost and so if town meeting in fact is reduced to a cute um article in the boston globe about people having bean suppers together and sitting at town meeting knitting then we've lost town meeting so that's that's my speech and i've been at town meetings where they have defunded the sheriff's office where they have voted to reverse financing for sidewalks where they have stripped of the police department of tens of thousands of dollars i mean i i think there are are some decisions that are actually made at town meetings bill there are i'm and i'm sorry i brought it up it's just i have to take every opportunity to to say that we need to give our towns more ability for self-governance that's all i'm saying and i'm happy to pass our bill again we will take it up so the next one on our list is review the major party requirements do we want to take that on i don't know right now it's that they're they have to be organized in 30 towns in at least seven counties and get at least five percent of a in a statewide office a five percent of the vote is is there are there problems with that i don't remember where this came from anybody maybe the party people here could actually speak to it well we only have major party people here so is that is it a problem for the major parties bruce you're not not in your head or just at ease well bruce olson from our democratic party i would say this is not a priority for our party okay martha thank you martha abbott assistant treasurer of the vermont progressive party um i think this discussion usually takes place in the context of other possible changes to the primary election process it's been the requirement for a while and then that's fine you know i don't think we have a problem with it it becomes a problem sometimes when we try to interact it with other possible changes um to the election law so such as there was a recent discussion about if you're in enter one primary as opposed to another primary and then you get a right in and so you're a the nominee of two parties how does that work and there's some interaction in those issues but by itself i don't think we have a problem with it okay so unless anybody else has something they'd like to throw in on this or concerns about it i think we'll cross this on off the list and then what i'm going to suggest is that we take a a few minute break here but before we go just picking up on what martha was talking about that when we um have amaran um we had last in our last meeting we talked about two issues related to the parties one was where the five percent gets assigned which party it gets assigned to and the other one was the the positioning of your party's initials on the ballot and i um i voted with two other people around the um three other people around the five percent i'm going to change that vote of mine because i think it doesn't matter and i'm also going to change my vote on the placement of the r d p l u whatever whatever party you want to put behind your name because i think that those are party questions and not necessarily general i know that they're in this in the statutes but i think they're more party issues so i'm going we can have a little discussion on that but i'm going to suggest that we not address those issues in this bill committee uh senator colomor senator polina did senator colomor say anything he put his thumbs up okay i he's not on my screen i couldn't tell you're probably not surprised that i would tend to agree with you so i would put his thumbs up as well sir clarkson we were saving this for after our break when i'll be refreshed but um i'm disappointed i i think it's an issue we need to resolve i think i wish you'd send us all to the cafeteria and work on resolving it because i think there are issues that we should be resolving i mean i there it's uh so i i understand where you're coming from i am and um i appreciate that i'm just disappointed that we are not going to have address this in this bill senator rom so i mean being new i'm just sort of thinking okay that you know we're we were asking party folks to come share issues that they had about general election issues is is what you would want to focus on so we're still inviting party people to the table um but it's you want it all to be focused on general election i mean being new to the committee i'm certainly not going to contradict that i just think particularly the issue about major party status felt like an an inter-party issue where one party in and of themselves can't really make any determinations for themselves i didn't understand that we the two issues i feel like you know i i guess what you're saying is even though there was an issue that we were discussing that could be between two parties like a minor party and a major party or two major parties you want them to work it out themselves but the issue still lives with the secretary of state's office they're still the one that says right now oh you can just pick whichever party you want to give your percentage to etc that just feels hard for one party to be able to determine on their own well the no i'm not saying that the that it is it's in statute right so so i'm not saying that the secretary of state would do it i'm saying that i don't think that this is the appropriate bill to deal with this issue and i think that it could end up being the poison pill well i think that's the issue is is it the poison pill i i think it's it's an issue that means i'd love to resolve and i'm happy to have a conversation about it between the parties but it is an issue where the voters vote one way thinking they're electing a candidate who is represents x values and then the candidate changes themselves and decides to run as a y-valued person i think it's a misrepresentation of that candidate and that is i think a core election issue i understand that it's a poison pill because we disagree and it would be it i understand that but i i also i would hope we could be encouraged to have that conversation elsewhere and i would love to know what that form is because i think that it needs to be resolved i'm happy i i i appreciate you're not wanting to make this elections bill a poison pill you know put embedding something in it that is divisive i get that but it is an issue that somewhere in some form we need to address and i i think that it does need to be addressed but i'm not sure that even statutorily is how it gets addressed i i think that um and the more i think about it if if i run in one party's primary as something and then change my mind in the general election and um take the party that uh wrote me in then um and i then the voters are are somewhat they were hoodwinked they feel like they were hoodwinked that time so if the same person does the same thing the next time then i say that um if you're if you fool me once shame on you but if you fool me twice shame on me so if the vote if that same thing happens in the next election with the same person and the voters still fall for it then that's the voters choice so i i just i think it is an issue and it's an issue in some places as opposed to other places and with some people as opposed to other people but i think it is not a general enough issue that we should put it in this bill so i will just all i really you know i usually i'm used to in the past sort of being taken aside by the chair and told this just isn't gonna fly so i appreciate your transparency so i want to just honor that um you know i i personally i was the only one who had a different vote on um major party status versus who gets to decide where to put their um name of the party what order because i do feel like it has a really big outcome in our elections to be able to just decide where you put the percentage of your vote and and determine major party status that did feel like something that is you know has material uh consequences that aren't remedied in a future election so i can get over that but i did feel like it was a general election issue but i'm just saying i value your transparency i'm just making that final point no and i'm happy to go with the you're the chair chairwoman anybody else all right so amara and i just wanted to make sure that you were and and i and i also do believe in transparency i think i was wrong and i'm perfectly happy to admit that i i think i made the wrong choice um on those issues given where we are with this bill and the importance of of getting something major done so anybody else have anything to say about senator colomer thank you manager i was gonna just not say anything more about it but i think you bring up an interesting point um and i think it's up to the candidate in many ways if the candidate is willing to risk political suicide in essence by doing exactly what you said i don't think they would get elected the second time i think people would say we don't know who this person is uh because they flip flop so often i'm not voting for that person so i think it is sort of a decision that the the candidate could make and and uh commit political suicide senator polina so just um coming off of that it's basically it's up to the voters to make those decisions and i think that's what we're saying is that the voters will decide ultimately yeah i also do i also do appreciate your honesty madam chair i really appreciate it we always appreciate it it's one of the things we treasure about you all right so what i'm going to do is i'm going to suggest we take i don't know what time it is is i yeah three o'clock exactly how about if we take a 10 minute break come back and get into uh the issue of mail-out ballots and i the other thing i'm going to suggest is that we take that we not look at a campaign finance and public financing of elections in this bill that we do that in a separate bill so i've just crossed those off the list so we'll come back and talk about mail-off voting as opposed to mail-in voting thank you