 Good afternoon and we will wait just a moment for all of the folks who are coming in from the waiting room to connect here with us. Thank you all for joining us today you are with the Vermont House Government Operations Committee. We have spent a bit of time over the first couple weeks of session here reviewing the 2020 election. It was an unprecedented election in many ways. No, no, not only because of the high participation rate of Vermonters, but because it was done at a much higher percentage by mail or absentee ballot than has ever been before so we have heard from the Secretary of State's office and I thought it was important for us to spend a fair bit of time hearing from the folks who actually administer our elections on the ground in our towns and cities and so thank you to Carol Dawes for joining us and also for helping to bring along perspectives of clerks from not only small towns but large towns and cities around the state and so just for committee members to orient themselves we have a very nice document on our committee page under today's date with some names and contact information for some of the clerks who are with us today. And so I will invite Carol to to give us her introduction or overview and I don't know if you have a specific order that you had hoped folks would be able to testify but we would love to hear from each of these clerks. They're their observations of the election and then hopefully we will have an opportunity for committee members to ask questions so welcome Carol. Let's get you unmuted. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon and thank you so much for for inviting us to participate. It looks like we've got a pretty good turnout of clerks on who were on the invite list so that's good we do have many if not all of the members of the Municipal Clerk and Treasures Association and the State of Committee. We also have other clerks. I did send an email out to all clerks in the state. Because I wanted to make sure that we had some clerks that aren't the MCTA members I want to make sure even though we represent the majority of clerks in the state I want to make sure that that all points of view are being represented. I want to make sure that we have as you said large towns, small towns. We have tabulator towns, non-tabulator towns. So, yes we have a mix. I'm not going to read through the review of 2020 elections that I presented that as you mentioned is on your website but I will just point out a few things. I want to know from what's on your website that the Secretary of State's Office has already presented there it looks like Chris Winters presented to you a nice compilation of the 2020 election seasons and how things went. So, I'm not going to rehash a lot of that information. I'm working closely with the Secretary of State's Office starting right after town meeting which is when the wagon went off the rails and we were all sort of making it up as we went along. I'm working closely on local election information and then primary elections and general elections. Working closely with the Secretary and also with the legislature with your committee with Seneca Vops putting emergency legislation in place. We did the postcard mailings for August or actually we didn't the Secretary of State's Office did the postcard mailings when which went out to all active voters, giving them opportunities to request absentee ballots. And that went very well, though there were hiccups associated with mailing lists, but it did give clerks information that they could use to make some changes corrections updates to our mailing lists which was valuable. The advantage of the opportunity to hold primaries in different ways to ensure both election worker and voter safety. We had a broad range of drive through walk through curbside, door, all kinds of different polling setups based on what different communities had for for their needs and their, their facilities and availabilities. It worked really well. We were able to, we did have some challenges associated with tallying right ends for the primary. What's required by current law for chat for tallying right ends is that you have to look at every ballot you have to touch every ballot, at least two people have to touch every ballot. And that certainly was a concern for us during the primary and the general but more for the primary, because for the primary, there are a lot more writings by virtue of the, the, the fact that there are the three different ballots, and that the voters really don't understand what the primary process is and why they get three ballots and why they're only allowed to vote one of them. We find a lot of crossover where people who, you know, vote the Republican ballot but then right in their democratic choices, or vice versa, and all of those have to be tallyed. We did through the, the directives from the Secretary of State's office we were able to modify our tallying a bit, so that we didn't work in teams of two, so that we didn't have to have people right next to each other while tallying and we were able to spread out a bit more and swap stacks of ballots off, but it still did require handling all the ballots. And we've talked about doing some changes to the right in tallying in the past and perhaps that's something that we'll, we can discuss again this year. The ballots for the general election started being bulk mailed by the Secretary of State's office in mid September, and we immediately started receiving voted ballots back and processing them. We also had to mail ballots out ourselves because we had new voters in our communities we had people move into the community we had people do changes of address, and we had received their ballots back as undeliverable. And there was a fair amount of mailing out that we had to do ourselves on. And so the Secretary of State's office had made for made sure that we had ballots envelopes materials for mailing things out. We received hundreds of ballots back is undeliverable. Again, the checklist is as good as we can maintain it, but of course people move in very city about 64% of our housing stock is rentals. So we have a very large transient population, and people move around and so we keep getting you know we were getting ballots back. We had about 400 of them that came back as undeliverable. I don't know what the solution to that is but but certainly as the discussion continues on around on mail ballots. That's something that will need to be talked about. There were challenges with public feedback. Many people were happy to get the ballots mailed directly to them many people were not happy to get the ballots mailed directly to them. We had phone calls, emails and social media attacks. One instance in Berry City. I, one of my voters posted photos on on online on her Facebook page that showed that ostensibly showed that she had gotten two ballots for the general election. She had one ballot with her name on it or one envelope with her name on it another envelope with her name on it. And you know she was claiming that she had gotten two ballots. Somebody pointed it out to me, and I looked in my records and said my guess is that one of those is her August primary ballot, which she never voted. And it turned out that that's what it was, but of course, no correction was ever posted online. So, it left that perception out there that that people were getting double ballots on. We did get great funding support from the Secretary of State's office, obviously it came from the federal government came from the legislature allowed towns to install ballot drop boxes, which were very popular with voters. They also covered other extraordinary election expenses. They also provided us with boxes of personal protective equipment and hand sanitizer and wipes and various supplies like that which were very useful during the elections. Many clerks also received funding support from an organization called the Center for Tech and Civic Life, whose mission is according to their website, quote, to harness the promise of technology to modernize the American voter experience voting experience. And they made grants of $5,000 to many communities around the state, allowing us to to get other extraordinary election expenses in Berry City it helped pay for plexiglass shields between the voting, the election workers and the voters, along with some other supplies so that was was very helpful. We were dealing with a record number of absentee ballots, obviously, and thankfully as part of his directives, Secretary condos allowed clerks who have tabulators to feed ballots into them in advance of the election. Which was a boon to many towns who took advantage of that. The opportunity to process them in advance. Berry City did not, but I, but I certainly have spoken to a lot of clerks who, who felt that that was, you know, incredibly valuable to them to be able to process early. Election day went very well. Everything I've heard has been positive from across the state. Thankfully, we mostly had significantly reduced numbers of in person voting, which helped control contact between election workers and voters. I believe in the report from the Secretary of State, they said 98% of precincts had reported by midnight on election night, which, you know, makes us the envy of many, many states around the country. We did very well. There were challenges with the defective ballots, especially during the primary election. As I said, the process is complicated. And it led to many, a fairly high percentage of defective ballots and, and I've included in my document just some information about a few towns and what sort of percentages they had for defective ballots, both for August and for November. And you can see that the number is much higher for the August primaries. And so perhaps it's time to take a look at not only how defective ballots are defined and handled, but perhaps even talk about how primaries are done. And so the collaborations really made a huge difference in the success Vermont had the legislature and Secretary of State's office, the post office clerks, political parties advocacy groups, election workers and voters. Everybody played a part in making our season a success, but to me the most important thing was the flexibility that was afforded to us. There, there were very few things that were mandated, and so much of it was that we all had the options to make the decisions that were the best for our communities. The community didn't pre process absentee ballots but others did, you know, into tabulators but others did. I did drive through voting in August through our field house other people did outdoor voting. That's what was best for their communities and having that flexibility really made a huge difference. And I would recommend that we that we continue to look at. And I think that this is going to place as being as enhancing the options that we all have, rather than restricting them. This might be a great time to before we get into suggestions for future elections to ask other clerks who may have additional comments they'd like to make. Do you have any particular order, unless we just want to go by the order that's on your website, which I don't have pulled up yet but I'm pulling it. Not to worry, I, I will just jump right in and suggest, since I would really like to hear from each of you because you represent different sized communities from different areas of the state I would like to give each of you a few minutes to, to give us your observations of what didn't work. You can contrast the primary to the general election you can narrow in on on checklist issues versus, you know, drive up balloting issues if that's what you experienced. And so I'm going to unmute. Well maybe I'm going to ask Bobby to unmute because I know that she's having a little bit of trouble with her connection today but would love to invite Bobby to go first. And then I'm just going to run through alphabetically in my participants list so we'll hopefully get a chance to get to everyone. And Bobby are you there. You're unmuted, according to my screen but I'm not hearing you yet. Maybe your audio on your phone connection will work better. Do you recall how to unmute yourself. All right, so Bobby we will come back to you. Just as soon as you figure out how to get unmuted let me know and and we will definitely come back because I'd love to hear your thoughts. And thank you for being here. So Kathy, Mander Adams, tell us where you're from and give us your feedback observations on how 2020 elections worked for you. Noon. Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this discussion. The, the, probably the biggest point I need to make is that the belt I am from Belvedere, where a very small town, I have 245 registered voters, and we typically have a pretty good turnout in the past. One of the things that stand out the most to me is that our older population that's not technically connected that just go by past performance, you know, elections and all of that stuff. While they're very aware of COVID and all the restrictions with COVID, the whole process of the first, the first card that they received giving them an option to ask for an absentee ballot for general elections actually brought more requests for that than I've seen since I've been down clerk. The same, you know, the same kind of thing occurred for general elections they were confused by the ballots as they got in the mail. Mostly because of the age range and the lack of, you know, familiarity with all of these changes that have been going on. I did a lot of phone calls asking why they were getting this or what did this mean and, you know, I was happy to answer their questions, but in general, I think the Secretary of State's office did a wonderful job, keeping us informed. I was never, I never felt alone when I had a question when I had an issue using the system and asking quite I was always helped right on the spot 99% of the time. It was a great help and, you know, I think moving forward. The general population understands the need for moving forward with how things are done, making some changes. It's a struggle. Town meeting, the town meeting idea has been a struggle. But, again, we have to keep moving forward. So, I think the changes that were made or not a huge problem for me I have to tell you, I can't tell you how many times I said, I am so glad I live in such a small town. I know people. If I don't know them personally I know them because I was sure when they moved here and I, I do the recording of the land records and process of tax return, you know, I mean, building the property taxes and so forth. So, if I had to deal with a large population, I, I would need more help. I work alone. Considering the circumstances, I feel this if everything went pretty well for me. I never felt like I was going to pull my hair out and be lost in the crowd. That's a good thing. Well, I can imagine that the logistics on election day can often leave people feeling like they want to pull their hair out so I feel, I feel very happy to hear you say that. Any questions for Kathy before we go on to the next person. All right, I'm going to jump back to Bobby because we've got a little unstable internet access going on here so Bobby share with us your observations on how the 2020 elections worked for you. Hi, can you hear me. Yes. I think it worked very well in March field we did outdoor elections for both the primary and the general for the primary since it was warmer we just had everyone bring their own little, little personal tense. And we had people drive like station to station around our parking lot for the general since it was colder we rented a large like a wedding tent. Well, we'll seem to be very happy with the ability to stay in their cars. I don't know that we'll be able to do that in April because it was so expensive we were only able to do it with a grand. But people really appreciated it we got a lot of thanks. And we got a lot of thanks for mailing the ballots. I would have some people that did not want to vote that way on a ballot that was mailed to them and they came to the polls and some of them brought their ballot with them some didn't. But overall I think it worked pretty well. We had the same issues that Carol talked about with the defective ballots from the primary people either didn't return the two extra ballots or they voted on two ballots. They don't understand that they can only vote on one and they have to return the other two no matter how many instructions we include with the ballot how many people we talked to. I think there would be a lot less defective ballots if we could just send the one. And then we have the same issue with right ends we have, there seems to be a group in town that are trying to make a joke out of right ends. They, they put an actual voters name but then they give them a little cutesy nickname in between their first and last name. And I think they're just using it to embarrass people so that's a little frustrating I, I wish there was some way to combat that I think if we made people declare their right in candidacy we wouldn't have to report those joke names they seem to be inside because there'll be two or three people that use the same nickname for someone. So that's discouraging it's not it's not a serious use of the purpose of a right in. And we also get right ends for whatever sports team one. When the Red Sox won the world series back. I'm sorry that I don't remember the year we got we got right in votes for each player on the team. We're not using the right in function seriously. So it's, it feels like a big waste of our time and especially during coven when it means close contact. Well that's frustrating. Any questions for Bobby about about their experience in Marshfield during the primary or the general election. All right, well, thank you Bobby I appreciate you being here with us and, and, and you're the first to say you did primarily drive through voting so I'm curious to, to imagine how that worked so thank you for describing that to us. And now, Kerry Galloway, who is the St. Albans City clerk. Tell us how, how were elections in St. Albans in 2020. Thank you thank you for the opportunity to speak and be here today. We met a lot of the challenges in the 2020 election year really well with not only a lot of new voters, but a lot of support from election workers. But we had an influx and I think a lot of clerks had an influx of people wanting to help out during the election and for pre ballot processing. And it was great that we were able to have people outside of our municipality to help us do that. I almost probably need to but still I think that's a really great addition if they're Vermont residents be able to assist during elections. The primary was kind of a trial run as far as the covert friendly layout. You know, I had to even design, you know, almost like a CAD presentation but it was not a PowerPoint, just the, just so we would know just exactly what type of voter, we could assist best, you know, if they weren't able to wear a mask or didn't want to we had to actually come up with an entirely new process and it was really excellent to have kind of support and language backing from the Department of Health there. You know, so going forward, you know, no matter how less this virus gets, I think it's always great to keep health concerns in mind, you know, for all elections all public gatherings in general. I think health concerns are really important to constantly, you know, touch on, at least in some capacity. So we did a lot of the postcards were great we did receive a lot of them back with requests on them people were able to sign them. Very few people didn't so we did receive a lot of undeliverable ballots during, you know, the general election with 72% of people holding by mail during St. Almond City's general election. Our defective ballot rate was really low. We had about 1% for the general but you know those are obviously lower than the primaries. So that said, for any thoughts that you all may have for, you know, discussing curing ballots, you know I echo what Carol wrote in her report about, you know, really fine tuning that procedure for, you know, the burden or liability of you know municipal officials to contact voters and how that goes so. I think that another big piece, and I think other clerks were mentioning it is, you know, it was real opportunity to educate voters. Like I said, we had a lot of new ones our local paper, Sam was messenger did several installments of like how to do your mail and ballot, you know with video and in the newspaper so I thought that was really helpful for people. You know, especially for, you know, kind of complicated elections like the primary. I'm really a proponent for the universal mailing I think it's excellent, but I'm really glad that it was left to the municipalities to make that decision for this upcoming town meeting day. And having that flexibility to move the date I think is crucial to do a kind of a complex procedure like mailing ballots to give them that leeway. And you know, honestly, like I said, we had a lot of absentee requests and absentee returns. So that processing time was crucial and it worked beautifully, you know we had a 0% error rate. We were able to collaborate safely and, you know, have processes in place. I was able to schedule those for that entire 30 days. And I think that was fantastic. And it made the election day, you know, seem, you know, no worries there you know you know that everything is processed, you have the blog that the Secretary of State supply so you know, you know, which number you left off at. And I thought that was great and we saw a lot of overseas ballots and you know the work with overseas has been really good so I don't know if there's any improvements there but you know there's still a lot of interest from people voting overseas. But I think that you know I echo what people say about right ends, you know, I think I had, I don't know a 20 page election report for mine you know I wrote down every single person you know so even if they had one vote you know I so it kind of does add up. And again, you know with safety, you know we did have teams of two but I think the right ends it's always good to review that no matter what you know we all kind of go through it and I think it's very valid for people to be able to be free to be on these ballots but I also think a little procedure. And some outline for that I think would be a really good thing to because I try to assist candidates as much as I can with giving them information, sending them the forms and everything they need to, you know run efficiently. And I think that's a really good, you know role for the clerk to do that I know they need to do their homework but I think that you know we would be more than willing to assist people with letting new people know like hey this is how you want to declare. This is how you do it and here's all the information. I'm sure the Secretary of State would be, you know on board to but that's really I think we had some successful elections, it wasn't as stressful as I thought it would be. I think a lot of people learned a lot and the clerks, the clerks and the elections vision. Incredible, I don't know that I could do without it I'm a fairly new clerk so having my first presidential election be during you know global pandemic. This team is incredible so thank you to them thank you to you all for listening thank you. Thank you so much for that report. And we have heard. We've heard mostly universal praise for the Secretary of State's office and the support that they give to to clerks while administering elections so glad to hear you say that committee members any questions. All right, I don't see committee members diving in so I'm going to go to Donna Kinville next. Hi. Again, thank you for taking the time to listen to us. It's always great for for us to go through this to know that someone cares and understands what we're going through. South Burlington was a little bit different. We kind of stayed in line with our elections we actually had a failed school budget vote. So, because of the directive, the school board was able to postpone their second we vote a little bit. So we were probably one of the first municipalities to actually hold an election in the covert area era we did at the end of May. And for the most part we stayed the line, you know we mailed out ballots to everybody who wanted them. We had all our polling locations open. It involved a lot of thought about how do I keep my workers and my, my, my voters safe. So it was a real whole configuration of all the polling areas in one door out another door how do you move this and that. So there's a lot of confusion on the voters once they got in the polling location, they're like, where do I go now. So we even had arrows on the floor but they just couldn't get used to the, the different layout than they're than they're used to. So, but that actually went well we had about 2500 people vote in May and at the polls, which we thought was was pretty good. We had another 3000 ish vote by early voting. So it was a good turnout, it failed again. So it got moved to the August primary and so that just made it crazy. I think the August election for me was the worst election of all of them. Because we were mailing out ballots to people when they requested them we're getting their postcards and they've changed it. It was just mass information coming into us at one time. And at that point, curry, I was pulling my hair out just trying to get through all of that. We did, and we actually did get a lot of good information out of that and we're still using that information to try and figure out and challenge people. You know, question whether or not they really are residents of our town. We had about 2000 balance that were returned is undeliverable for the November election. So we're working off of those. One thing which which the Secretary of State's office did and I, we hugged this thing, they sent some larger towns, a letter opener, electric letter opener. It was the best invention we ever could have had. I mean, we wanted to hug this thing at the end of the day, we put the things in and they went what would have taken an hour for people to open these envelopes took a matter of a minute or two so it's good to find different ways to do our jobs but do it much more efficiently. And then that's what that center for tech group was trying to do, and then trying to find ways to help the election progress. And I actually went down to my pillow to Washington and your director, Georgia did as well and met with them. And they are truly a bipartisan group who are interested in the administration of elections. And they gave us a real broad base of what we want to use our election money for. I bought my printer because we have such a large volume of mail out ballots, early ballot. My printer couldn't handle it. You know you're doing 3 400 a day, and you've got three envelopes you're feeding through the printer, it couldn't handle it so I bought myself an industrial size printer, which would be solely designated for absentee ballots. One thing that did save us was being able to early process the ballots. Even prior to 2020. Processing of early ballots is getting to be an issue to be able to handle them at the polls is going to be an issue. The day before an election, you are out the door with people who are coming at the last minute vote, you really don't have time to do the early processing which the law current allows us to do just that day before. So it really needs to get extended a little bit farther out. If we can. As Carol did said I did get requests or people complaining about double ballots. And a lot of that is the beams are election software. If I were to register, and I'm an old time South Burlington resident and I registered Donna. You know, I can't go to Kenville which is fine. If I went dude I did a nickname of, you know, Don, Kenville in the same birthday and everything the system will not match me. So it will create a new voter file. We've been working with Secretary State's office them to broaden, broaden, broaden, make larger our search features so if I enter that in with that my date of birth is going to show me everybody in the state that has that same date of birth. Because people were getting to balance that that was a concern. The one thing I had issue with everybody else had is I had an issue. I do have an issue with my tabulators. I didn't have an issue with them. Counting the right on, but they get old, they're getting clunky they get noisy people put them in and they like freak, and then they start to grab the ballot because they're not sure what's happening. I had two of my machines where the people grab their ballot and it tore the ballot in the machine. Now you can't get the ballot out of the machine. You have to turn that machine off, take the tabulator have the voter watch say what is the count here that says number balance process, take the card out put into a new machine. Now what is that you agree is the same total they're like yes okay now we continue on. So the machines are getting old. And they're going to eventually need some type of major rehaul and they're probably, I would say 18 years old that we've had these machines. So this is one of the things I've had about the primary requesting the three ballots. It's really kind of funny because people were almost like we're making them do two different things. For the presidential primary, you have to tell us which ballot you want for the state primary you have to give them all three and so each time you're constantly just educating them on the difference. It's almost like if it's just one, it would be just so much easier they know when a primary is they request their ballot and they're done. It would be less questions on that way. And the biggest thing we had was just the national news, people hope you got my envelope yet but can you guarantee my signature matched. Now we can guarantee that we don't do that. And so it's just a lot of national news, which this year seem to really filter into the local issues and people are really, really, really concerned about developing counted. So we got that which is not something we really got much of before. So I think that's kind of pretty much one thing I have when I have my BC meeting before this next election. I'm going to ask this is a question I ask a lot of people, what did you learn from the COVID from all of this pandemic that you learn that needed to be changed that you're going to continue on in the next election so I'm going to put that out to my election and say, what did you learn was the one way direction was that really good, or did it cause problems, and just kind of look at all of this is a great time to revamp the way we do things. So that's a that's a challenge I'm going to put up to my, my board. That's a great idea. And I, I look forward to hearing what what your board says, in response to that question, I'm sure each of our communities would have a different set of responses. Thank you so much Donna. Again, Peter Anthony has a question for you. Yeah, thank you very much Peter Anthony from Berry City. What, in regards to the primary, what was the principal reason for the size of defective ballots that you experienced and did you experience an unusually large number this past cycle. I don't think as a percentage wise I don't think we did a big difference percentage. I think total wise because there are so many ballots out there that the number seems higher, if you count the ballot. It had to do with the number of ballots mostly. I mean people kind of forget to sign this certificate envelope, those are always just that's usually the most on any election. You know the, the ballots in there at the three ballots. It was either. They included more than one in their certificate envelope. They didn't return the two, or they voted more than one and they put them all in the certificate envelope so you couldn't count any of them. Thank you. Yes, voter education, as much as we tried. It's time to take. So we've had a couple of our larger communities and now we're going to come back close to my home and talk to Georgette Wolf Ludwig who's our fairly town clerk and welcome Georgette it's nice to see you in a little zoom box. Thank you and thank you to you and everyone for inviting me to attend this it's been great listening to all the clerks and course a lot of the issues that I had been covered by a lot of the clerks. I have to say, one of the helpful things about the August primary was when the Secretary of State's office did the postcard. I was able to really take a good look at my checklist and change addresses get corrections made. It was really good. I figured people who are who had actually left town and so I could really create a good active voter checklist I felt we have about 750 on our checklist but about 60 of them are folks that you know I don't know where they are they in town are they out of town and you can't just take them off if they don't respond to a challenge letter so it was really good feeling to get a real good idea of what the active list was so that was really helpful. The active was mostly for the August primary same thing that everybody is talking about the the voter not understanding the process, putting ballots, more extra voted ballots in their certificate envelope. But we did see participation up in the primary it was the most I'd ever had in fairly to participate in a primary. Sending out sending out that card and giving people the option. Put it right there in front of them and they and they did vote I think more people voted. I think the whole state right wasn't it one of the things that more people voted in the whole state so general election I would say went smoothly of course we were all more concerned about coven at that time and and but the Center for tech and civic life, the the grant that they gave town of fairly for $5,000 really helped I was able to buy more PPE with plexiglass is plexiglass and and signage signage was wonderful for curbside for in in the building to keep people separated so that was a huge huge help. Voter participation was huge and thank goodness. Most people voted by absentee early ballot. We had a few folks that were concerned. I think it would have a lot to do with the media and the drop box that we were able to purchase with Secretary of State the funds that they gave us really helped when I talked with my voters that I will get your ballot I will pick it up. You know it will come here it will get voted to reassure them was really helpful. I just wanted to think oh I got an electric letter opener to Donna, even though we have to open some I like 400 some odd. That was truly helpful so definitely trying to get as many tools as possible signage to help, you know, the voters. We unfortunately didn't get anybody to use the. The democracy you know the voters for people that have disabilities. We can't seem to get anybody to use that it's too bad because it I actually used it because I thought well I'd like to get someone to use it. And it works really well. It was also nice to have it knowing that if we ran out of ballots we were able to use that machine and it would print a ballot so unfortunately that's just really not being utilized I think as much as it could be. I'm trying to think if there was anything else I had a little bit of an issue with poll workers in the sense that. Some people came forward but others were very concerned, and especially because my, my co workers are primarily retired and of that age. And so I'm a little bit concerned about town meeting because we are going from a floor meeting to Australian balloting, and I'm getting more resistance to work the polls. Just as the pandemic seems to get worse and where you don't have our back scenes yet so that'll be interesting but all in all it was a. It was a great election I love elections I thought things worked really well and I missed seeing the people but we we got the job done so that was good. Thanks Georgia. Committee members, any questions for Georgia on how the elections went in fairly. All right, I think next up would be john Odum. So we're back to a city clerk from our fair capital city john how we're 2020 elections for the city of Montpelier. Well things went I mean generally speaking, they went they went quite well. We, I would echo echo a few things and that's probably mainly what I'll, what I'll do for you because I think we all had similar experiences and probably have similar recommendations. They were great. They were terrific for us. And in regards to the Center for attack and civic life there. They're a great resource I hope if you all start looking at maybe looking into some of the procedures and stuff in other states that might be comparable they'd be a great resource it's a. I've worked with them in the past there they're a small nimble operation, very smart, and they could have a they could have potentially a lot to contribute. The primary went echoing everything everybody says you know we had a little more front end work with that because the in the general the Secretary of State sent everything out but we. It would be another voice in favor of you know I have a lot more conversations with people about how does this three ballot to envelope thing work. Then I, then I have with people who don't like or resent or don't understand having to declare a primary ballot that they want to take in the presidential primary. That's, that's way off I think people are past that hump and that would be, you know, certainly save a lot of paper and a lot of grief and help with that voter participation. So we did have a lot of improvements on our lists. Didn't quite wasn't quite as many as I'd hoped in the general we had a lot more bounces. Now we locally did have a little bit of challenge with our post office that I think other folks didn't. But I would suggest you all think about empowering the Secretary of State to have a little more flexibility with how they approach list enhancement and list hygiene. I don't want anybody changing my lists but there's ways you can do national chain would change of address that could be helpful without, you know, updating list addresses without authorization from the, from the clerks or the BCS. For example, identify the folks who have a change of address that is outside of the town, and those could potentially be go into a challenge list. You could also run lists through to check the addresses to check for deliverability. And that could help us a lot and that's something that could be taken out so both of those things I think would help us a lot. I think we've got to lock in that early processing I don't know how we would have done it without it. And, you know, I would just moving forward. I would put even more stock than sort of this conversation of how did the primary and how did the general go. And that's going to be at how town meeting goes especially with those towns that are going to, you know, do the, the all mail in again, which is what we're doing. That's going to be more telling if every, you know, we were in all new territory for the August we were then in all new territory for the general. Now we're in all new territory again. I think today introduces enough complexities that I think, whatever we can learn from that will be enough to trickle down I think and impact the others. And as far as that goes, you all need to really think about changing those filing deadlines to do a mail in election, they are too tight. There's no margin for error, you know we have to to compress all that work that we did into a very narrow timeframe so there's, I'm terrified of honestly I'm not sure how it's going to go, but we're going to do that. But that that really has to be done we need to be thinking in terms of running these elections in a more sustainable way volunteer wise I know we did I think a lot of people, a lot of our reports on how well things went really depended on the flood of volunteers that we received that flood is very unusual. And we're going to see that flood go away for town meeting day, and that again will give us a better sense then looking back at that one, even more informatively than the other. Also, if we for those of us who are doing the mail all mail in. Historically, you don't see turnout when you know it looking at Oregon Washington, Utah, folks that have been doing this for a while. The general elections did not go up in terms of participation nearly as much as people thought they did, but the lower turnout elections that you know like the statewide primary like municipal elections. They went boom, right up to that general level. So we'll also all be looking at turnout to those of us who are doing the all mail and I guess, again, we're all going to be looking at unprecedented turnout that might only compare to a couple of these presidential primaries but it could be higher than that. So all of this means you're all going to have to be really nimble I think I'm whatever you all work on because you're going to get a lot more granular information. I think come town meeting day, even so that's some. Yeah. That's probably all I got. Thank you john committee members any questions for john with regard to how Montpelier's election season went. All right, I am not seeing any hands so Tim Arsenault thank you for being with us and tell us how things went down in Vernon. Thank you madam chairman. Firstly on both the clerk and town moderator in Vernon, and a long time broadcaster based in Brattleboro. So really I am used to a sense of panic, but this election was the perfect storm because not only were we dealing with the land records which brought on a high level of land record and property transfers, the election itself. But we also took advantage of the land records grants being offered by the tax department and put our land records online this season. With just one and a half people in this office that meant that we were were stepping in fetching. We did get a lot of confusion on absentee ballots to the point where some people were asking via social media, where's your drop box. I took a picture of it, put a big sandwich board sign and says this is it, and then they couldn't fill out the absentee ballot. So I did a YouTube video on how to fill out an absentee ballot. And that began to get some traction as the election went. We did our primary outside. Thankfully I had the help of our emergency management director who is a retired Brattleboro fire chief and he was very, very helpful in making sure that we were all properly socially distance. We did our November election in the usual place downstairs in the town hall with social distancing masks and all the like. And he was able to stop a couple who decided that they weren't going to wear masks for anything anyhow anyway. So we quickly bought a couple of ballots outside and make sure that they were taken care of before they went away. And voter education really is a key here because we have a all time high level of absentee ballots come in for the general election and all time a raw number of voters vote in November. But it seemed to me that there were some people who wanted no part of an absentee ballot they threw it away. And others just had no clue about how to deal with it, even trying to use a magic marker to fill it out. And of course, that led to the other side. Thankfully they call us and we met them at the door with another ballot so they could correct their mistake. But still, I think we got through it. Okay, some days I don't know how and both the clerk association and the secretary of state's office talked me down from the cliff several times during this process. So in the end we did fine but but it was a struggle at times. Well, Tim, given your double role I wish you luck for town meeting day. The select board already has tentatively agreed to push back the actual floor meeting will do our, our Australian ballot vote on the traditional day but we are looking at mid May for an actual floor meeting outside and I think that may suit our purpose. Excellent. Any questions from committee members for Tim about their experience. All right, I think that each of the clerks who's with us has had a chance to speak now and so I just want to open it up to a few, a few more general questions. Not all of you talked about this but I'm wondering if it was universally a challenge to find poll workers given that many of our poll workers are are of the retirement age. So clerks if you want to weigh in on this, feel free to give me a wave. And I'll just call on people as I see them wave or you can raise your little blue hand Kathy did you, did you have a challenge with poll workers. I did. We pay our assistant election officials a pretty good fee, which has helped us in the past to get all the necessary help, but I struggled this time. And until elections, you know, I was still looking for people willing, because, regardless of how many absentee ballots were turned in, we still had to be open. We, we had some of the same issues that you heard from all the other town clerks from refusing to wear a mask to, you know, bringing their, their ballots in. It was educating my assistant poll, my poll workers, assisting them, I actually brought them to the office the day before elections and showed them the setup and the process and the six foot distancing and their role and how to help people who come to the door. I actually had a assistant working outside the door, because I only had one entrance and one exit. So I had to traffic, you know, so it was hot on primary so the biggest complaint was, you know, the heat that we had to deal with. You know, I have a few people who said sure. And I provided them with all of the protection equipment, it was provided to me so it was a great, you know, it was a no expense to me. But a couple of them wanted everything they wanted the face mask and shield and the gloves and the cleaner and the, you know, the pens and everything. Some of my typical usual helper said no, I'm not coming anywhere near a voting presence. So COVID was definitely an issue, definitely an issue. Money couldn't bring some people here. So, and the proper here couldn't, couldn't bring some of them here either. So I had to, I had to really figure out a way to make it work and not have any one person work 14 hours. Except you. Well, thank you for that Bobby, what are you, what are your observations on poll workers. Initially, when we were talking about doing the November election inside. Most of my JP said that they wouldn't be able to work there all of an age that puts them at a higher risk. But I was pleasantly surprised at the number of new people who volunteered we don't pay our election workers. We've never had to we've always had volunteers but we had a lot of new volunteers. We decided that we could when we got the grant and we could afford to do a big tent outside. Some of my JP's also came, but they were scared. But it was nice to see some new faces also. I don't know what town meeting will bring because we're probably going to have to do it inside. John Odom. In my experience, we were flooded with volunteers. I had to turn them away, you know, both on election day and lead days leading up to election day where we had the more flexibility to do more with the polls. I volunteer management actually became a big time suck for me. So it was a very, I'm sure there's no question to me, you know I usually have to go out and find people and shake the bushes or really harass my BCA which can be hard to do. So this experience I know was unique. So it'll be different in the future, I'm sure. But this time around, boy did it make my life easier. And that's excellent Bob Hooper has a question. Well, Mr. Odom is warmed up there. Can he expand a little bit on the comment he made about the post office issue and I'd be interested to know if having just received a Christmas card last week mail from Pennsylvania. The day before Christmas I'm wondering if anybody else had male problems that are significant. Male problems were significant. I don't want to diminish the incredible improvement we were able to make from the postcard experience in August. I was just tremendous. But still we were unpleasantly surprised by how many came back. I'm thinking it's a tricky conversation to have, because, you know, we can't just go change addresses ourselves, we can't just put in an nco a run and update everybody's addresses. But we can I think there are opportunities and those are just a couple off the top of my head to, you know, empower, especially at the global level here the Secretary of State where which really contains all of our lists we just have individual queries into that list. There are creative ways to use those list enhancements that don't cross that line. Well, I mentioned the two that came to my head run up, run an nco a and don't touch any of the addresses but tag the ones who indicate they have moved is for us to challenge them. You can run it through a list to see if the addresses we have are considered deliverable. Sometimes some vendors I believe can sort of fix that so you're not changing the address. You're just straightening it up so it can be deliverable, and then tagging those ones for us that may not be deliverable so we're not wasting postage going out there and it gives us this clerk something to work on something to fix so those are just the couple of the top of my head but that's going to be a big deal because I think we got a lot of, at least, you know, I live in a very supportive community for the male and elections. So this may not quite indicate for everybody but at least in my community. There's a lot of leeway on problematic addresses when people occasionally getting to because they were at a place under two different names or similar names. I'm not going to continue to get that leeway from them. It needs to get better and obviously most of that comes on to me, but there are ways I think some creative use of some of these services that are out there could could help it to be done on the global level. So you're basically talking about administrative type stuff rather than the actual ballots getting out ballots getting back. Yeah, well I'm talking about where we send the ballots to and how we make sure they get there, getting them back and processing. There's not a whole lot of creative ways to do that besides getting the, you know, the letter the envelope where we just sort of have to do that I'm not sure. You know, getting them out. Obviously is also a bigger deal in town meeting day because we're doing it ourselves and the Secretary of State isn't. So, yeah, that end of it. There seems to be a lot less, a lot less wiggle room for how we do it, but the efficiency of doing it. I think there's a lot of room to have conversations about. Thanks john, go back to Bobby and then Donna. Hi, we, we had a lot of issues, more so in August than in November with the Postal Service. I don't, I didn't bring it up before because I don't know that this committee can solve the issue but we had a pile of postcards come back and deliverable, which is great if the person's moved, but when it's, you were a small town I know a lot of these people they hadn't moved. There was no reason why the card was returned it was just a mistake a flat out mistake of the Postal Service. It's happened with my personal mail. It's, it's a real procedural problem in our local post office. It's, it's not Marchfield it's plain field. Half of our town has a plain field zip code. And for whatever reason, they just didn't deliver those postcards they return them undeliverable, but the, they were addressed properly. It wasn't a formatting issue it wasn't a coding issue. They just return them. And if I hadn't known a lot of these voters, I would have, you know, challenge them not sent them a general ballot but I just some of the names struck me as people that are still around so I started. And each time suck for me because I had to call all of these people and we don't have phone number so I had to track them down. However, I could, you know, call the neighbor and whatever, and find out why, why the post office was returning their ballots and they could get a reason, but some of them were absentee ballots, it actually requested and then we had to figure out how to get their ballot to them. That was difficult. That sounds frustrating. And I hope that you have described your issue to the Secretary of State's office because I know in testimony with them last week. There was a lot of time on the phone with folks at the US Postal Service and it would be nice to know why that was happening. I will had given me will sending had given me the contact information for the person that was sort of overseeing the absentee ballot process for the Postal Service and I did communicate with her about a lot of that. I also had some ballots returned undeliverable that were not Marshfield ballots, but the people, the voters had Marshfield mailing addresses and I think that was just a case of our local post office. Seeing the red envelope and assuming it was mine. That's more understandable but the, the unreturnable you know void in return to sender address the unknown cards I don't know what to do about that. Donna had a hand up for just a quick one I'm more like John where I got so many requests for for poll workers. It was, it was unmanageable, which is a great issue to have except for those people who think they were alienated against but we tried to use everybody we got. But the issue that that came with and we have for polling locations in the city. I can't be at all for pulling locations at once. So we may have had one trained election worker there in the six or seven brand new people. So that is self, even though we had pre training we did a zoom meeting went through all everything asked questions and all that. It was still very nerve wracking on election day just like oh my God please just let that person I have there being that one person really be on their game today. So we had a lot like I said we've got a lot of people that requested it we just don't have a lot of experienced people. But maybe hopefully we'll get some. Excellent. Tim. I'm just one thing to point out I did have some first time voters also decided to be volunteers after more than half of our normal volunteers decided they could not because of covert concerns. In fact, in one case there was a gentleman who was claiming the election system was broken. I basically said put up or shut up come volunteer, and I want them over as a brand new volunteer. That's, that's excellent. Anyone else want to weigh in on poll workers I have another question that I would love to throw out to the group but want to make sure anyone else Kathy. I just wanted to quickly add on a concern about the postal service, because, like the others, I was taken by surprise in August by the fact that one of our centers that sorts mail was closed. You know, it dumped so much of the problem on one sorting center, and, and our post office to sort up the mass. You know, I, I send something to somebody took him two weeks and she lives a half a mile down the road. So, I, I'm not blaming my post office, I'm blaming the, you know, I'm upset about the way in which the whole thing was handled. The sorting centers. Yeah. Okay, so that leads me to another question that I wanted to ask, and that is in the sort of myriad of suggestions that have been made about how to improve on on this election now that we have such a good experience with voting by mail. Many of you received ballots after election day in the mail and to what extent was that a challenge, you know, just in terms of was it one was it 10 was it 40. And what is I guess in your opinion what is a fair window to say. The ballot was postmarked we ought to count it up to what day. And so I saw Carol's hand first so go right ahead Carol. Okay. I certainly received a few. If I, I could look but I would guess that it was five or less on and personally I have real reservations about the idea of expanding an acceptance date on beyond election day due to postcard postmark, because you'd be surprised how many pieces of mail we get on a daily basis that have no postmark. And so I, I would be concerned about how that would how that would sugar out, you know, how do I talk to a voter who says no but I mailed it and I say yeah but it doesn't have a postmark, but another voters does. This year it would have been an impossibility because they all the ones that were all mailed out by the Secretary of State's office, they all had a return postmark from September, because they had all had postage paid envelopes. So that would be something that would would have to be on would have to be addressed. But I really, I would have a hard time thinking that how we could put a process in place that would assure that every piece of mail coming in has a legible postmark. Thanks Carol, Bobby. I would like to echo what Carol says I would be strongly opposed to this we've had so many issues with postmarks on tax bills being illegible, not being postmarked at all, or being run through an office posted meter which as you know you can change the date and put your own pick your own date to put on it. And I think it's, it's the tough road to go down because there are so many different scenarios what do you do with one that looks like it might be November 8 but it could also be November 8 and you really, you received it on November 12. What do you do if it's illegible what do you do if it's absent what do you do if it's not a hand canceled mark but not a post US post office mark but a postage meter from someone's office then what do you do. I think it, you know, looking at the national news I think that is where a lot of the inconsistency comes from and a lot of the voters lose faith in the system when they see totals changing the next day and the next day and the next day. I think that it's not a road we need to go down. John Odom how many ballots did you receive after Election Day and what's your thought on counting those very, very few. I was really surprised fewer than usual. I think it's had it's funny. I have a sort of a very different thinking process I think then then the other clerks on this, but I end up in the same place for a completely different reason. You know we do manage tax bills utility bills, you know with the postmark does go find sure there are some exceptions to the role where we have issues but in general it's something we do and it's not a big deal and I do have great over, you know, two voters who mail out their ballots a week before one of them gets there in time one of them doesn't that that voter being able to say hey look I did everything, you know I did my due diligence I did everything right just like this person, but my vote doesn't count. I worry about that theoretically, but then the reality was, we had fewer come after the election than than we ever have before. I mean few enough that it's, it's probably comparable. Maybe even better. In some cases than the complaints or the issues we might have with charting those, those, you know, postmarks that, you know, come in for our taxes for our utility bills. So, you know I come down to, you know you want to, you don't want a solution without a problem. Right now, it ain't broke. I don't want to fix it but I you know I would keep that just as a matter of principle in the back of your own minds, you know as we go forward over the years but right now all that sort of theoretical stuff notwithstanding it really wasn't an issue everybody got stuff in. Thanks john Georgia, did you have your hand up. I would agree with Carol and Bobby and john you know hit the outcome of it. I, it's not broken right now it works. It's nice to know at 7pm that's it the ballots are in. We're done count those ballots. We can get our results into the Secretary of State's office in a timely manner, and I had to come back. And I always tell people that if you don't trust the mail because we had issues and fairly as well as please use the drop box and so that was utilized more than ever. And so, anyway, I think it should stay the same. Donna ballots after election day. So five or six, not not many. One thing we have noticed is Wednesday, the day after it's going to get the most. And I think that's just because I don't know why I mean these are first class postage. On the basis Tuesday we always get the least amount of mail in our, in our city, delivered to us than any other day of the week consistently. So I don't know if it's the sorting of the US Postman service that they don't do as much first class on that Tuesday. But I'm with everybody else. It's not a big problem those four, five or six people. You know, I don't think it's worth changing the system for them, because most of them were mailed the day before if you look at the stamp, you know, they knew it was going to be late. But I would, I would said more focus on if we can try and get the post service to say why aren't you processing things on Monday night why aren't they being processed Tuesday, instead of Wednesday. Yeah, Peter Anthony has a question. I was going to say Carol can tell you or confirm what you suspected namely that for some reason to Tuesday is treated differently. I think Carol can speak to this but I think the local Barry post office went out of their way on that particular Tuesday to make sure we got what came in but Tuesday for some reason is a as a non sort day. Peter, we've we've been told that by our local postmaster that they don't sort on Tuesdays and we don't get, you know, we may get a flyer or two but but we get virtually no mail on Tuesdays they did go out of their way to make sure that ballots were putting in this box on Tuesday, ones that came in on Monday. So, so they were helpful in that regard but but they as a general rule they don't sort mail on Tuesdays. Bobby your hand is up anything else on this topic. And the last question that I wanted to ask. Did you all use secure drop boxes and do you do you hope and intend to use them in future elections. Seeing some thumbs up anybody want to speak about that, the volume that came in that way Tim. Tim came in our town and we did not use a traditional box drop box instead. Our secure box was a converted toolbox done up by a local contractor who later on in the year became our brand new fire chief so he did all the metal work did the both into a outside railing and we tried to go as low cost as possible on it and it seemed to work. Excellent. Curry. Thank you, San Alvin city has always had a drop slot. We expanded the inside size of it and a temporary makeshift but secure drop box. And that was very helpful. As someone mentioned, having the ability to drop it off if people were really not trustworthy or for whatever reason did not want to mail their ballot or didn't have time to I think it was a great option. One thing I forgot to mention my overview was, you know, I mean, at the base of everything funding is so important and there was funding available for these drop boxes. If we could continue to learn from all of these elections. It would be nice if we could have the ability to have some funding for things like drop boxes. Mail machines, mail cutting machines so just those little details are still prevalent and sometimes municipalities may be struggling to make those updates when they know that those would be a good, good addition for their elections. Thanks, Bobby. But Curry said we had a small drop box. It was was never adequate for absentee voting, especially with the number that we had this year so we took advantage of the funding and bought a traditional through the wall mail slot and a gun cabinet, and mounted the gun cabinet to the inside wall and the mail ballots go right into the cabinet it's locked it's secure. People loved it, and we're still using it now with COVID because our office is locked. People are using it for dog licenses and tax payments and everything. All right toolbox gun cabinet Georgia, what do you have. Some great solutions. So, fairly has had the same small drop box at the to the right of the town hall up the stairs by the front door. Since I started here in 1990, and it was held together with duct tape. The last few years so certainly wasn't secure. The other thing that I realized it wasn't ADA compliant, which I had never it never had really occurred to me that because it had just always been there and we had always used it so with the funding from the Secretary of State's office. We were able to purchase and have installed a real secure lock box, right down by the road so people can actually drive up and drop their ballots off. And it really helped having that, especially for the November election as people were concerned about ballots coming in the mail to me, or they really going to get counted, you know I had this drop box so we took a picture of it put it right on the website to let people know it was there. And it's worked out really well we used it for tax payments, water payments, food shelf donations, whatever people are using it so I really appreciated the opportunity to have that money to do that. Great thanks Georgia anyone else on drop box. All right, Kathy go right ahead. We didn't have any type of a drop box prior to the November election. And again, the funding that was offered to us to install a drop box I took advantage of and was able to have a drop box installed just in two days, and has turned out to be very useful. You know, it was used quite a bit for the elections. But because the office is restricting, you know how many people come in, I get correspondence in there as well. So, it was great to have that ability to go ahead and put it in because we had some support for the funding of it. Thank you all. Any other general or specific questions from committee members. For this great resource here, Samantha Lefebvre go ahead. Thank you very much. And so this can be answered by whoever would like. So my first question is a reference to the Senate go box committee. That was on the 14th. And it will signing answered the question, but I would like to ask it to the clerks. So he said that there was really no way to determine if someone filled out a ballot for somebody else and sent it back in. And, you know, example like a spouse, or me filling it out for my aging parents or if I had an adult child. And so there's no way to protect that. And so I was wondering if that occurred anywhere where someone showed up to go on either the elections, and they already had another ballot there. I may talk about my first question if that did occur to anybody who is here. Donna. I actually did have it happen. And it seemed to be more. It had, I think there was one where someone voted someone else's ballot. But it also was one happened where a lot of ballots came to a house, and a lot of the people weren't looking the ballot they took when they went to do it. And the bar coded on the back that this belongs to John that Sally, John filled Sally's out and Sally may not feel John or Sally filled John now John goes to the poll and John's not there so we had to go looking through the envelopes that were returned and say, Oh, yeah, okay, because it's bar coded we don't look at the signature. We're just scanning them into the system, not matching the name that the bar code that was on the back with the name versus the name that's on the front of the certificate was a lot of flip flopping, which is why when we do ours. Everything's on the front we put the voters name on the front so we can look really quickly, but we probably had five or six that that happened with. And one or two of them I think we're done fraudulent I think the others were just mistakes. Someone voted someone else's ballot, but I think the others were an attempt, and it worked. And thank you. Yes, thank you very much. And so the reason more so I asked is because it's great that you know, Donna caught you know you could see what happened but for the towns where it happened and it wasn't recognized. I would say that it was someone that I know I purchased my house they have moved away their ballot came and I filled it out for them. They're still going to be on the voter checklist. They're not going to be missing where you send the challenge letter, you know they didn't respond back. And so what, you know, where's the follow up, if that just keeps continuing to happen, or is that something more that you guys are looking at trying to clear up the checklist. And then, and if they do show up, maybe Donna you can explain what you did, how do you verify if it was done fraudulently, or if there was a mistake, or so this is the example of where somebody had a ballot sent in by mail they showed up to vote in person, and you're like I'm sorry you've already voted. How did you follow up with that how did you figure out if it was fraudulent, or if there was a mistake. Unfortunately we get a lot of, and this is not a downplay on any say, we get a lot of election training, but we don't get a lot of election fraud train. How to detect it. So, and if there is we have reasons to suspect it. What we have heard in the past and I think things are changing a little bit was back. Well, you go and investigate is this is this is a local issue this is not our issue. This is a local. You guys need to get your local police department on it you need to. They're not trained for that kind of stuff. And that's what I have always heard. And so gets kind of funky when you get near the election date, because if somebody sold their house a week prior to the election, and they got mail their ballot like in November, they got it, they moved. But that doesn't say they didn't go to the new town in register there as well, or a new state, even another whole state. If it was in state it might be a little bit easier to catch because we did catch some people and actually have two voters who voted in two locations or tempted to but I caught them. And they were young people they were they got their absentee ballot in one town and where they lived and now they registered in South Burlington so I sent them a ballot because nothing came back at. And when I went to enter it in the system, they were gone. They voted in the other towns in the town pulled in from my checklist. So I have two instances where I confirmed with other towns where they actually did vote in both. But I was able to catch the second ballot from going through and put it aside and that's it is up for the Secretary State's office if they want to prosecute further on that they said well let me know what happens. And honestly I haven't heard anything else, but I have not really had the time to get back with them to see if anything is going to be done. I mean these were young think they were young people early 20s who just said well I didn't always do anything wrong. So it's always that great area right about an election time do I allow them to vote do I not. You know you give them time to vote in the new place or not. So there's always those few days just before an election that Lisa some chaos confusion. John Odom. Yeah we caught one person trying to vote twice. I ended up to SOS which I think took it to the the AG's office doesn't happen very much. You know what we get is generally anecdotal so it's not something I would put on the front burner, you know it's not to say it's it's a, it's a solution looking for a problem because it's always sort of built in problem to what we do. I think it's a good deal I think there are some due diligence things we could do I'm not so in favor of allowing the envelope not to be sealed just sort of principle but I think that's one of those due diligence things you do. Yeah, I mean another option that I know, I know Secretary condos would like to do would be some kind of pull book option where we can all be essentially working directly into the master database so it would be possible for somebody to go and vote in two positions for two different towns that brings a whole different, you know bag of worms as far as, you know, security of the databases but that's, you know, that's a direction that could be looked at. And Carol Doss. Yeah, we had, we had one or two that fell into the same sort of category on and what was nice is that on the Vermont election management system where we data enter all our absentee ballot requests and the ballot says they come back. It would flag a voter it wouldn't let you enter a ballot back from a voter who already had a returned ballot in the system from another community. And then you would reach out to the clerk and figure out, you know what was, was there an issue was it somebody legitimately will not legitimately but actually trying to vote twice. Or was there some other issue and we actually had a situation where the the voter hadn't tried to vote twice what had happened was in that a voter had been pulled from us to be registered in another community, but it was the wrong voter who had been pulled and actually allowed us to make a correction in the system so that the voter could have their ballot counted. So the statewide system did did help us with that. But what it does do is it makes you realize that the system is only as strong as the data that's entered into it. And we, all of us were overwhelmed with ballots coming back so trying to stay on top of the data entry was a challenge for virtually everybody. Thanks Carol anyone else want to jump in on this. All right, I'm going to jump to Mike McCarthy with a question Oh sorry, Kathy did you want to jump in on on potential fraud. But that was one of the things that even in a small town, one of the things that I don't know that I mentioned is we don't use a tabulator. And so, for all of the absentee ballots that were coming in ahead of time and again, being a small town it wasn't overwhelming and because I work alone it wasn't overwhelming. I was able to process the absentee ballots prior to election day which of course helped out, but I had a couple of attempts, you know somebody moved read it election times, but nothing that couldn't be resolved quickly. And I didn't have I don't think had any intentional tries. But again because we hand count everything. Most of what 99.9% of what came in came to my face came to me and I was able to decide because I was keeping on top of things if it was legitimate. All right, any other clerks want to jump in on the question of double, double voting or, or potential fraud. All right, Mike McCarthy has a question and then Mark Higley. One chair. I know here in St. Albans that curry had a really incredible procedure during the last couple of elections to sort of allow people to vote in person safely for those folks who didn't vote early and I'm, I'm wondering if there's been kind of a those best practices among the clerks and if there's been any formalization of those procedures especially when folks have kind of a similar situation because it was really impressive. And courage just been fantastic through all of this. Go ahead Carol. There's tremendous amount of sharing of information, particularly amongst the VMCT a we have the listserv and people put out questions all the time for myself. We did not do indoor voting for the August primary but were, but did for November and so I reached out to clerks in similar size communities that have similar facilities and asked them for copies of their layout. And I could look at that and, and use it to help me build the layout for my facility. And I know that there were similar kinds of outreach that were done throughout the season. Great. Excellent. Mark Higley. Yeah, I guess my question would be not so much concerning the folks that might be attempting to vote twice, which I can see that there's an opportunity to catch, catch that I'm a little concerned that the one the couple that Donna mentioned that could possibly be fraudulent, or be an investigated by the Attorney General or Secretary of State but my concern would be, and I guess the question would be, how do you catch a ballot if ballots are made to all registered voters. I know my uncle Charlie, who's had dementia for the past two years, and the folks pretty much understand how uncle Charlie would vote, and they sign it, pretty much know how a signature is and not not put past anybody but would you as town clerks be able to catch that. And, and again, how important it is is I go back to races like, you know, the Ainsworth-Buckston race twice, one and lost by one vote. So one vote is critical. And to me that's my concern for mailing out all these ballots to every registered voter. So the question is, could you catch an individual who signed a ballot for another individual that was debilitated to some or whatever the case might be. John Odom. I think it's a great question and I'm actually glad you bring it up because there's a point that I like to make to folks a lot. I mean the short answer to the question is, no, we can't necessarily stop them. Just the same as if we only had in person voting, we couldn't necessarily stop them from being either told how to vote before they got there or to have someone who is, you know, allowed to accompany them to their poll booth if they, you know, have, you know, limited capacity who would then tell them what how to vote right then and there. In both those cases, you've got the same situation in both those cases. I think the question is not going to be foolproof and probably never will be. I think what this points out is that the problems that get tend to get highlighted like that one for the all mail in voting that we talk about are essentially the same problems we already have. They have slightly different flavors to them. And I think it's probably good that the whole mail in voting thing is sort of bringing up those questions again because we should always be talking about them and we should always be thinking about them. But the mail in it doesn't bring anything new to the table in terms of problems like that very one that you need to watch for anyone else want to respond to that question. Yeah, and then Bobby agree with John. I mean, we have elderly folks that come in or spouses that come in that you know that are starting with starting with dementia or have some issue and they have their spouse, or their child go to the polling booth with them and try to explain it in fact I had to give one man, I think a couple of ballots this last November because he kept making a mistake and his wife kept telling him no that's not you know and so I get uncomfortable as a clerk listening to it as well. But yet that that voter wants that person there, they've asked to have that person come and help them so I just don't think that there is a way even with mail in that it's a problem we already have. Definitely, I agree with john. Bobby. I'm just going to add that if someone is determined to do that. There's sorry, my extended warranty is up. It's the third call today. If someone was determined to do that type of fraud there's nothing now stopping them from requesting an absentee ballot on behalf of that voter and doing it at home. Any other clerks want to weigh in on that. Any other committee members want to ask a question of the assembled wisdom and experience here at local elections administration. Sam go ahead. Thank you. And I appreciate the clicks and their knowledge so what, for example, if it's someone who votes for somebody who just doesn't want to vote. How is the, you know, what if what if that's what's happening. Hopefully that makes sense like what if they're deciding they're just going to skip voting, and then somebody else fills it out for them. And then I guess my other follow up is while I have the time if it's a problem. I already have like how are we going to fix it like how are we going to ensure that voting is easy to do, but it's impossible to cheat any ideas just throw it out to all the clerks that we have. So that's a main goal between all of us is to work towards that. And I would really like to hear the ideas because we're hearing that there's already the problems being acknowledged but how can we work to fix that. Carol and then John. I was just going to say that, you know, they're at this stage of the game there. There isn't any way in our current system that would that would preclude somebody making a request and then voting on behalf of someone who doesn't want to vote. You know, as, as we've talked about whether you're mailing ballots out to people or whether you're mailing them upon request. That is an opportunity that's out there. You certainly hope that that the numbers that do that are very, very, very small and I believe they are very, very, very small. I've had conversations with people before who have called me and said, you know, well I have grandma's power of attorney and I know how she likes to vote so send me her ballot and I'll take care of it and I'm like, no, that's, that's not the way it works. So, you know, we're able to run interference on certain occasions, but, but it's not, you know, it's not a completely sealed system kind of thing there are, there are opportunities there. I'm not sure what the, you know, short of what I consider to be some, some rather strict overly strict ways to, to, to conduct elections, you know, I mean, Vermont. I think prides itself and should pride itself in how accessible we make voting. And I'm, I'm afraid that if we, if we try to find solutions to problems that don't really exist, like voter fraud that we're that we're going to disenfranchise some of our voters. Thanks Carol that's, that is the, the push and pull that I have heard characterized john and then curry. Sure, I mean just to essentially echo what Carol said. There's no perfect system, human systems are not perfect, they're not, you know, they have scenes. And I think you look at where you need to make the adjustments. I mean you're, you're hearing from us that attempts at voter fraud are minimal that that's echoed through all the studies, you know, statewide, not nationwide. That's just, it's irrefutable at this point. So the question becomes, where do you want to affect that balance in a system that can never be perfect. You want to lean it towards the side of everyone who should vote gets to vote, maybe one or two of those others get through, or do you want to lean it to the side of absolutely every cheater, if it's even possible gets caught, even if that means squeezing out some legitimate it's sort of like the old welfare conversation right cheats versus making sure people get it. I think there is an issue of what is your sort of ethical priority from policy standpoint, which is more important to you and for my part and I think I probably echo most of the clerks it's more important to make sure that people who have a right to vote get that right to vote, but then just logically looking at it as a problem to be solved. You look at where that issue exists. And right now, as I said, there is virtually no voter for it is a tiny tiny thing. There's not a problem over there as Carol said. Now, if that changes, if from our policies or culture or whatever, you start seeing that number of voter frauds come up. You're going to see the clerks be the first people to say whoa whoa whoa the balance is out. Now that's looking at adjust the policy maybe to tweak that and bring that back down and fine tune it. But as it stands, it's just not there. So the system, at least in Vermont is pretty fine tuned. It's pretty tight, I think, I dare say it's as tight as it could possibly be. So, you know, I don't think you mess with that. I think it's terrific. Thank you. Yeah, in response to, you know, how to really tell, you know, if somebody had requested a ballot for you, I just, you know, and Carol had mentioned it to our Vermont elections management system does have a really great tool on the my voter page where you know Vermont does have ballot tracking. And, you know, it might be an area that, you know, might be able to help if they wanted to do in person voting, and they checked their ballot status and they said oh somebody I didn't vote yet you know maybe that might be a good tool to expand on, you know, publicize that people really can follow the path of their ballot and you know whether they know how to use it if you know they're elderly or however you know education they might have or internet access. But you know it is there. And it is one way that somebody might, you know, catch on if that were to happen and as you're hearing, you know, the incidence of voter fraud is so minimal across the board, but you know like things do happen. But it's just a tool that I really found helpful and I think a lot of voters were really excited about and really put their minds at ease when they did, you know, decide to mail vote or just vote in person that it was there. Donna, I think I've been a clerk for far too long now. You know, I've been 20 years in June as being a clerk. And I, I always in our hearts as clerks we want the integrity never to be contested. We want people to know they have complete trust in the election. And so I have a, I really do have a hard time to guess to be all this fraud things and I think it kind of harped on is that we've really never had any training of how do you find fraud, how do you investigate it how do you. And I think that's something that as we go through like john's point of, you know, that balancing of scales. Yes, and I completely agree with john, but we also have to make it known to people through somehow that we are still watching. We're not, you know, we're not out here doing just lala whatever happens is minimal, minimal amount. Let's not worry about it. I still think we have to still worry about it and tighten things up and we can and one of the things that really bugs me, and I know the rest of some of my fellow clerks are going to agree was like on election day when someone comes in to register to vote. They can just walk in say hi I'm Donna Kenville and I live in Marshfield. Now, Bobby apply catch them because she knows everybody in Marshfield, but Bobby came to South Burlington and did that. We're not going to know she's in South Burlington. So I really, you know, what we need to do to find for what a fraud is to make it so we don't disenfranchise people. We also got to find ways to make it that the information that we're getting is very verifiable, I guess if that's the correct word. And I keep saying on election day I after people registered to vote on election day I send them all a notice say welcome to the city and you've been new voter. And there have been some presidential elections that I'll get 15 to 20 of them back. It's not at this address. Now it could be the post office not wanting to deliver, or it could be the fact that no one really truly lives there. I think as we go through this conversation, I think a we need training more on it and be we have to definitely let people know that you know we are still watching and tighten things up so that people don't don't sneak in who shouldn't be but don't want to make that balance like this, but make people a little bit more accountable on some things I have up 2000 people registered using a social security number. I can't prove they've been on the air for 10 years. And they're voting, and the majority of them are, but the rest of them are not. Thanks Donna Bobby on this topic. Yeah, I, I was going to suggest, along with what Donna said that for people to know that we're watching. When we do report something. It needs to be followed up on. I've had, and I had an issue in March field only once in 23 years of someone who did not live in my town swearing they lived in my town and voting. And an hour later their landlord came in and I just mentioned oh I met your tenant and he said, a person moved out of town five years ago. I reported it. Nothing was ever done. I can't say that the person voted twice. I don't know that he voted in another town but I know he wasn't eligible to vote in my town, and he lied and got to vote because we don't have a day to day voter we don't have the time for the mail to come back and find out that they're not really there. So, when those rare occasions do happen they need to be investigated they need to be looked into. Thanks Bobby. Any other clerks on this issue before I pop it Oh Carol go right ahead and then we'll give Mike for wiki the last question. John had mentioned, you know that that one of the Secretary of State's goals is to ultimately have us clerks be able to use a live statewide checklist at our polling places for marking people in on which would help with any kind of duplication. I took the time in November because we had I don't know about 100 people registered to vote. And I took the time to data enter them into the system before allowing them to vote which would let me see if they had voted in another community yet at least absentee. We don't know day of, but that that gave me that opportunity, but it does bring up a larger issue which is not every clerk has internet access at their polling places. And so having that kind of universal access on election day is currently just not possible. Right. All right, so Mike more wiki you get the last question. Trying to learn to lower my hand as I unmute myself, one of those protocols and just quickly to that last question. I'll share what I was. I've been saying for 20 years when it comes to internet access. We're working on it. But I do hope in the next year or so, there's going to be federal money that's going to allow us to make some big, big progress here in Vermont. I appreciate all the work that you do on the ground level here. I know when we want to find out what's happening we asked the clerks, and I just want to hold up a concern that I'm not sure we're having right now but I don't want to have in Vermont because it's not happening nationwide. And the reality is that the, the population of people of color in Vermont is growing. And across the country, the challenge there is voter suppression. And what I want to do at some point we may come back to you and see what we can do to make sure voter suppression isn't happening here in Vermont, as the population of people of color in the BIPOC community grows. I want to hold that concern up to think about and, and as you see, as all of us are seeing more people of color in our small towns and our larger towns. I want to hold up that concern that that we get ahead of the curve when it comes to to to voter suppression because nationwide I think voter suppression is a much bigger problem than voter fraud. So that that's the last thing I want to share about that. Thank you. Not necessarily a question but definitely a statement that I would give folks an opportunity to answer if they, if they felt they wanted to say something about that. All right, seeing some thumbs up but anybody who wants to jump in go ahead and un-mic and respond to that. I want to say that I was overwhelmed when I looked at the news and saw in some of these districts, some of these states where the lines were just so long. I just can't even imagine it was just unbelievable people waiting in line for hours all day, you know, no place to go use the bathroom no place to get water no place it's and staying there just so they could have their right to vote it was, it was pretty amazing to see. And it also made me very proud that in Vermont we did everything we could together from big town to small town Republican Democrat we worked together to make sure that people could vote safely and didn't have to spend, you know, three to six hours standing in line on election day. In order to do that. John Odom. Yeah, just really, really briefly. You know I had a situation. This time, or you know I had a candidate on the ballot for JP his name was Jose. So I went into it got the proof back you know it has the stress mark over the E, and the ballots all came back, jos. And it's because the actual printer, even though it showed up correctly on the proof couldn't handle that. So it just spat out all my ballots I had to contact them and say oh my God is, you know I'll redo the ballots and you know he was okay with it. And just maybe the biggest thing we all need to think about, at least at the local level with the concern is making sure folks feel welcome as part of the community to vote. If they, you know, if they're new to the community. Maybe they're not as you know, really wide as we are. And just an example of a tiny little way that the system locally my system might have made him feel unwelcome. And I just feel terrible about that so I think that's the kind of thing we can do. Curry. And just to add, you know, I, when we went forward with mailing ballots to everyone, you know one of the first things I thought of was that it's such an inclusive way to have, you know, people voting you know, people who aren't necessarily able to take that time off work or, you know, if they needed the extra time to ask more questions, you know, they got their ballot. And I just really, really like that. Thank you all. And I want to just give a great big hearty thank you to to this assembly of clerks who have given us a couple hours out of their, their work week and I know that these are precious hours because the list of things that you have in you is is always long, but we do so very much appreciate this because one of the most important areas of jurisdiction for this committee is elections law. And it was really important to us to get this debrief with you so that we could hear what was good what was bad what would you change what would you keep the same. And so I guess I would welcome you to to follow up with an email if you think of anything that that came up in the conversation today that you didn't get to share with us. And do please stay in touch with the legislative process. If we are as a state going to decide that this experiment and mailing a ballot to everyone is a good thing and and we want to keep doing it. I think that people is going to need to move this year so we want to keep our eyes on on any lessons learned and how to share best practices and how to, you know, minimize the snags, whatever those may be so thank you all for your time here with us today and I very much appreciate it.