 Good morning. You are with the Vermont house government operations committee. We are meeting this morning to continue our work on S 15. We heard from half a dozen or more witnesses on the bill last week. But we had not yet had the opportunity to dive in deep from the perspective of our elections administrators. So we are joined here today by director of elections will sending and Carol does, who is with the municipal clerks and treasures Association and we expect that this will be a fruitful conversation about the various aspects of the bill. Lots of folks had questions, wanting to understand how how these changes would be implemented on the ground and how they compare to what we did or didn't do in the 2020 universal vote by mail. So welcome to will sending and Carol does and Chris winters. I don't know if the three of you flipped a coin while you were in the waiting room to see who would go first, but I will let you tell me. Who's ready to go. Thank you madam chair if you don't mind. I would quickly kind of kick off this discussion and then turn it over to the real elections experts will sending and Carol does what what I thought would be most helpful for the committee based on what we heard from you last week and what I saw in your discussion yesterday was to start with an overview of of the Vermont experience in three very interrelated areas of checklist maintenance, the security measures that we do have in place and a brief discussion also about voter fraud is that acceptable madam chair. That sounds like it touches on some of the issues we had questions around so thank you. Thank you and hopefully this will answer some of the questions in advance but there'll be plenty of opportunity to talk to director sending about the questions that you have. I'll also just let the committee know that I sent over an overview of PowerPoint this morning to Andrea and it should be on your committee page. It's a very high level bullet points of what we're talking about here today in our opening testimony. So with an increase in mail ballots and this bill and s 15 comes an increased responsibility to make sure that all the addresses in the voter checklist are up to date and as accurate as possible. And I would just say that due to the strides we've made over the last several years our voter checklist is the most accurate it has ever been and it's getting better and more accurate every single day. And we'll can talk about some reasons why that is happening. We thought we'd start out today telling you with the steps that we take along with our local state and national partners to make sure that that voter checklist is scoured and updated constantly as people move around or or pass away. Everyone wants as accurate a voter checklist as possible. But we have to recognize that this has to be done with a balance with voter access because the removal of a voter from the voter checklist has to be done in a really careful and deliberate way and that's according to state law and federal law and our elections procedures. So I'll turn it over to Will to walk through how this maintenance occurs and it occurs through the use of our town clerks and local boards of civil authority. Automatic voter registration has played a big part in making our voter checklist more accurate. Our Vermont election management system flags any moves within state and the clerks can talk to each other through Vems about those moves. We get monthly death death notices from the Department of Health. We get move notices from other states. We are now a member of the 30 state electronic registration information center which is going to be a powerful tool in finding voters who are registered in multiple states. We had our postcard and ballot mailing efforts in 2020 that went a long ways toward election checklist cleanup. And we also have big plans for what we're calling our summer of checklist maintenance in 2021 in anticipation of another vote by mail election. So I'll turn it over to Will to walk through a little bit of the detail in each of those areas. Great. Thank you, Chris. Welcome, Will. Thank you. Yes, thanks, Chris. And hi to the committee good to be back. And thank you for your patience with me being away for a little bit last week. I appreciate it but nice to be back. And Chris gave a nice overview there like he said I'm just going to go into a little more detail. In terms of our the laws around checklist maintenance and the processes around it here in Vermont. And as Chris mentioned at the top I think it's even more important than ever for us to do everything we can to clean up our checklist as much as possible, have it as up to date as possible, and have the records even even when they are qualified registered voters were here right now contain all of the information that makes it makes it easier to administer the elections so we want complete records and accurate records and we're intending to mail ballots to all voters for the November general elections all active voters like the bill contemplates again this becomes more important than ever. When people, people have been raising concerns about various means of voter fraud, always and even more so, since the introduction of the bill and I think the what seems to be sort of the primary concern that I hear out is about the possibility of somebody returning ballots that are sent to a voter who's no longer registered or no longer at the address that we have on the checklist, and the possibility that those ballots could be returned by somebody other than that person. And so what's the, what's the most direct best way to address that particular risk of fraud it's to have an accurate checklist that has as few of those bad addresses as possible. And really this checklist maintenance is a primary security measure. When you're talking about mailing out ballots to all active registered voters. So, it's always been an important piece of the clerks responsibilities and our responsibilities at the state, however, even before and despite whether we decide to mail a ballot to all active voters. So, the checklist maintenance I always call it one of their primary election related responsibilities for the town clerks in the BC as we try to emphasize that at times when there isn't an immediate pending election when they don't have actual election administration work to do they they're one ongoing throughout the year elections related responsibility is to keep up with the voter checklist. And that means adding names as applications come in reviewing those applications making sure they're active voters, and also efforts at maintenance at reaching out to voters who you think may have moved or passed away. So we highlight checklist maintenance in in all of the materials that we provide to the clerks for training are our primary procedures booklet starts with checklist maintenance as the off season duty of clerks and BC as and walks them through the checklists around it. Our trainings start with checklist maintenance as the first thing I talked about during like by annual summer trainings in the summer before the election. And the in periodic bulletins that we send to the clerk clerks were constantly reminding them about checklist maintenance, and especially in the off year when they're actually required by state law to do a review person by person of the checklist and I'll get to that in a second. And again, this is around checklist maintenance a sees when people talk about it these days and as the attention on this bill has grown it's, it's as if it's kind of the Wild West out there and it really is. There are specific laws both at the federal and state level that govern how names are added and removed from the checklist. There are other procedures in our office that help the clerks take care of that and features of our system and other efforts we're taking that are all geared toward cleaning up the checklist. So from a legal perspective. And, and the, I guess, the most common reason that you would want to remove somebody from the checklist is because they moved out of town because they changed their place of residence. So this is sort of the, the reason for removing from someone from the checklist that is right for the most abuse. Historically people have been removed from checklist on the assumption that they have moved to members that concerned people in terms of voter disenfranchisement that led to when the National Voter Registration Act was passed some provisions in the MVRA that speak to checklist maintenance and particularly removing names from the checklist for reasons of a change of residence. And I've walked the committee through that law before but I will really quickly now to. To make sure that you're new and just to refresh your memory. What the MVRA requires is that in order to before you may remove somebody for the reason of a change of residence, you have to mail that voter a notice. And it says you mail them a notice at their last known address to the, to the keeper of the checklist. That notice gives the voter an opportunity to say, Hey, I still live here and provide either their new address or confirm that they are at the address that you have on the list. They say no, you can remove me. If you do not get a response to that notice sent to that voter when that notice is sent is when they go into the challenge status on our checklist. So any voters that have been sent that notice on the on the assumption or the notion that they may have moved that town will be a challenge voter and wouldn't be sent a ballot under the provisions of the bill as it's currently written. So they either reply to that notice for a period of two general elections, they can then be removed from the list. So they either reply to that notice sending it back, contacting the clerks in some other way giving them a call sending them an email, or when they arrive to vote, or what if they request an absentee ballot. So if a challenge voter request an absentee ballot, the clerk, along with the ballot sends the opportunity to respond to the challenge notice. And so you expect to get back from that voter both the statement that yes I'm still a resident here, and here's my voted ballot that I requested from you to go up at the polls they're also presented with the affidavit to affirm their residents which is essentially the same language that is the response to the challenge letter. So essentially anytime you touch those voters anywhere in person. You're going to ask them to respond to that letter and return them to active status. That applies across the country to federal law. The other provision that's important in the NRA at federal level is it says that you cannot do any such systematic program to remove voters from your checklist within 90 days of a federal election. It's one of the clerks that they once they're within the 90 day window of one of the federal elections you can't be doing that kind of name by name review of your checklist is to prevent mass removals of voters in the run up to an election in the month before an election. Representative Hooper has a question for you. Thank you chair. Hey, well, hope you had a good time. That postcard that we send out is that something that the post office is empowered to forward or not. If there's a forwarding address on file if it's entirely designed to get the voters notice to needing to do something. I believe so Carol do you know specifically whether those are forwarded or not. They're unforwardable. They're sent the first class mail so they would be forwarded. Yeah, within within the forwarding window. So, okay, thank you. Of course that you know it depends on the voter having provided that forwarding address to the post office. Well I asked because some of the official mail has that postmaster do not forward stuff on it so yeah. If anyone is curious about the state specific rules about removing names from our checklist. It's a single section in the statute it's title 17 section 2150, and I'd encourage anybody on the committee. If anyone is curious about it to give it a read it's two or three pages. What it makes clear is that aside from those change of residents removals, which are governed by the National Voter Registration Act. It tells a set of other reasons why a clerk or BCA can remove a name from the checklist. Without that notice being provided. Those are really distinct and clear. It's if you get written notice from the voter. It's either official or public notice so for example obituaries obituaries in the newspaper are enough, as well as more official notices from the Department of Health. If you get notice from another clerk in Vermont that the voter has registered there to remove them from their seat from your checklist. And then any changes or updates that are generated through the automatic voter registration at the DMV. Other than those reasons, if it's just an notion that the voter has moved out of town again the notice letter has to be sent. That's sort of your ongoing individual instances of checklist maintenance and how they're addressed by the clerks. There's also a requirement in the statute that you will see in that same section 2150 that says that every two years in the off year, not numbered year, the BCA gets together and does a name by name review of the checklist. It has to be completed by September 31 of this year. My office typically sends a bulletin describing the law and the process around this time, April or May of the year reminding the clerks and the BCA is that before September 31 they need to engage in this process. I think one typical method of doing so in the larger towns the clerk will, for instance, break up the checklist a to J K to M and to S, and so forth, and let each member of the BCA review a section of the checklist or multiple sections to arrive at that meeting with voters who they think possibly should be sent a challenge letter. The BCA then sits around the table shares their common knowledge of the voters in their town and decides collectively whether or not to challenge any particular voter. That's the systematic review that's supposed to happen every two years. And the towns each file certification with our office that they've completed that review. Our role at the state level for checklist maintenance is really to provide the guidance to the towns on these various processes and how to use our system. The statewide voter checklist first came to be in around 2006. And as a result of the help America vote act after the 2000 election in Florida. And the first iteration lasted until about 2014, which is when we installed our current statewide voter checklist and election management system which was put in place in 2015. This new system really allows for better tracking of voters as they move around the town, the state excuse me. If a voter registers in one town in Vermont who was previously on another town's checklist it pulls the voter off of that checklist, and notifies the clerk in that town that the voter has been removed from their checklist and provides the opportunity for the clerk to return that voter to their town if that was a mistake and registration for instance, but the default in the system right now is that if a voter registers in one town who was previously on another town's checklist it will be automatically removed from that checklist that one piece of functionality has really helped to reduce the creation of duplicates in the system it was a very common problem that's that a voter would be added in one town and not removed from another town's checklist, which I believe created a lot of the legacy duplicates that we still have in the data they're getting cleaned up. We've really reduced the number of new instances of that since 2015. As Chris mentioned, get notice from other states, if a Vermont voter, when they register to vote in another state indicates that they were previously registered in Vermont almost all voter registration applications around the country asked that question where you previously registered somewhere else and where you write the town and city in Vermont, and most of the states I can say are good about providing us notice of those voter registrations. Get notice from Florida as you might assume in Arizona. And my staff on a constant basis will receive those into our office and farm them out to the various parts around the state. We also do our part of course if any voters register in Vermont and indicate that they were previously registered in another state. We also contact email for a checklist administrator in all 50 states DC in Puerto Rico, and we send a notice to any of them anytime this that a person indicates that they were previously registered in another state. On a monthly basis, a member of my staff gets a report from the Department of Health with the deaths that have occurred in Vermont. A touch base with her last week it's typically around 300 or so is probably an average. Unfortunately and sadly it's gone up over the past year during coven. For example, will omit any deaths of Vermonters who are 15 or younger, there are typically a few of those scattered throughout the monthly reports, and then those are transmitted again through the election management system to the clerks dashboards. Here are your notices of death from the death death, excuse me health department to be removed from the checklist notices of moves and registrations from other states I covered that. This is sort of the fundamental basic checklist laws and procedures. I'm just going to quickly touch on a few other initiatives that also are important to that effort. Number one is automatic voter registration of course, the primary goal of automatic voter registration at the DMV which essentially switch the question that the DMV from having to opt in to to register and to vote to opting out so it happens unless you say no. It's certainly increased our new registration rate, and that was probably the primary goal just to get as many eligible Vermonters who were out there who hadn't thought about registering to vote but do think about we're doing their license to be included on the roles. But as importantly and almost more importantly to us and the clerks as we've gone along is what it's done in terms of record cleanup. We're getting out information and existing records so records that we didn't have a driver's license number didn't have a birth date of birth or an accurate address that when a voter updates at the DMV and we get that information the clerks can fill out that record. I do know and I want to acknowledge the clerks are often frustrated with the quality of data that comes over from the DMV. Additionally, that's typically as far as we can tell primarily driven by the customer themselves providing that data to the DMV or old data to the DMV or bad addresses to the DMV that then just flow through to us. There's also data entry errors though that happen with that volume of data. On the whole, it's been a really successful effort in terms of adding voters to the roles and cleaning up the voter checklist. So representative Dan and with a question, if I can interrupt you for a moment. Actually, I have a couple of questions will. I think you're testifying today. Does the Secretary of State's office use the United States post office national change of address system to verify change of addresses. No, ret can and not on a regular basis, we it's something we have looked into a number of times we've worked with it, an administrator administrator of that program, and a few issues with our data have made it not ideal. Now, having said that I was going to get to a couple bullets down here are joining the Eric initiative and the Eric initiative will enable us to take advantage of NCOA on a regular basis as well as a couple other databases. Okay, my second question is 17 vs a section 2154 is the statewide voter checklist law. And I'm just looking at it. It does say ensure the compatibility and comparability of information on the checklist with DMV computer systems. But it doesn't seem to require any other checks. Is that is that correct or I think that is correct. That's the only one that's explicit in statute. Okay, so you're checking with the Department of Health is not required in statute for deaths. I don't believe that's codified anywhere but let me make sure I have the accurate answer to that question for you I'll get back if I find language and statute but I think that's administrative procedure at this point. Okay. So that's because you mentioned that we do get the nightly, excuse me, madam chair. Yeah, that's great. Go ahead. We get the full nightly customer file from the DMV. So these are not just records that are coming over through the AVR process. In addition to that in addition to the new registrations and change of addresses we just get their whole customer file with the driver's license numbers, and that's what enables the system to automatically verify driver's license numbers when the clerk center them for new registrations which we do do. All right representative Leclerc has question. Thank you madam chair and good morning will how are you. I'm good morning. But you're very happy to be back at work. A couple questions about this statewide checklist. Number one in the in the conversation around the curing. What kind of information. Do the well goes into the statewide checklist from DMV or say from somebody goes to the town clerk in other words, is there any place to get like contact numbers phone numbers email addresses or who to those are included those are data that's collected on the registration form, but specifically actually phone number and email address are two of the pieces that are exempt from disclosure. Okay. So, I know I'm jumping ahead a little bit here but in order to have any sort of effective influence on this curing. Wouldn't we need that information from voters other than just a mailing address potentially. I think one of the reasons the bill was drafted the way it currently is is because of the inconsistency of whether we have phone or email for voters in their records and that's why the default is to send the postcard. Okay. Another question I have is on the statewide voter checklist. As it's turning out we're going to end up having different checklists by minutes of Palo depending on faith for instance if we, if the non citizen voting goes through those checklists the information on those checklists or the voters on those checklists that doesn't make the statewide voter checklist does it. I think it's very clear and very strong about the fact that any of those checklists that would contain non citizens need to be wholly separate and distinct from ours. Okay. Well we're also going to be discussing another bill on the floor of the house today about 16 year olds would that that would require its own separate checklist as well, would it not. I would have to see how it's written but I, I don't think so I think what. Again knowing knowing not a lot about what's intended by it that we could create a pending status for 16 year olds in the statewide checklist. And what does that mean pending. So you'd have their information already to become an active voter at at at such time that they're old enough. But then they wouldn't appear on any printed checklists that were used for election administration. But it is my understanding they're only going to be allowed to vote on municipal issues not statewide. Yes, and to give you an example. It's the reverse currently with 17 year olds, the constitutional amendment authorized 17 year olds to vote in the primary if they'll be 18 by the general election. Correct. And so just for instance what our system can do with those voters. And so they have to be in there as 17 year olds in order to appear on the checklist for the statewide primary. But the system knows and excludes them when it prints a local election checklist. Okay, during that same time. So we can, we can have that kind of nuance in the system. So my, my last question will be then that so on the statewide voter checklist is, is there a birthday included on those. Yes. Okay, very good. Thanks. However, just just so you know the month and day of birth are exempt. So when I give out the voter file it just says your year of birth, not your month and day. Thank you. Yeah. As Chris mentioned and I'll keep it brief I know everybody has a lot of questions and we need to get to a lot of other folks. But Chris did mention that just the process we went through in 2020. So the checklist update and maintenance the postcard mailing for the primary, those were forwarded those were sent to all active and challenged voters the challenged voters got a got a different postcard that gave them the opportunity to respond to the challenge again and affirm their residents so it was like a kind of a second notice to all of the challenge voters last June. For the general election as you know the ballots were not forwardable. And one of the main pain points for the clerks was the receipt of a ton of undeliverable ballots back to their offices. But at the very least one of the benefits of that and a lot of towns is that those were used as a starting point for a discussion about challenging voters whose ballots came back. So I think we made a lot of progress in 2020 with records and we're just going to try and increase that Chris mentioned that I sort of pitched this to him about a month or so ago. I'd like to really consider this summer 2021 is the summer of checklist maintenance. I was proud of that and excited by it. I'm not going to mention nerd at this point. But but to be serious I want to focus with the clerks I want to send them a number of bulletins over the summer, both reemphasizing the BCA review that needs to happen by September 31, the various things they can do along the way to prepare for that. And tips to update records that don't contain certain information. We also I'm going to work in a lot more detail with our election management vendor system vendor and checklist vendor to provide the clerks data for instance I can start to run reports out of this system that will identify any record that doesn't have a driver's license, or any record that doesn't have a birth date. And I want to kind of do an iterative iterative process over this year providing the clerks with that summary data about their voters and about their checklist to let them take action on and do further. And probably most importantly I'd also like to pair it with a social media campaign that Chris and our, our robust social media team can take the lead on to encourage voters to contact their clerks, and ask about the data in their record and update it to ensure their mailing, mailing addresses okay, and talking about that hey Vermonters. We're going to mail a ballot to everybody who's an active registered voter on the checklist in 2022 for the general election, make sure your address is up to date make sure your information is up to date in the checklist. But perhaps most importantly, this summer we're we're right on the brink a couple weeks away with some final data massaging of really starting to. We've been a member for the last year but have been working on the data exchange but to start taking advantage of the Eric group that we've talked about a couple times this is the electronic registration information center, of which about 30 states are members at this point. And the basics of that program or that the member states supply their DMV files and their voter checklist files, they're anonymized before they go into the Eric group, they're compared, and the states are provided with four basic reports, which we will then we will accept at the state level through the election management system and again farm out to the parts on a town by town basis. I thought I had them listed but I'm going to have to pull them off the top of my head are in these are going to be critical to further further maintenance they are any potential out of state moves. So here's voters on your checklist that we believe have moved out of state in state moves here's voters that are in one town in Vermont that appear to have moved to another town in Vermont. So here are any records, and it'll be a more robust set of death information because it's going to utilize the social security information information the ssa. So they have access to that database and can do comparisons against that database, and also duplicates. So here are any records in your checklist that we believe are duplicates. Those for instance the in state moves and the out of state moves. Again, because of the MVRA are still subject to that law. So what that Eric data will provide is not the clerks won't be able to act on that and just remove the name of somebody who is potentially moved to a state that they will challenge that voter in the normal process and send the MPRA states that are members speak really highly of the data that they get back from Eric, the matches are good. It's a very strong algorithm they use they're not just doing first name last name and date of birth. There's been previous efforts at this kind of data sharing between states for election checklist they have not been as robust and resulted in bad data. The Eric group is sort of a response to those to do it right. And in addition to their focus on checklist maintenance just so that you guys know another report they give us I shouldn't have left out sort of the other side of their role is is voter outreach and they'll identify eligible but unregistered Vermonters who we should send an opportunity to register to. And this is what I had about checklist maintenance and I just want to reiterate that, again, all of that work, both the standard work that has been going on for years and the new initiatives that we're going to engage in are a really important security measure to reduce the risk of ballots being returned by from bad addresses or from voters that have moved out of state. So I'll pass it back to Chris on that note to talk a little bit more about security if that's okay. Let me just let representative and jump in with a question first. Um, so will would you be opposed if we amended section 2154 to add some of these new steps that you're undertaking, such as using Eric. In general, sometimes I worry Rep Ganon about getting too far into the details of the of administration in the statute but I also think it's important to set standards so that that work continues to be done past the time when I'm here or Secretary Thomas is here. And I would just add that we'd want that language to be flexible enough so you know Eric might be the great thing right now but there may be another group that we want to join down the road there was a previous group called cross check that turned out to be not so good. And so, you know some states were taking an event advantage of that and then dropped it so just some flexibility in the language but Okay. Thank you. I also would note rep Ganon to keep an eye on I'm sure you have already but the provisions that are being proposed in at the federal level in S one and HR one, because there is there is some more prescriptive language about checklist maintenance potentially coming from the federal level. If there are no other questions we can move on to some of the security measures that we put in place but before we do I think we'll mentioned it but I think it's worth repeating that as he discussed the challenge the challenge process and challenged voters for the November general election we did not send ballots out to those challenged voters only those that are in the active status so some of those registered voters who are of questionable status did not get mailed about it and that's how S 15 is crafted as well. So there's that reduced risk of sending a ballot to someone who's not actually in the state anymore or in the town anymore. So moving on to election security. I did hear a lot of questions about election security and how secure Vermont elections are after our first round of testimony. So we thought it would be helpful again to highlight why elections in Vermont are so secure. What steps we've taken to ensure election integrity and why our elections remain secure in 2020 even with record turnout and so much of a huge increase in voting by mail. So again will is going to walk through just a few of the things that we do to make sure that our elections are protected and are trustworthy, including you know that primary security measure measure which is checklist maintenance which he already walked through. But then he's going to talk to you about our secure ballot envelopes, which include barcoding signatures and certification language are secure drop boxes for ballot return. The harsh penalties that we have for any offenses against the purity of elections. And we have also our town clerk kind of security force and our local election workers keeping an eye on things. We have post election audits, one which we just completed yesterday. We had delayed that post election audit due to coven but we ran through that yesterday and the results really show that the, that the tabulators that we use can be trusted that the clerks and election workers in our towns are doing a good and accurate job of reporting results. Another security measure that we have are the recounts that happen almost every election where we double check the work of various local elections when the race is close paper ballots is another big one a best practice and something that Vermont does. So we have that receipt we have that way to go back and check if anything looks out of order in an election. We have election processes that are that are built in that many of which this committee passed into law to ensure transparency to ensure security and the non partisan handling of elections. And the last piece is cyber security and our federal partners and we could spend a whole day talking about that too but that's just one way that we protect against cyber threats. We can work with other states and work with federal and local law enforcement to protect our elections so it will if you want to step through some of those in a little bit more detail. So before you start will, I think it would be helpful for me to point out to committee members that you, you may notice that the Secretary of State's office is tracking. The questions that they heard asked when we were reviewing the bill yesterday before lunch. And so if you don't hear your particular question answered explicitly please feel free to raise a hand and we will, you know we can ask your particular way I know that there were a fair number of spots in the bill when we were walking through it yesterday where people had questions and queries and so, you know, well, I'll keep an eye on hands and try to interrupt director sending when I see folks come with questions. So thank you to Secretary States staff for for answering some of the questions that you saw on yesterday's committee conversation. You're welcome thanks Madam chair and I'll keep this one brief to because I most important to get the folks questions and answer those forum. As Chris said I think around security the checklist maintenance like I emphasized is that is a big first important security measure, just to make sure that ballots are going to active registered eligible voters at the correct addresses and not anywhere that being said, even if ballots get sent out to a wrong address or to a voter who has since moved or passed away years ago, what are the controls to keep somebody from just sending that ballot back voting and sending it back. I think most the committee's aware but I think it's worth stating on the record here some basic basic measures in Vermont elections that some people don't seem to be aware exists. The number one and you've heard me say before is that any particular voter can only return a single ballot. As ballots come back, either by mail or voted in person in the office during the early voting period, or voters that arrive on election day at the polls your name is checked off the checklist when your ballot is received back. And once your name has been checked off another ballot can't come in for you. In addition to that, the that checklist with all the names checked off of people who have returned ballots is compared at the end of the night to the number total number of ballots counted by the tabulator or by the folks counting the ballots by hand and count towns, and those two numbers need to match. So, just at a very basic level that's what controls against, for instance ballot box stuffing. I mean, it makes me sad. The calls that I get about concerns about a clerk or, or a local election officials stuffing the ballots. I think that's part of the concern about early processing is our ballots just being put in the box along with the absentees that come back. That kind of thing is controlled by the numbers and you would see right away if there were more ballots counted than voters checked off the checklist is having submitted those ballots. This is a baseline. I think probably the most important security measure that keeps folks from committing early, early voting voter fraud via returning ballots for other voters by mail are the penalties for doing so. And the clear language on the election on the certificate envelope which I think Chris sent to Andrea maybe to put on the committee page or not yet he's shaking said no we can provide. I didn't yet but I will send that along now. I've got it here and I've read it to you all before but before somebody could sign one of these certificate envelopes and send the ballot back for another person they'd have to sign their name under the following language. I swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that I am a legal voter on the voter registration checklist for the town or city of blank which is typically filled in by the clerk or the voter. Number two, I am not registering requesting a ballot or voting in any other jurisdiction in the United States except in my jurisdiction in Vermont. In voting I have marked my ballot in private and have not allowed any person to observe the marking of the ballot except for those authorized to assist voters under state or federal law. I have not been influenced. My signature and date below indicate when I completed this document, the information on this form is true accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and I understand that a material misstatement of fact and completion of this document may constitute grounds for conviction of perjury. And then you sign and date it on the bottom. This has gone through before I won't take the time to right now the various penalties around impersonating a voter or interfering with a voter or intercepting a voter's ballot in the mail that are in statute. And I think that that deterrence of just knowing that you could be convicted of perjury for sending in any more than your own ballot that was sent to you is a pretty strong deterrent. And at least in my experience over 10 years has led to almost no indication of this kind of activity taking place. What would be the most. What you would expect to happen if this kind of voter fraud or occurring is at least, at least with some frequency that you would have voters showing up to vote at the polls on election day, and having their name be checked off the checklist as the clerk having already received a voted ballot for that person during the early voting period. I just want to tell you that I do not hear about that happening from the clerks in the aftermath of the elections. When it does it's typically figured out to be a mistake made either on the marking of the checklist as the ballots were coming in. Obviously it happens with so little frequency that I can't even think of instances of it and it surprises me frankly how little it occurs just even on a mistake basis where somebody sends in an absentee ballot and forgets that they did so, and then and then arrives at the polls, and has to be reminded that they did. If you remember we did have one instance of this. That was included among the seven irregularities that were forwarded by my office to the Attorney General's office this year and it was in Burlington and the the man was caught. His name was already checked off as having submitted a ballot early by mail and he was demanding to submit one anyway did so. The clerk contacted me after some investigation we figured out that it was in fact the same person turned out that he the ballot he that he turned in at the polls was submitted blank, probably in an effort to say that he hadn't really submitted a voted ballot but that's a cast anyway. And the indication that we heard from the Attorney General's office was that he was trying to test the system and got caught. Director sending I've got a question from rep of faith. Thank you madam chair and thank you director setting for being here. So I have a couple of my questions from couple days ago and from yesterday. I'm not sure I don't want to have them all come out at once. I'm just going to try to pack away at them as we're going. And number one, the question I keep getting is what happened to that man that was testing the system so if we if you just listed off what happens. You know, the, the indications of what would happen if you were to do something wrong so what happened to him, you know, because he did do something with fraudulent intention. I'm not aware, don't have with me right now exactly what the penalty was, but we can certainly acquire with the Attorney General's office. I haven't been assessed yet replifed they may still be deciding what the appropriate penalty is I'm not sure what the status is. Okay, thank you. So my next question that I had the other day was. And what you've said a way to catch it, but what so if it doesn't happen is, you know, if someone gets a hold of somebody else's ballot for whatever way they obtain it and votes that ballot. A legitimate voter doesn't show up let's say like let's say, you know, they didn't attend in voting, they just lost interest they didn't do it. And so there's no reliable way to detect the fraud that took place correct like someone casted the ballot. The real person never shows up. So there's no way for you to detect that was a fraudulent ballot cast in. No, if it was submitted as a voter that's currently on the checklist and registered and able to be voted but the person perjured themselves inside the envelope for that person. And there was no other indication otherwise that there was any issue with that ballot it would likely be counted. Okay, and my second question is, is, um, if someone submits a ballot, and it's not, you know, it's fraudulent that vote never can be redacted that's my understanding correct. So like, let's say that town clerk knew, like she, she had bad feeling. But that vote was casted and then you guys found out later that that vote didn't count there's no way for you to redact that vote correct. So if even if he had marked up that ballot. There was no way for you to take away that so once once the ballots casted, it is there so that that's my understanding. That's right. And then going back to the voter checklist really quick. Also to clarify so let's say, you know, my neighbor, my neighbor moved. And there's a bunch of us on the street and they moved out of state, but they just somehow it got missed from because I know that in in state, moving gets detected very fast here you know town clerks pick up the phone call one another but it's when they moved out of state there sometimes be a lag, which I understand. So when someone moves out of state, and let's say we overlap in the ballots came out and someone picked up somebody else's ballot and was like oh I know how they want to vote and just checked it off marked it and sent it. But that's then keep the person in the system because they still casted a ballot here. If they were. If they were challenged. They had been so under the under the law. These are only going to active voters and they would remain an active voter if they cast about. Right, so let's say because let's say it was right in that window of when the ballots were going to get mailed out and they moved, and you know they didn't tell anybody they're moving so no one was on alert. Even if they told the town clerk they were moving they still would have to go through that process because you can't do it just on a, you know, a pretense that they're going to be moving. The voter tells the town clerk they're moving they can remove that that voter. Okay. So let's say they didn't tell the town clerk, and they just moved again they didn't tell anybody they needed to get out they got out. They got, you know, the would have so that election they would be counted as voting and so then they'd have to wait. They wouldn't have to wait until the next election to be able to challenge them, or what could they just do it after they realize the person moves. Yes, they can do it anytime. There's that they wouldn't have to wait any longer because of that. So it really wouldn't have any effect on the status of that. Okay, thank you. Representative Lefebvre would just add as as director sending pointed out, Vermont has severe criminal penalties for for impersonating a voter or for voting more than one time. He I've now sent that certificate envelope to Andrea and hopefully y'all can can take a look at it I'm sure it's familiar to you already but you can review the language that's on it. Yeah, it's there it's signed under the pains and penalties of perjury that the person submitting it is who they say they are and they haven't voted more than once. You know, lucky for us in Vermont, risking potential jail time to try to change an election one vote at a time just isn't something that the majority of people would think is is worth it. And Bill said we don't get a lot of complaints of that we don't think it's a massive problem in the state of Vermont where we're not aware of it. In the many years that we've been doing elections here we're just not seeing it happen. Thank you and I'm interested to see under that signature for the person that did try to test the system the one that we found what what they will be what their recourse will be for that, because if there's not many of them. So it's hard to prove well if you do do this this is what happens. So thank you I will save the time for other people and come back with more questions. Thank you. Thank you. I mean I have a couple questions but I think only one and a half of them is relevant right now. So my understanding is that you don't see people showing up at the polls, confused as to why they have a ballot which we would expect if this was happening in a widespread way. I'm wondering though my I also understand that there are some ways of sort of doing some more proactive ballot tracking and if that might be something that we could explore. So it's, I think one of them that I know of is called ballot tracks that would actually send me a text message when my ballot was was submitted and if I didn't submit that ballot that all of a sudden I'm like hey what's going on. And I can sign up for that I could sign up for that tracking is that something that the Secretary of State's office is exploring or looking at as a means of, I think it would a increase participation and the ability to cure ballots and all of that. So I'm wondering if there's any looking into that type of process. Certainly. And, I'm familiar with familiar with ballot tracks also. And I think it's interesting there's only about two or three, two or three total so two other vendors that are providing that service right now it's really sort of cutting edge election administration technology, and definitely to what we spoke about it in on the Senate side some one of the concerns obviously is with the level of broadband access for Vermonters and even even before that just who has cell phones and who doesn't. But the best shouldn't be the enemy of the good as they say and you know if so we're certainly looking into that kind of tracking technology. And the follow up to that is around the curing language and I'm wondering, knowing that we're not there we're not at the point where we have that tracking ability or are prepared to enact that but I'm wondering if the Secretary of State's office would be open to making the curing language a little bit less prescriptive so that if we get to a place. The point that I'm thinking of is adding the ability to sign an affidavit so if I get a message that's in my text message that says you forgot you know you didn't sign this I could actually say yep that's mine to sign the affidavit and send it back because right now it reads to me that the only way to cure your ballot is to revote, whether it's to be sent a new voting packet or to come in and vote again and I'm so I'm wondering if we can make that a little less prescriptive to leave the door open to that technology to both make access better and and increase security. Yes. And that's spot on it's something that I had in my mind about the current draft. Whether it's an amendment right now, or at some point in the future I is going to be up to the committee but I, I think that's a very good suggestion. And it's something again that when I was looking at the current drafting, I agree, and I think at least as it's currently drafted to it could be addressed by making sure that the postcard that sent has the opportunity to sign an affidavit to say yes that was in fact my ballot, just like you said so that for somebody who may be out of state or even on the other side of the state, you don't have to send a whole new ballot package out to those folks for them to re complete and sign the certificate or I would support that kind of amendment. Thank you so much. And I actually I wanted to note to rep we have ski that we do, I think you are aware, you are aware of this that we have the my voter page, and that it does at least show you those three data points that your request has been received that it's been issued to you. You know when to expect it just to arrive in the mail hopefully and you would then have an idea for instance if somebody intercepted it, and was going to vote it on your behalf and then same thing you know when you put it in the mail. And then the other the third data point that that page gives you is when it's received back by the clerk. And so again you already have that ability to know a four or five days I still don't see it received by the clerk is there's something going on here. And what the ballot tracks technology would give you is even more detail in between kind of like your UPS tracking where it actually is along the way, and the ability to get a text. Yeah, I think the thing for me that it sort of proactively does that may may help answer some of the security concerns as if I had no intention of voting or I didn't you know I didn't put it in the mail and it was you know I wouldn't. But think to go check the my voter page if I wasn't going to do that whereas if I get a text message and I didn't put a ballot in the mail. That's going to alert me to the fact that something funny is going on. So, while I love the my voter page I love the idea of looking at how we can sort of move to a proactive system that doesn't rely on someone to go and look. Awesome. Thank you so much. Replicler I take it that helps to answer your question. It didn't madam chair but I'm looking at the time and I can wait and ask later. Okay. We do have a break scheduled at 10 o'clock. And then it would be our intention to come back to this at 1030. And then we will be able to be able to continue this conversation with our elections folks at Secretary of State's office and then also here from Carol Dawes, and then, and then we will pivot to the bill language and continue to plow through. It's my intention that we will, you know, get to all of the questions that folks posed yesterday. And then we take a break right now, and committee will see you back at 1030.