 Good afternoon. This is Wednesday, February 3rd. Is it? I believe it's February 3rd. This is Senate government operations and today we're looking at elections issues. I'm going to just, I don't know if anybody is out there watching or if people are in the room with us that aren't normally in the room, but I'm just going to say that the committee and our staff are the ones that have the main discussion and I will call on people to testify on issues. I ask not to use chat. Please don't use chat. The only thing that chat is used for is for Gail to put links for us. If people refer to specific documents or statutes or something, she can put that up there, but I consider and the committee I think agrees with me that chat is like sidebar conversations in the committee room and if we were in the committee room, we wouldn't allow it. We don't allow it here and it is harder for me to kick people out who make faces when people are testifying, but I have been known to do that in the committee room. If people are testifying and you don't like what they're testifying to, I would say just listen politely or I might kick you out. I have been known to do that. So with that, we have a lot of elections issues and I think that everybody has the list of what we're going to look at today and I realize that it's a huge list. And what we are looking at today are kind of three broad areas. One is the checklist itself. Some before I go there, some of these I know are things that we probably can't address this year. They're longer term things. Some of them are things that are outside of our capability to do much about. And so what I would ask is on as we deal with the issues, if the secretary of state has any information about what might be allowable and not allowable, I would ask that we do that so that if there are things that aren't simply aren't within our jurisdiction, we don't spend time looking at them. So we're looking at three general areas, the checklist itself, the ballot itself, and then as it affects town clerks. And I know they all overlap with each other, but I was trying to get them into some kind of order so that we weren't all over the map with this. So does anybody have any questions about that, about how we'll proceed here or any comments? And Amron, I would say that what we will do is if there's an issue that we come to my hope is that we can come to resolution on many of these today when we hear from people. So if there is that we'll just put the start putting them into a bill. And whether that ends up being a committee bill or an introduced bill, I don't know at this point. Does that make sense, Amron? It does. And Madam Chair, I just wanted to let you know I am double booked this afternoon. So if I briefly disappear, if Gail could email me and let me know that you need me back, I'm doing walkthroughs and house government operations as well this afternoon. We'll keep track of any decisions we make also. Thank you. OK, thanks. All right, so let's start. The first thing on the list was the checklist itself. And there was there have been a number of suggestions from a number of sources that we need to make it easier and purging the checklist. We need to have more flexibility around it and make it easier to do. So I'm going to ask the Secretary of State to tell us what constraints were under by federal law so that we don't go off talking about things we can't do. Sure. Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Chris Winters, Deputy Secretary of State, and normally you'd have Will sending testifying to something like this. But we actually have our national conferences this week for the Secretaries of State and for the State Election Directors, and it's all virtual. And Will is actually a presenter at one of those right now. So he's not going to be here for a little bit, but he plans to join us just as soon as he can. Good, thank you. Sure. For checklist maintenance, we want to look to 17 BSA 2150. And we all have our green books here. Did you get your green books yet, committee? No. Oh, I'm sorry. No, they were mailed on Monday. Well, it's only Wednesday. I mean, it's a parcel. It could be a little bit slower than a post. I mean, OK, anyway. OK, go ahead, Chris. Sure. So in section 2150 of Title 17, when you get a chance to look at that or pull it up, there are several sections there. And if you look at the first subsection A one through three, it describes the circumstances when a clerk can remove a name. And there are three sections there. And you'll want to talk to I think you'll want to talk to Carol or John or one of the other clerks on the line, because they do this all the time. I've never done it myself, but I'm going to tell you what the law says. You can take a name off when there's notice from another clerk that the person is registered somewhere else. And you should note that clerks in other states aren't required to notify us, but many of them often do. So we'll get notifications from other states when someone registers in another state. And then we pass those back on to the clerks of the towns where the person moved from. So notice from another clerk is one. Two is notice of death from any public source. So every month we get lists from the Department of Health of who has passed away, Vermont residents, and our LaLani in our office sends that notice around to the various clerks in the appropriate cities and towns. And we would also note that notices of a change of address form from DMV, someone who does not opt out from the voter registration that DMV information gets passed on to the clerk. So updates to the checklist can happen that way too. And then the third way is written notice from a voter. So in writing from an actual voter saying I've moved, I no longer want to be registered, whatever the case may be. Subsection B of 2150 notes that the board of civil authority can meet and consider the people that they think might have moved, might have registered elsewhere. But subsection B says you don't just yank them off the list. There's a there's a process. And so you have to do it in accordance with subsection D of 2150. So I'm going to interrupt you there for a second and ask you a question. Yeah, are these the the process that's outlined here? Is that our process or how much of that my understanding was that a lot of this is regulated by the federal voter protection law, whatever that is. And so I think we need to know what is with an our jurisdiction to change and what isn't. Yeah. So what I'm talking about here is what is in our jurisdiction. And it's my understanding that this plays off some of the federal law. And of course, the federal law would likely supersede. And I'm not familiar enough for the federal law to speak to it, either one of the clerks on the line could or we can wait for for will to talk a little bit more about motor voter. But what I'm talking about is what's in our law that that we can likely change. Although you'll hear at the end of this that I don't that our position at the Secretary of State's office is that we don't need to change it. That what we have in place is adequate. We just need to be, I think, a little more aggressive about our voter checklists and keeping them up to date if we're going to a more robust mail system. So would you like me to continue with what else is in Section 2150? Yeah, I guess so. Just walk it through pretty quickly. Yeah, just kind of the steps that have to be taken will do. So Section B says BCA can meet and take people off Section C is the mandate for the BCA to do this once at least once every two years. And D is how they remove names. And this is the process for for doing that. It's essentially the it's the Vermont codification. You know, to go to your your previous question is the Vermont codification of the National Voter Registration Act procedure. So this Vermont law is the Vermont version of the federal law. And it can be described basically as you send a challenge letter. It's called actually called a notice letter under the federal law. So you send a challenge letter asking if they're still a resident or if they've moved, if they respond, saying, hey, yep, I'm still here. They stay on the checklist and they go back to active status from challenge status. If they reply and say, no, I've removed, I've moved, please take me off. They get taken off the checklist. And most commonly, there's no response. And so you keep them in challenge status. And if they don't vote for two general election cycles, then you can remove them. And it's on purpose that it's a very deliberate process. We don't want to just take people off the checklist willy-nilly, that it's careful, it's considered. And after two general election cycles, you can take them off the list. And then after that, if they show up to vote, if they on the checklist, they have to sign the actual response letter saying, yeah, I'm still a resident. I'm still here and they get returned to active status at that point. So I guess my question is, does that we can't change that because that's that is that's in federal legislation. It has to be two cycles. The two cycles piece, you could not change. That's correct. OK. That was so we don't even need to talk about that. I don't think I agree. Committee, do you have any questions about that? Does anybody because I think that a number of yes, Senator Colomar. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris, I think I heard you say that the BCA can meet at least once every two or every every two years, right? Must meet at least once every two years. They can meet much more frequently than that if they want to. OK. But what would the purpose be to meet if they can't do anything with the checklist? They can. They can send challenge letters and they can maybe have conversations with the clerks for people they know want to be removed. OK. Yeah. So they can actually do things. And then I suppose they can actually meet together again. I don't know if this always happens or if the clerks just do it. But they can meet again and say, oh, another election has passed. This person didn't vote in their second general election. They're a challenged voter. Let's take them off now. I'm going to ask one more question about that. You said that once they once you send out the challenge letter, they are put on the challenged list. They are not considered at that point an active registered voter. So if if both ballots are mailed out, they are not they would not get one because they're not an active registered voter. They've been challenged. That was the approach that we took in 2020 when we mailed out postcards to say, hey, request a ballot for the primary. We mailed to everyone, including the challenged, because we wanted to get clarity on the checklist for the general election. We mailed only to active, not to the challenge. And there was somewhere between 40 and 50,000 people on that challenged list. OK. And Senator Calamore and then Senator Clarkson. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Chris, even though Vermont has same day voter registration, they would not we would not be able to change. How am I trying to say this? You have to wait, in essence, four years before you automatically, if you will, pull someone off the checklist. But we have same day voter registration, so they seem to be at odds to me. I think I know what you're saying, Senator, that we could be a little more aggressive with our checklist because what's the harm if someone shows up and they're not on the checklist? Exactly. A lot of states, a lot of states don't have same day registration. The federal law applies to all states. So there's yeah, there's a little bit of a disconnect there, I suppose. The time that you have to wait is going to be somewhere between a little more than two years and a little sorry, a little yeah, a little more than two years and potentially four years, a little more than four years for that, depending on when the challenge happened to see that the person has not voted into elections. OK, thank you. But if there if we can't change that. I mean, if it is federal law, then it is what it is, right? Yeah, and we think the system works fine, just that we need to put more focus and attention on maintaining voter checklists. The clerks are all interested in doing if we if we go to a mail system, they want to have, you know, a much more up-to-date checklist because it's you know, there's more at stake with mailing everybody valid to have that list. Perfect. Senator Clarkson. Chris, what if what if the BCA and the clerk gets no response from a challenge letter? I mean, so it's one thing to say, yes, I've moved. That's another thing to say. Yes, I'm still here. But what if you get no answer? And is that an opportunity for us to be more aggressive about following up? I believe he just answered that by saying if there's no response, they have to keep them on the challenge list for two general elections. I was kicked off the meeting at that exact moment and did not hear that. So I actually was kicked out and had to come back in. So I missed that piece. Sorry. And you answered that. So that's and it's and it's the two cycles are two years, not the four years. They're not presidential. They're just election cycles. That's general. Right. It's a general election. Right. So does anybody have any comments or questions or on this anybody among our witnesses about other than getting the town clerks and the BCA's to be more active, there doesn't seem to be a lot we can do. So Madam Chair, before you go on, there's I think there's something that's important for the committee to know. OK, that we joined a consortium of states known as Eric, E R I C, the Electronic Registration Elections Registration Information Center, Electronic Registration Information Center. I always get that wrong. And we are now going to be sharing an atomized voter registration information with 30 different states. And that includes Department of Motor Vehicle data in those other states. And that's going to really help us with our checklists. We're rolling that out right now. It helps us with what appear to be duplicate voters in our systems. It helps us know that someone's gone somewhere else. It helps us with deceased voter records. So this is going to really be a boost, I think, for maintaining our checklist. So this is another step that we're taking to make sure that our checklists are clean and accurate, and we're pretty excited to get going on that. What we do is we get the information and then we distribute it out to the town clerks when we see duplicates, dead voters, voters who've moved. And thank you, Pat. No, thank you, Madam Chair. Chris, maybe you were Carol. How are these people flagged on the checklist? Are they on the checklist with a flag that they're challenged people? Or just not on the checklist? Yeah, I believe it's a status of challenged versus active. Maybe Carol probably knows better than I do. Is that right, Carol? Yeah, that, you know, if I go to my to my online to the Vermont election management system, I see on the on the dashboard, I see just a snapshot. I have this many registered voters, this many are active, this many are challenged. They're color coded in the system, which is nice. It's an immediate identification of them as challenged. So I can pull a report, you know, if I'm pulling a mailing list or something like that, I can just pull active voters. I can just pull challenged voters if I'm mailing letters out or notifications. So if we're just mailing to nonchallenged voters, we're in effect, they're off the list in effect for the four years, correct? Or the two years? Correct. That makes sense. OK, thanks. Thank you, Madam Chair. You're welcome. Thank you. So the only other suggestion that came up under kind of checklist category was that we and I, Carol, don't jump out of your seat here. That we should the secretary of state should keep one voter checklist and it shouldn't be done at the town level. Would anybody like to weigh in on that? I want to take testimony as we go here, Carol. Yeah, and what I was going to say is that one of the biggest challenges we have with the checklist is inconsistency of data. And it's not anybody's fault. Many of us have a lot of voters that are in our list that have been migrated into the election management system from various older versions of databases and such back when we didn't capture dates of birth, when we didn't capture driver's license numbers. And so when we when we try to eliminate duplicates, it gets difficult because we don't have those common denominators to to match up. So there are, you know, probably multiple Debbie Smiths on the checklist, the statewide checklist, who are the same person, but one has a middle initial and one doesn't. And one has a date of birth and one doesn't. And and so it's difficult to find a way to to to match them up and and and merge them together. What would be valuable, whether it's done on a statewide level or whether it drills down to the local level, would be to find some way to make that data more robust and and filled out. We do have an option to go in and tie into the Department of Motor Vehicles to look up people and fill in their birth dates and date of birth and driver's license number. But that assumes they have a driver's license, you know, so they're making the data more robust would make a big difference in cleaning up the checklist. Does that need to be a legislative change or is that an administrative change? I think I don't think it's legislative. I think it's administrative. I think it's software. I think it's trying to figure out what the I think it's collaboration with DMV. I don't know whether there's a way for DMV data to to tie into our system and fill in those gaps automatically. I don't know if that's an option, but, you know, something like that would be would be helpful. John. Yeah, I just want to make sure that you all know that the the statewide database is that is federal law. We have to have one of those and it has to be current. So, you know, and you'll have states that either where the local administrators feed directly into it or there's some kind of way station between, but it does have to be current. And I would check on the legality of these global updates. I mean, what some states will do is something like run things simply through national change of address, which is, you know, something done for for mailings. And I know that there are states that do that, but I would, you know, I don't know offhand, but I think it's a question as to, you know, how much local control is written into those lists? If there can be global changes from on high like that, or maybe they would just have to be retroactively approved by the board of civil authority. But I would think that would be worth looking into. I are, Pat, I'll go to you in a second. No, thank you. Are you saying that that like when Chris was talking about this Eric system, I mean, any taking people off the checklist is still going to have to be done at the local level. They can notify the town clerks, but the BCA is the one that by our statute has to remove them. Yeah, we, we retroactively do that, essentially. They can get tagged, but I would want to be sure that changes to voters within the system, as opposed to saying this person is eligible to be purged or challenged, but that this address changes underneath. I mean, that's more what I'm thinking of. That would be very helpful changes for us as if we had change of address built in, I would advocate, I just want to make sure that that, you know, that may have to be something that would have to be retroactively approved or approved before it's applied. OK, Pat. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to ask Chris, if it's in your department, all of it, the requests that come from nonprofits, from candidates for their checklists, would that be something you'd be able to handle? Just the volume. Seems to me. I'm sorry, I don't think I understand the question. If a non-profit asks for the checklist in Washington County, because that's their district or their area of service, I'm sure there and candidates ask for checklists, would you be able to handle the the level of response or the amount of response? Yeah, I don't think we could. We do provide the statewide checklist when and can say sort. You can sort that it's a big, big checklist, obviously. But if they're looking for individual town checklists, we send them to the towns. Oh, I see. OK. So be the same as it is now. Yeah. Thanks. OK, so is there there's doesn't seem to be anything that we need to do legislatively around sent? I'm sorry, Senator Polina. This is basic, but if there's already a statewide checklist that is there because of federal rules, what would be the difference between the statewide checklist that we already have and what we're proposing to have? We're not proposing anything. I'm I'm listing everything that everybody put as ideas. And a couple people had said that towns should not be maintaining the checklist anymore. It should just be done at the Secretary of State's office. That's that was their suggestion. I'm just we've heard. I didn't mean to say I didn't really mean to say we were proposing it. I just meant that was on the table. Right, because I put everything on the table. OK. Yes, Senator Clarkson. So I know we have a statewide checklist. What I. Don't understand really is the interplay in between the statewide checklist and the town checklists. So, for example, why why if somebody moves to another town in Vermont? What isn't that caught then? Isn't isn't that part of what how we can stay more current? Is that interplay between the statewide list and the local list? Don't they catch the inter Vermont moves and clarify that? How would you catch that if nobody notified anybody? Well, but somebody's looking at it somewhere. If if somebody if I moved to Dumberston and I registered a vote in Dumberston, that's going to come up on the checklist and they're going to notify Putney. Are they? Does somebody do that when there's a double name? OK. Yes. So that's one of the ways we get things challenged or OK. That's one of the triggers inside. Right. Yes. Yes. Inside Vermont. You see that. OK, great. I just I guess I missed I didn't come in that name. And also what I did here, Senator Ron. So I don't know if the committee will ever get used to how my brain works. So I apologize in advance. But this sent me in my own mind on a tangent about when I worked for the city of Burlington and I did accessibility work, it was really challenging to get every town to maintain their ADA designee, which should usually be in the clerk's office just to make sure that person is known and it's posted. And if someone's having any disability related concern, they can get the help they need. And it just came up in my mind and thinking about, you know, how someone who needs a local accommodation makes sure they have that information. So it's kind of a tangent. But I just wonder if folks from local government or even state government could talk about how you try to make sure that you have your ADA designee posted. I'm not sure what I'm going to do here because I don't want to get us so into the weeds. We have about 23 things on our list and we so far have done two. OK, and I don't know that the ADA list is contact is related to elections. I suppose it is if you need to get have help in registering. But so how do how do we handle that? John, Carol, do. Well, in our office, we will provide what accommodations we can or we will refer people to the Center for Independent Living. We will, you know, whatever other resources there are in the community. We're all, you know, trained in the, you know, the systems that allow for, you know, more accessible voting. You know, I keep I I personally keep my eye on accessibility and talk to people. But our, you know, our ADA officer is associated with public works, which I think there's a strong argument to be made for that as well, since that connects right to our facilities in sort of a. You know, a one to one way. So is ours with facilities. Does that help you, Senator Rom? It does. Thank you. And I do know that the town clerks have been very aggressive in making sure that people have our town clerk was beside himself when he got the little machine that allowed people to to vote if they were blind or hearing or deaf for it was. So I assume the most time clerks probably are. All right, so let's go to the ballots. That's the next. So the very first thing on the list was a suggestion that we need to put in statute that we will guarantee that we always have paper ballots. And I'm going to ask Chris to just comment on that because I believe it's already in the statutes. You're muted. Sorry about that. I was looking at the statute already and I have to go back to the statue. It is in statute and it's in title 17 at section two, four, eight, one, twenty four, eighty one, except in the case of voice votes from the floor. You accept except in case of voice votes from the floor divisions or voting at a floor meeting by paper ballot or a local election. No voting shall occur in any local primary or general election that does not use printed ballots. So yes, printed ballots are paper ballots are required. We're very happy that they're required. It was a great move that they are required. And we always have the paper to go back to because paper can't be hacked. So I guess unless anybody has any comments to make on that one, we don't need to address it at all. Senator Clarkson, no, I just read with sadness, the town hall burning in some town in the upper valley, not in Vermont, I believe in New Hampshire and all their records. I mean, just so we just hope that fire doesn't happen before every recount of or whatever, you know, it just that's the one thing about paper ballots is their paper, but they're also paper, which is great. All right. So the next item on our list here is nicknames on ballots. And I assume the issue here is, do we allow it? Don't we allow it? How? How do we allow it? So, Chris, do you have any? Is there anything in the statutes right now that addresses this? I'm sorry, Madam Chair, I'm going to defer to Will on that one. OK, I don't know that one off the top of my head. And let's move to expand the electronic return if that's OK with the committee and when Will comes. OK. So it does send me. Madam Chair, before we leave the nicknames, maybe it would be helpful. I'll we have so many town clerks here and interested parties if the problem could be identified more fully. Is it is it a problem? I I would like I would would you rather defer the conversation until Will is here because otherwise we're going to have to repeat what the problem right. Absolutely, we see. Got it. OK. So expand electronic return. And we currently allow electronic returns for some things, right? Yeah, that's that's correct. And I think the clerks can probably speak to this. But there are a number of other people who are overseas or perhaps are stranded in another state are out of state with a sick family who come Election Day are looking for a way. Emergencies really are looking for a way to cast a ballot. And it's obviously breaks breaks a clerks heart to hear someone call up and give their very sympathetic circumstances to why they aren't able to vote and tell them, well, I'm sorry, there's just no way to do it. So this is looking at a way to expand the electronic return of ballot for emergency situations like that. So John and Carol, if you want to weigh in on what we currently allow and what we should allow and does it need a legislative change or is it administrative? Yeah, we we don't actually allow electronic return receipt of ballots. Ballots that come to us must be paper. We allow electronic sending of ballots. We can email ballots to people or they can access them through the state wide system. And we did the legislature actually, I believe it was two years ago, expanded that to be not only overseas and military, but also to be available to more local people in those cases that Chris talked about emergencies. Somebody who ends up in the hospital on Election Day, it can be done sort of in lieu of an absentee ballot in emergency situations that close to election. But it does still require that the person receiving the ballot electronically printed out market and return the paper ballot. And so what what has been talked about is, is there a way, particularly of light of the fact that we guarantee paper ballots, is there a way to accept an electronic ballot that gets sent? Would we then print it out? Is that how we would end up with the paper ballot? That's what the conversation is around. Good, thank you for John. Yeah, I would just add to that just really quickly as a clerk. I think this could be a great thing. It could make our lives a lot simpler. I'm also a credentialed security penetration tester for information systems and doing so would create would create a big can of worms and create a lot of potential problems. If you're talking about Internet voting, the ballot actually coming through. So I think those would have to be seriously vetted. Before we allow any before we allow that. I would I would say that in my security hat. I would say that, yes. Anybody else, Senator Rom? Well, I just wanted to ask if if we're kind of talking about a study and if anybody knows that there's other states we could look to to study this rather than, you know, get ahead of ourselves, there probably are very many security concerns. Right, yeah. I mean, I think we could put something in here requiring the Secretary of State to come back with information about how how this could be done safely. I do think as as John said, this is one of those areas where you really have to balance accessibility with security. There are some other states that are forging ahead, in our opinion, a little too quickly on some of these electronic voting, Internet voting, basically for for certain small populations. So it is something we'd want to do carefully and thoughtfully. And isn't something that we're in a rush to get done right away. So it might be something that's appropriate for further study. OK, any more questions on that one or comments or Laila? Yes, Laila, Richard, some of the league of voters. I know that the. Just writes Vermont. Positions on this are to expand. Access to actual ballot return, I think it's viewed very as a very important extension for people who who have really chronic disabilities, not just people who might be sick. It was something that could be certainly could be understood and anticipated in those situations. I'm not as familiar as disability rights for Mont with what other states do, but I do know that they raise the issue in conversation. So they might have some other models of things that have worked elsewhere. Senator Clarkson. Is there something that would give the clerks in the Secretary of State more confidence that the ballot that was being returned electronically as a PDF or as a fax? Any heightened degree of security or a double check? Is there anything that we could be added that would? I think that this the Secretary of State's office and John Odom both said that this is a more complicated thing. And it it isn't ripe to put in anything now, but it needs. We need to look at it further. So that's how we heard, right? No, I hear that. I'm just wondering, I mean, that, you know, we have signatures. I know people want to get rid of signatures, but signatures certainly could be compared. And I mean, are we going to do so? We're going to do I heard the suggestion. Are we going to do a study of this? How are we going to take? Yes, we're not going to. We're not going to do anything in a piece of legislation this year, except ask for them to look at it further and figure out how it can be done. Is then is that what I heard committee? And report it back. Yeah. Report back. I suppose next year or at some at some future date, we can figure out when they're going to report it back, but they're not going to be able to report it back in time for a bill to be passed by February 19th. Got it. Yes, no, I hear that loud and clear. And OK, and I am sorry that that people who are who are disadvantaged by having to return a paper ballot. But if there are people who we know are in that situation, the justices of the piece can bring ballots to them. There are ways of getting around that in the meantime, I believe. If I'm right, am I right? I see a couple people nodding their heads. OK. All right. So clarify the elect the defective ballot. We, Chris, do you want to tell us where that is? Sure, I can I can get that off. There were, as you know, a number of a fairly disturbingly large number of defective ballots in the primary because a lot of people were doing it by mail for the first time. There's the issue of the three ballots and the two unused. And we're going to take that up under the issue of primaries. That one's on too. So a number of defective ballots there, a lot of people voting by mail, voting by mail for the first time, even voting for the first time. There were defective ballots. And again, every clerk hates to get that call. Our office hates to get that call that. Oh, I don't think I signed the certificate. And what can I do? How can I fix it? And right now, there's nothing you can do to fix that. So that's something that could possibly be addressed. Other states have curative processes. So a person could, you know, before Election Day, come down and fill out a new ballot. Sign the envelope if that's what's needed, cure their ballot in some way. And so I think we'd like to explore that. I think that our advice would be to not make it an affirmative duty on the clerks to have to seek out people with defective ballots, but to enter it into our system so that it's very well known online. Anyone can look at their voter page and see the status of their ballot, whether it's been received, whether it's defective. And if someone figures out that their ballot is defective, they go in and check and it says defective, then they can reach out to the clerk and have some way to cure that defect and make sure that their ballot is counted. So there were two issues here, I think, around this. One was to clear to further clarification of what is a defective ballot before we even get to the issue of curing them. So are there suggestions of what what needs to be clarified, town clerks? Carol, to me, the the the most common reason that we have defective ballots in Barry City is that people have not placed their voted ballot in the certificate envelope. And I believe that the the the reason behind that is that the envelopes are very tight. It's a really tight fit to slide the ballot in the envelope. And I I I'm imagining that what's happening in people's homes is that they're trying to get the ballots in the envelope and they're not able to do that because what they'll return is they'll return the voted ballot, they'll return the signed envelope. They have filled it out and signed it exactly as they're supposed to, but they did not put the ballot in the envelope. And so finding some perhaps that's something that could be reviewed for whether that is considered a defect, whether it can be fixed by the clerk's office or by a pair of BCA members or something. That I would say 75 percent of our defective ballots are for that reason alone. So, Senator Clarkson. So, Carol, if they're not in the envelope, where are they? There's an inner envelope. Right. They're not they're not in the correct envelope, but they're in the outer end. The big they're in the right. They're in the outer envelope. Yeah. And the inner envelope is even at times in the outer envelope, but the ballot itself is not in the inner envelope. Right. Right. It's not in the certificate envelope. Right. It's not in the correct envelope. Got it. Yeah. So is that can can we is that a matter of clarifying what's a defective ballot or is that an allowance for the town clerks themselves to deal with that issue if the inner envelope is there? Or we could just tell the Secretary of State's office that they should change their printing requirements. I mean, they make a bigger envelope. That that piece we can definitely look at. We've already started conversations with the Center for Civic Design on our the language on our envelopes, how it's presented, make it easier for voters to understand what they're reading, where they have to sign. The inner envelope size could be something that very easily adjust. And I guess the last thing that I would say is that in our inner envelope does serve an important purpose. It's the certificate is on there. The voter is signed that, you know, swearing that they haven't been unduly influenced. They're registered voter. They're not voting for someone else. And it also has identifying information. So the outer envelope is, you know, considered a secure security system. You can't tell who you don't see the voter's name and such on the on the inner envelope. And that inner envelope, at least in this last election, had a barcode on it, had the identifying information for the voters so that we could match up the ballot to the voter to the ballot that went out. So I know there's another suggestion to perhaps eliminate the inner envelope. I think the our position would be that the inner envelope is definitely necessary. I think we made some adjustments at one point to the law to say it didn't have to be sealed anymore because there was a problem with sealing that inner envelope. So it doesn't have to be sealed, but the ballot does have to be in the certificate envelope. The question of whether it can be in there but not inside. So maybe it's inside the outer envelope. The envelope is there. The ballot is in there. You know, maybe that's a little spot where we could make an adjustment. But overall, I think it's it's it's working fairly well. We can adjust the size and we can do more voter education on making sure design and voter education to make sure that that's inside the inner envelope when it comes back. The secretary of the Secretary of State's Office did in the last year or two revise the outside envelopes and the return envelopes to make them bigger, to make them easier for stuffing as we mail them out. So there may be some extra room there to print a larger certificate envelope. If it just a question, if if somebody sends back, if Carol opens the the envelope and there's the inner envelope that's all signed certificate, everything and the ballot, but they're not inside of each other. Can she get with two BCA members and stick it in the envelope? I mean, is that an administrative fix that could be that could just because the certificate envelope is there, they've signed it, they've done everything they're supposed to do. They just couldn't get it in. And my fingers don't work very well sometimes. Yeah, I'm not sure if that's a problem that's happening a lot. I think we can find some ways administratively to address it. And if not, maybe there's another tweak to statute that it says as long as the envelopes there. I'm just thinking that if the if you're considering ways to cure defective ballots, it seems it seems a little silly to ask a voter to come into the office to put their ballots in the envelope. And so perhaps creating an administrative cure for that particular issue is a better way to go. OK, John. Yeah, I would just mention and I know this also surprised some people, but I'm not a big fan of the unsealed envelope being OK. I feel like kind of defeats the purpose of the envelope to a point. But having said that, I think realistically speaking, the difference between the the ballot being in the certificate envelope but not sealed and the ballot being next to the certificate envelope is a distinction without a difference. I mean, it's it's six and one half, doesn't the other. It doesn't, I think, make sense to allow for the one and not the other. Senator Rom, did you have your hand up or I couldn't? Well, I didn't, but I was going to wait for the right to put my hand up. I wasn't sure if this fits into nicknames or this conversation. Just the people that I heard beside themselves that their ballot had been spoiled. It was because they weren't sure if they assigned their name Beth instead of Elizabeth, if it would be counted. And I know most of the clerks here said it they would still count that. But I didn't know if it needed to be on the envelope. Like, please sign your name exactly as it's written on the ballot as like a technical issue. That's all. Well, the nicknames thing is for people who are running. OK, so I just like, yeah, this nickname issue that I wanted to raise is one that was specific to people who thought they were so worried their ballot wouldn't be counted because they signed a nickname on their internal ballot is all. Yeah, I think that our our town clerks are pretty good at sussing out the intention of the voter. And I I I don't I have to tell you that I wouldn't know if if my husband returned his if he signed William White or Bill White because I'm not sure he knows how he's on the checklist. Yeah, so anyway, Senator Clarkson. So you we've already you just spoken about clerks latitude. It strikes me that the term defective ballot is something where a ballot has been affected negatively rather than misplaced in the envelope. You know, to me, that's not a defective ballot. That's just a ballot that hasn't actually been put in the right envelope or sealed or you know that. So to me, that just really is discretion of the clerk and should be an administrative cure and just seems like a no brainer to me. I agree with John. I think that if we're going to have an internal envelope, it should be sealed. I think that otherwise what's the ball because I'm the one that I got. The glue was so old that it didn't stick. There's always tape. Oh, come on. Really? Well, I mean, you know, I don't know. I'm sorry. I think some of this is also this is, you know, we trust our clerks. We give them discretion. We give them discretion between Bill and William. Why are we then not giving them discretion between a completely correctly filled out ballot that's just not in the right? We are. We just talked about that. And we and Chris said that there might be a small tweak in the statutes that we could do. And I thought I thought we were done with that conversation. OK, and so I just would like to say I support that completely. And the term you used about clerk latitude is is interesting as we look at this because clearly there's clerk latitude somewhere and not other places. So I just want us to be to go back to Carol's point, be consistent. Well, OK, and I was cautioned that we really want to make sure that we're treating voters the same way from from town to town. So clerks need to be clear guidance and not too much latitude. Or if there is latitude, it's very clear what that latitude is. I think it's when when you're looking at the the ballot itself and there's a circle and there's three people running and somebody fills in the one. And then they realize they filled in the wrong one. So they scratch that out. They scratch it all out. And then they made their little X in the white right one that they wanted to vote for. That is the intent of the voter is pretty clear there. And I think that's that's what I was referring to, is that we do have some around intention of the voter. And I would think if you sign your name, Beth, as opposed to Elizabeth, that is that a problem, town clerks? I would just say, you know, a signature is a signature. People do kind of crazy things. It's it's something legally recognized. We don't look to parse out whether somebody signed their middle name or not. And I get this question a lot. Neither does the bank, neither does somebody. I identify that on your check because it is a signature. A signature is it's it's its own thing. It's not, you know, there's not a demand that you write in cursive, your entire name, you just sign it. The other thing that I would say with regards to, you know, clerks being able to sort of make their own judgments, we do hold ourselves to the law and there is nothing in law right now that in Vermont that says that you must sign the same way you signed your driver's license or the same as your name on the on the checklist or anything like that. So so as John said, somebody's signature is their signature. Senator Ram, I'm absolutely hearing everyone. And I wonder if it's just something I can point those folks to as the voter, not the clerks to say you're fine, you know, if it's somewhere on some website that says, you know, you're. However you sign it, it's you know, I don't know how to explain to them. They thought they had to come home from taking care of a relative to fix their ballot, you know, so they just weren't sure. So I just wonder if there's standard language to say, you know, I don't know what it would say, but that's the hard part. But I don't know why they were so concerned. And I feel like it's going to keep coming up that they just want to make sure their ballot was counted, even if their signature was eligible or different. I actually have never heard that. And I have to tell you some people's signatures are so eligible that if we held them to be to we would have no medical people being allowed to vote. Right. I think it was the people I know who have very beautiful penmanship that were more concerned than the people who don't care about their penmanship. And it just seemed like they were so concerned their ballot would be counted. I think that that's probably an issue for voter education. Those the political parties, the campaign for Vermont, AARP, VPURG, that that's an issue of voter education. Am I right? And nod your head, campaign, VPURG, AARP, league, nod your heads. Yes, you think that that good. Thank you. And political parties. OK, so we might have to have a small tweak in the statute around allowing a BCA member or town clerk to put the ballot in the inner envelope. If they're both there, we'll talk to Ameron about that. Madam Chair. Yes, sorry, Senator Plano. If we pick on the envelope one more time before we move on, it seems like the reason for the inside envelope is because of the information on the inside envelope, not because of the envelope itself. We don't want the envelope. We want the information to not be on the outside envelope. So I would argue that it's possible that the inside envelope doesn't have to be an envelope at all. It could just be a card that the information is written on. And you take the big envelope and you put the card that has the sort of private information on it and then you put your ballot in. So maybe instead of getting a bigger inside envelope, maybe we don't need an inside envelope, just a thought. Town clerks and Secretary of State. I know Secretary of State feels very strongly that there should be an inside envelope. Yeah, that's correct. And I defer the clerks on how that opening and processing happens and the importance of the envelope with that. John, I would say that Senator Polina, in my opinion, is absolutely right. I mean, if it's going to if it's going to count, if it's physically next to the envelope, but not in the envelope, then why is it an envelope? You could just cut off that top part, just the paper itself. And it means the same things. Why I think sealing in the envelope versus having the envelope next to it is truly a distinction without a difference. You might as well, you know, if you're allowing for it, you might as well save the paper if that counts just as much and just put a card or something, Carol. I I can see I'm I'm I'm looking at it more from the the point of view of process and and it it's nice to have the the the these inside envelopes from a processing point of view. But because you're sort of keeping everything together. But I don't see that it has to be an envelope. If we went with a separate card, there'd have to be a different process put in place to make sure everything stayed together until such point as you were actually handling the the ballots themselves, separating the information from the ballot. Yes. So what you're saying is that you'd have to when you open the outer envelope, then you'd have to take the ballot and this card and paperclip them together, staple them together so that when you went to actually process the ballot itself, you would know who to check off on the checklist. And unless the the the process was changed so that when you opened the outer envelope, you data entered them into the system as returning their ballot. And at that point in time, separate the card from the ballot. And now you have a stack of anonymous ballots that can just be processed when you're ready to either tally or put them into your tabulator. Thank you, Paul. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair, for the record, Paul Burns, executive director of V-PURG. I as you know, if you've had a chance to look at the comments that we submitted on behalf of a number of other organizations as well, we agree that they we could find a way to go without the inner envelope but have that same information included. So I appreciate the consideration of that approach. More fundamentally, though, we believe it is really important to provide some means of curing. Eighteen other states already operate with some capacity for a curing process. And in Vermont, while we celebrate the fact that a much lower rate of spoilage occurred in November than occurred in the primaries, and that is certainly good news, it was still something like 1500 Vermonters. Chris will have the number probably, but somewhere in that area of, you know, citizens of this state who attempted to vote, who got their ballots in on time and those ballots didn't count. Imagine if we actually had evidence of 1500 people who had voted twice. What the outrage would be in this state. But what we have instead are 1500 people who tried to vote, who were unintentionally disenfranchised and a number of those. And I don't know exactly how many would be interesting to see if the state had this data, how many of those could have been cured simply by using a mechanism that is readily available for use in another state. So I know that and I was hoping that we might hear more ideas from the Secretary of State's office. I know they've been considering this and thinking positively about some some element of curing. But if it's if it's only 1500, then the burden that would be placed on clerks to inform voters of a problem with their ballot is also not that great. And yes, it is on us and all sorts of civic groups in the state to continue to do our work to try to tell people that how to send it incorrectly. So hopefully that's that number would only go down in the future. But it's not clear to me yet what mechanism is available. I know there's some talk of technology that might send an automatic electronic notice to voters. But of course, we don't have that data for most of these voters at this point. So to send them an automatic text is not really, as I understand it, a viable alternative. So I think the only way that we could do it is have the clerks inform people even sending them a postcard and and allowing for that curing process to take place. And the last thing I'll say is that a number of states that have curing also allow the cure to actually happen after the election. And that, you know, that has implications for us as well. And and I know we're not talking about considering ballots that arrive after election day yet, but that's one other piece that that goes hand in hand with curing in a number of these states that that you allow for that to happen even after the election up to a certain number of days. And it varies by state. We included a lot of this information in with the specific comments that we submitted, and I think that's available to all of you now. So thank you, but I really just wanted to stress how important it is for many of our partners that we try to do everything we can to minimize that disenfranchisement, which includes allowing some some curing measure. So committee, do you have any questions or comments on this or thoughts on this at all? And I would like to hear more comments about how the kinds of things that would be required that might be cured. The outside envelope is one thing or the lack of signature. What what are the other things that create a defective ballot that could be cured? Senator Callemore. Well, thank you, Madam Chair, until you put that last prepositional clause in, I was ready. I don't know that this could be cured or not. But what about if somebody voted for everybody on the ballot when they weren't a lot? In other words, they overvoted that. Is that a defective ballot? That's a spoiled ballot, I think. OK. It's an overvote. It's an overvote. Yeah, the rest of the ballot still counts. If you, you know, they, you know, if you catch it during the election, then, you know, you can come and get another ballot. I screwed this up. But if it arrives and there's that that isn't there, we push it through. It counts every other vote that's correct. But it does not. It counts as an overvote that one ballot line. So there's no way to cure that. No, because because by the time you know that that ballot is being overvoted, you don't know who the voter is. Because by that point in time, we have separated the ballot from the certificate envelope, so we don't know who the voter is. And that is on purpose to maintain the anonymity of the voter. So what kinds of things do are curable then? What kind of other than the returned ballot without the envelope or without a signature on the envelope that can be cured because somebody could be could come in and sign it. What other what else can be cured? Now, that's that's the question, I think, because I agree with Paul. I mean, how can we have 1500 voters disenfranchised if we could if we could with reasonable measures cure them? So what town clerks and secretaries, what are the things that need to be cured on a ballot? You know, I think signature and not being in the envelope are two big ones. The clerks will know better than I. But sometimes people sign the ballot itself. I'm trying to think of any others defer to Carolyn John. Sometimes because they haven't signed the certificate envelope, we don't know who they are. So we can't identify the voter to have them cure the ballot. But but what else, Lila? Excuse me. For a primary, the failure to return the unvoted balances, it is defective, I don't want to talk about the primary because we're going to talk about that in a separate thing. And I think that there are some solutions for that. But in a general election, other than a signature or not in the envelope, or they signed the ballot. What else can be? What else is there? Audrey. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I think Chris might be able to correct me if I have this wrong. But there are certain instances which you do need to submit an ID with an absentee ballot. This is primarily from my experience in other states, like a photocopy, if you've registered in a certain way, wanted to raise that as a thing that has been cured in other states. It might not be particularly germane to Vermont, but I've seen it before. I don't think we require that. Do we, Chris? I am not positive. Certain first time voters who may have registered. Yeah, I think it's and I can track it down with my team. But about this, I'll take a look into it and see because I believe it's part of America Vote Act. If it's worthwhile, I'll send it over to Chris. Yeah, no, to Chris's point, same day voter and to Brian's point, if you're doing a same day voter, they're obviously showing their driver's license to, you know, if they're getting registered at the same time that they're voting. There is that they're they're doing that in person. So there's no defective ballot to cure. Right. Right. Of course. Defective ballots are the ones that get sent in, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Am I wrong about that? We're talking about vote by mail here, right? Well, we're talking about defective ballots. What creates a defective ballot and can they, which are the ones that can be cured and which are the ones that can't be cured? But, Jeanette, you could have a defective ballot with a person in person voting. They could screw it up and do exactly what you just said and said, you know, go back to the check in crowd and say, I screwed this up. Yeah. Yeah, but did they get given a new ballot? Yes. Yeah. And so you just tear that up and yeah. Yeah. So you can cure it right there by just getting a new ballot. Right. But if it's mailed in, I guess I'm at a loss here because so far those are the only things that I've heard that create a defective ballot. I think those are the big ones we are talking about. Fifteen hundred about I think Paul's number is about right. Fifteen hundred voters for the general. It was, you know, less than one half of one percent, but it's still a very significant number. Yeah, you know, I'm looking through. We have a specific way we have to handle defective ballots. We have to mark them. We have to put them in a defective ballot envelope and and keep them along with all the other ballots. So, you know, we have a checklist here that says what what makes a ballot defective? You know, the absentee voter is not legally qualified to vote. I don't know what that would. I mean, if we've mailed them a ballot, they would have been legally qualified to vote. But the affidavit on the certificate envelope is not completed. But I I don't know that I almost feel like that's been changed and that I that it hasn't been updated in the in the book, but we can look at that. Certificate is not signed. We've already talked about the voted ballot is not in the certificate envelope. We've talked about that voter identifies themselves on the ballot. We talked about that they signed the ballot. And then there's the primary, you know, returning the right number of ballots in the voted and the unvoted ballots. So those are those are the reasons for a defective ballot. So it seems to me I guess I don't see if the person isn't qualified to vote. They shouldn't have gotten a ballot in the first place. If they got a ballot, they're probably qualified to vote. So I don't I don't understand that one. The inner envelope in the and signing the certificate and not being in the envelope. Those can those can be. Oh, yeah. And if they sign the ballot, do we throw it out? Where people aren't supposed to do anything to identify themselves or other people on the ballot. So, you know, we when we held the the election for an item. Oh, it was for a lieutenant governor in one of the elections. And people were wanting to write all kinds of things on their on their ballots. This was in the General Assembly when we had to vote. And we told them very clearly that they wrote anything on their ballot, their name, somebody else's name, anything at all, we would throw it out. And we did. We did not accept any ballot that had anything written on it. Madam Chair, I think that the bottom line is that, you know, with those with so many defective ballots each election cycle, we all want to try to do something about that. We should have a curative provision. Technology will play a big part in helping people understand and and get back and and and cure something that they've done wrong with their ballot. I think we have to have this conversation about how much affirmative action the clerks or the Secretary of State's office needs to take to let know that there's there's been a defect and that they should come and fix it. And then there's the question of how much time they have to fix it. I think our recommendation is to take a small step first and say that there's not a proactive obligation, statutory mandate for clerks to reach out when something is defective, but they do need to update the the system to mark the ballot defective so that voters on their own can discover this, can get back down to their town clerk's office and fix whatever problem there may have been with their ballot and that it be done on or before Election Day, we need to start. Is where committee, where are you and everybody else on this? Can I ask the committee first, Senator Polina? I would be curious to see what other states do. Yes, on the one hand, is it just a cure all that covers everything and do they have to make different criteria for different kinds of defective ballots or that need to be cured? I'm just curious how big of a how big of a deal it is in terms of the actual law itself, whether it's in captures everything with one phrase or whether it's has to be broken down into particular kinds of defect defections. So I don't have a position in my position would be that I'd like to hear a little bit more about how other states do it. All right, but let's make sure that the other states are comparable to their vote is comparable to ours. And Alice, Senator Clarkson. So I think if we're allowing clerks to open ballots 30 days, beginning 30 days before, which I hope we will continue to do, I think that's great, we can catch these ballot challenges and clerks can be in touch with the voter. And they but but and they could call them. I mean, it strikes me they could just call them or email them instead of having to mail something to them. And then people have the opportunity to to cure it themselves to fix the problem by coming to Town Hall and fixing the problem themselves. I think that that is we should be doing that. I think that's great. And I think that's the plus of the 30 day window is that you have the opportunity to do that. Well, that assumes that people don't wait until the day two days before election to mail it in. So another reason to do it early. So I would it seems to me that what we seem to be agreeing on, and I guess we can take more testimony on this, is that we would make whatever statutory changes we need to make to allow town clerks to notify people to that they have to put it on that. They have to update the whatever that thing is my voter page, which I've never gone to, I have to admit. So I don't know if I have one or not. But you do they have to update that, which they do anyway. And then does the town for the time for when they get a ballot, then they would they they put in that the ballot has been received or whatever. They could put in there's a problem with it. And then people, but they're not mandated to notify at this point. They're they're mandated to update the voter page, but they're not mandated to to contact the voter in any other way. And it has to and they have people have to come in and do it. And it has to be done on or before the election day. Is that where we are, John? Just as a postscript, I get quite a sure Carol does to get quite a bit of calls during an election where people are actually physically calling and asking, did my ballot get in? Does it count? Is everything all right? So just in terms of any kind of digital divide concerns, I don't think they're there because we get so many calls like that. Probably get more calls about that than I do calls or contact about, hey, I went to the my voter page and it says something's wrong. So then you would tell them if you get the call, but you're not going to be mandated to to contact them if they contact you. Right. Yeah. And it should be kept in mind, too, that we don't have across the board contact information for folks. Right. You know, we've got we've got an address. Some of them we have phone numbers. Some of them we have emails so that could create a little inconsistency. Right. We were proactively had to contact them. OK, John, I mean, Paul. Thank you, Madam Chair. I I do think that there would be inconsistency, despite the fact that clerks may receive phone calls now from people checking in if all we did was updated the my voter page. I I think that that is not equally available to every voter then. So, yes, they could call up. But, you know, I think that's an issue. I recognize you do not have clerks would not have phone numbers or emails for many of these voters. If they had that information, they could perhaps try that that form of outreach. But that's why other states mandate a postcard notification process. And if you didn't want to allow people to cure the ballot after election day, you know, this process could cease some number of days before the election, to recognizing that, you know, at some point it's too late to send something out and expect the voter to be able to come in. But but I I guess I will continue to make the pitch. I haven't heard. I know that it's an additional burden. It's not my desire to put an additional burden on clerks. But at least we should figure out. I'd love to know how many what is the greatest number of defective ballots that were found for any particular town? I haven't heard of that yet. I mean, how much burden are we actually talking about here in order to preserve somebody's right to have their vote count? I think it's worth figuring out. Senator Clarkson. So I I agree with Paul. I was thinking every you had more contact info for everybody. But of course, you have their address. It strikes me that, you know, that we could limit it like 10 days or less. You wouldn't be required to send a postcard, but it's pretty easy to pop a postcard in the mail when you open up a ballot and see that there's a people have put things in the wrong envelope and that it's an easily remedied, curable ballot. And it strikes me that we could ask clerks to send everybody a postcard between that window of 30 days and 10 days and that less than 10 days or five days or however long we think the post office is able to get things to people that we that we ask to send a postcard to people and let them know either that or we spend much more effort educating people about using their My Voter Page because that's the other option is to really make that a more effective interface between the voter and the clerk. That is hard for people who live on River Road in Putney because they don't have any broadband access. But Lila and then Audrey. I just wanted to underscore the point that the My Voter Page that you just made, Madam Chair, that some people did not have access to it just physically because of the constraints of our system in Vermont. And also there are people who are really not computer literate, who are not to use the My Voter Page effectively. I found it useful myself. I tried to use it this much and see how it worked. But I think there are many people who won't be able to do that. I would suggest, as others have, that it would be a good idea to have a postcard or a form letter that would be as easy as possible for the town clerk to fill out to say your ballot is not being considered defective for the following reason. And this is what you do about it. And this is your opportunity to cure. I think not having a notice system that's uniform is very problematic. And putting the I think if you stop putting as much of the bonus on the voter, the town clerks may actually find that they have fewer calls because people won't understand that that they will be notified if there's a problem with the ballot, still have some people who will be nervous. But otherwise, people are going to be constantly checking My Voter Page, constantly calling. And I really think that in terms of equity and just a uniform system, having a male notice is the way to go. And our preference would clearly be to allow for a few days after the election. It doesn't have to be a long period. But I do think because ballots can be turned in up until the day before the election, that some extra time to allow people to cure it would be appropriate. I'm just saying that it does not want to. Audrey. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to echo a lot of the things that Leela just said. We had the voted home coalition. We we actually are big fans of what we call ballot tracking software. Very similar to the My Voter Page, I believe, but for an incredibly cost effective solution, you can automate your your responses or your proactive notifications to voters. So I doubt anyone can see it on the computer screen, but I want to prove that it's here. These are my notifications that I got got from Denver Elections. So there's even my my I voted sticker. The kinds of technology that is out there has been expanding rapidly over the past couple years. So Denver was the first place to actually institute something like this, but now it's nationwide. We highly recommend it because a voter gets to opt in into the kinds of messaging that they're looking for from their their clerks. So I I get the text messages and the emails because this is what I do and I really like it, but if you're not computer savvy, you have that option to get it directly to a phone. But there still is in law here in Colorado, the requirement that you get something on paper if your ballot is rejected. So we do recommend those things to be very sensitive to the kinds of burdens that this can be putting on on clerks. But really the technology is coming a long, long way. And we've seen it actually decrease call volume here just in Denver in particular over 90 percent. So you're spending less time reassuring voters and you're just automatically giving them that information, your ballots on the way, your ballot should have arrived. Your ballot has been received back. And then the last one is your ballot has been received and accepted for counting. That's the most important one. It's the most fun and it comes with the little sticker and everything. So we have lots of options and we look forward to to working with whoever is interested in looking at the different options. Thanks. And I'm going to call on John. I mean, Bruce, in a second here. But I am going to say that while this sounds wonderful, we are not in a position to have both ballot tracking software before February 19th, we have to have a bill passed by February 19th if we want to do anything this year. So we can't we can't we can ask the Secretary of State to look into it for future. But if we want to do anything now about curing ballot defective ballots, we have to do it before February 19th. So thank you, sir. Yeah, Bruce. Thank you, Madam Chair. Bruce Olson, Verrant Democratic Party. We just want to strongly reiterate our support for curing ballots. You know, we've had numerous instances in the last election where people they felt they were denied the right to vote because they made some simple mistake. We like the idea that people can get a postcard from the town clerk that notifies them that they may have made a mistake in how they process their ballot and it would be defective so they have an ability to cure that. The postcards we think is particularly important because so many rural voters have very poor access to the internet. They're older voters as well who may not even be online. It would be wonderful if we could have the technology as described in Colorado, but we just don't think that's appropriate for for Vermont at this time. So again, we want to be able to cure these ballots. And we think it does not sound to us like an undue burden for the town clerk to send out a postcard if a ballot is defective. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm going to make a suggestion here in the hopes of moving us on to something else because we still we have not even gotten to the town clerk's list yet. I'm going to suggest that we put, do a draft that would have the Secretary of State print a postcard and supply it to the town clerks that says your ballot has been received. It is deemed defective because of and you can check it or you can just say it's defective and you can come in and cure it and that that would be sent out by the town clerks up to 10 days before the election. And they can and those people who who have just cured defective ballots within 10 days of the election. I'm sorry, but I don't think we are in the position yet of accepting cures after the election. We're going to talk actually about the postmark receipt later. And I think they're connected. That's just a suggestion, Carol. The one thing, two quick things. One, with regards to the My Voter page, ties into my earlier comments about missing data. You can't access your My Voter page if the if your date of birth isn't already in the system and or your driver's license. So so that's another that's just a sticking point for accessing the My Voter page. The other thing is that not every clerk opens their ballots and is able to determine that ballots are defective before the election. While we have the opportunity to do that 30 days in advance, it's not it's an option. It's not mandatory. And so you're creating some inequities there if you've got some clerks who are doing it and some clerks that aren't. So it's just another piece that would need to be looked at. All right. Well, where do we go? Do we allow town clerks to can we allow town clerks to do it? And I know that creates inequity, but as Carol just said, some town clerks don't open their ballots so they wouldn't be able to send it out. Anyway, are we going to require town clerks to to open their ballots 30 days ahead of time? I mean, they're all they're all connected. So where do you want to go? Committee Allison, Sarah Clarkson and Will Sending, as you see, Madam Chair, has joined us in just time for another subject, go back to Nick. I think that if we are going to go to enabling clerks to start 30 days, that yes, that if we're going to really try and fix the cure the curing problem, curing ballot problem, we are going to need to ask clerks to begin to process those ballots 30 days before the election. Otherwise, you can't you don't have time to cure them. And so, you know, we don't see a way around that. So does that how do how do hand count towns deal with processing the ballots 30 days ahead of time? Because they can't feed them into the machine. They but these you can see if it's defective before you put it in the machine. Right? This is a decision that's made. No, no, no towns who who hand count, do they open them up and look at the the ballot themselves before? So now they're looking at my ballot and they know who I voted for. Oh, I see what you mean. No, how would they know if it's defective or not? Then if they don't look at the ballot, if they open it and it's not in that inner envelope, I'm not talking about that. What if I sign my ballot? Carol, you were shaking your head. No, I was I was going to say that that I I can determine that a ballot is defective generally just by having by slicing open the outer envelope, the return envelope. You look inside, you can either see that the certificate isn't signed or that the ballot isn't in the certificate envelope. I've never run into a situation where somebody has signed the ballot and, you know, it's not something I look for because I don't want to be looking at how somebody is voting in in that moment. So. OK, so where are we going to go? Committee, let's make some decisions here. Do we? I I opt for allowing a town clerk to send out a for those who process start processing early to send out a postcard. And yeah. And I don't want to mandate it because and I know it creates inconsistency from town to town, but it probably already we probably already have inconsistencies from town to town. So where are you committee? I support that. Senator Polina. I would encourage it as well. The 10 days is where I get stuck a little bit. I'm not sure what the timing should be, but I think if we sleep on it for one half a day, probably be OK. Just not sure about the time. And it's actually it's going into it's going to the same town. Well, maybe not. Maybe it's going to Florida. Maybe the person mailed their ballot in from Florida. I don't know. But if it's going to the same town, it may be not 10 days. Senator Colomar. I think this has been a wonderful discussion, Madam Chair, but I think I find myself in the position of not supporting curing the ballot. OK, Senator Rom. I think it's probably good to enable and make it voluntary this time around because it's coming up so quickly and because we don't know all the situations that we could create folks and don't have time to move it ahead for some while we are about all those unique situations. All right, so we'll have Emeryn draft up something for us on that one, and then we can get some testimony on that and make sure that we're OK, Carol. Just a quick question. Would this be applicable to both general elections and local elections, where we don't even mail ballots out until 20 days before? I would I don't I don't know. That's I would make it applicable to the general election and maybe allow town clerks to determine whether they want to do it in the local election. I don't know. What do you think committee or Chris? John has his hand on his face and there he is. OK. Oh, just another note. I've said this a few times in various hearings. I think it's another argument for trying to separate those filing deadlines farther out from Town Meeting Day, which are so tight and you can get that 30 days and then it can be you. We have it on our we have it on our town clerk list if we ever get there. But we've spent a lot more time on this than I had anticipated. OK, I'm going to have I'm going to have that written up. And then we'll see where we are. Great. All right, Chris, Will, we need to talk about nicknames on ballots and how what the issue is and how we deal with it quickly. And congratulations on your big presentation. Thank you. It went really well. Good. That's a really valuable organization for me to be a member of. I get a lot of value out of that. The nickname issue, we can be quick because it's small and you guys shouldn't spend a lot of time on it. What I will what our office was referring to was attempts by I think it was two folks this year who tried to do it where they turn that they turn the ability to put a nickname on the ballot into essentially a campaign statement. So where it's very obvious that this isn't a nickname they've carried from childhood in the community, such as we had a gubernatorial candidate who was listed on the ballot as first name, quote, and the F-35s. No. And but nicknames are used on the ballots in a good way over time, I think in Vermont. Other examples are your longtime rep, Kevin coach Christie, where everybody in his community knows him as coach. I believe Senator Callemore has in the past been listed with B.C. as a middle nickname because a lot of people know him that way. And I totally support that and think it makes sense to let people put that form of nickname on the ballot. And so I'm not sure how you would phrase it, but I could try and work on that if the committee supports the concept of somehow writing the law to say you can't use the nickname for something that's not really your nickname and instead to make a political statement on the ballot. Committee. I would support that. Sure. Thank you. Well, I thought you were going to say that Senator Callemore used Brian, the radio man, Callemore. No, but when I was on the radio, I just used my initials. Oh, OK. Or best high school hockey referee in the state, Callemore. That's what I thought it was going to be about. The ice man making me feel bad. So, Anthony, our Senator Paulina, are you OK with having some language around that? OK. Senator Rom. Senator Clarkson. All right. Well, that was quick. I must have been doing something wrong. Will gets in here and gets you down just like that. Well, we spent the whole time before on anyway. So I want to go to signature verification. And I think that the the Secretary of State has some thoughts about about the complications of doing it because we don't have signatures now and how we might go forward if we're going to. Will, Chris, whoever. Go ahead, Will. Yeah, I think that is the biggest practical impediment to it at this point, just the fact that we do not have signature images on file for any of our voters. And I'm not sure what the process would even be to go about collecting those. We spoke a little bit before about potentially receiving them from DMV to the extent they have them. But I I just still have serious sort of fundamental concerns with that concept. Especially in the potential ability for it to lead to a lot more defective ballots than we have right now and disenfranchisement of voters based on signatures not matching what we have on file. I think if you look across the country, Audrey can probably help with this too, but it varies whether states are doing human verification of signatures or using new software that does those comparisons. I sort of have concerns about both, to be honest. And it's one of those where I try and waive the benefit of implementing the system against the fact that I don't think we see a lot of signature fraud on our absentee ballots. So I would support language that had the Secretary of State look into implementation of a signature requirement, but I don't think we're ready or necessarily convinced that it's necessary now. So maybe we I'm looking to see if maybe we ask you to look at that at the pros and cons and what it would mean. And does that make sense? Yes. OK. All right, well, that was easy. Senator White, it brings up what I would have said in your last discussion at the very end, which is that. I don't think you can really have a meaningful, pure provision unless you put a timeframe on when the clerks have to open the mailing envelope and determine whether the ballot's defective or not. And it's not that you're saying they can do it wouldn't the language wouldn't be that they can do that for the 30 days before the ballots come in on a day to day basis, right? So the the relevant language is how long from when you get a ballot, do you need to open the mailing envelope, see that the certificate sign and that the ballots in the envelope? Just to focus the committee a little bit out of the five or six reasons a ballot can be defective, those are going to be those are the two most common ones for one. And they're really the only two that are able to be cured by the voter. Come down and sign the envelope or come down and fill out another ballot and put it in a certificate envelope, seal it, sign it and give it to me. If your other one wasn't we'd that's a nuance, but we want to talk about whether they could take the one they didn't send back in an envelope and put it in a new envelope. The other reasons for a ballot being defective are ones that aren't curable. That's whether there's not on your checklist, right? They're not legally qualified. You can't determine who they are. You just get a ballot back with no indication of who it comes from. Right. So you're really thinking about curing the signature or putting the ballot in the envelope and those two things I think is what Carol was saying. You can tell from opening the mailing envelope, either the certificate signed or not, and you can tell if the certificate envelope is empty or if it has a ballot in it. So I really think that you need to do seventy two hours or whatever the committees and the clerks feel is reasonable for a time to make that determination and then do whatever notice you're going to do to the voters that you guys decide upon. Well, we on our next list, which was town clerks issues, we did have early processing and there were four different categories. One was limited to one day before work with the clerks to determine what is the best time, 30 days, two weeks, whatever, required to be done periodically or and establish some guidelines. So I don't know if we want to go there right now because that's or Senator Rom, you had those are slightly, if I may, those are slightly two separate concepts, though you could have one and not the other. The early processing is 30 days before you can open up, you know, get it. Well, you asked the question earlier, what do the hand count towns do? They can do the same thing. They just open up the certificate envelope and put the vote of ballot in a secure ballot box instead of sliding it through the tab. OK. All right. So do we want to add something in there that the within a certain within 72 hours? A ballot has to be open to determine whether it's defective and can be cured. Yes. Senator Ron, I think what I what confused me or I confuse myself is when Will said that some ballots can't be cured. I thought when when a ballot is incurable right now, they can't vote again. So is it true that if they learn that it's if it's defective, but it's for a reason that they're not on the checklist or something, can't they still can they still go in and vote? Or did they now lose their opportunity to vote? So if they're not on the checklist, Will was saying there there are some things that are curable and there are some things that are incurable on these right ballots, things that may be incurable or they're just not aligned with the checklist, right? So would they do they forfeit their ability to vote if their ballot is incurable in certain ways? No. So they I can help you understand that. But OK. You can they're either they're either not to stand that. OK. Or Carol, the other the other instance I think about with a person not qualified that defective reason is if they've been challenged and haven't returned the challenge letter yet. So that one in theory also, if you check through and you're like, oh, this is a challenge voter, but I haven't received their response yet. That could be another reach out. And I need an affirmation of residence for you before. Same thing with somebody who votes and registers to asks to register to vote and asks for an absentee ballot at the same time and we mail them both the absentee ballot and the voter registration form, which they're supposed to return outside of the certificate envelope so we can add them to the to the checklist first before we then process their absentee ballot. That would be another thing that could be curable. And if they've been removed from the checklist for through this process that we talked about earlier, they could come in and reregister to vote because we have same day registration. Correct. So there's can I just narrow down that there are will there is there anything that is incurable that we're is there anything where they have forfeited their right to vote and there's no remedy for them that we're left with, if that's all possible. After no, not if you know who they are. OK. What about if they write their name on the ballot? Those it's interesting that that's in a different part of the statute. It's not in the defective ballot section where it was included on the defective list and it should be because when you look at that part of the statute, it says the ballots defective. If they identify themselves, we should get it added to the defective ballot section to that's really few and far between. But those are ones that you really pretty much don't count, don't come across until you're counting the ballots, your hands. So that may be a situation. It's kind of the wrong but that's somebody who signed their name on the ballot, which is just odd in my estimation. Yeah. Senator Clarkson, I can't remember the ballot, but does it say not to sign it? Does it clearly say? I mean, I can't imagine signing it, but I is there something on the ballot that tells you not to? No. So if you're a first time voter and other countries or other jurisdictions require you your signature on a ballot, I mean, it strikes if we could make that curable. It just seems like such a modest issue and kind of a nice issue in a way that they're affirming that they have voted or whatever your signature means to you. But you wouldn't you wouldn't see that until you're counting the ballots. And then at that point, yeah, you know, I know. But if you're if you're processing them 30 days out, if they if it is one of those things that happens as you're processing them, which many towns do, they process the whole thing. If that is caught at the time of processing it, then it strikes me that that also could be cured. I think it might be easier to just put on the top of the ballot. Do not sign the ballot. Yeah, either that. Yes, I would agree, because I'm not. Yeah, unless we tell them not to, there's how would you know not to? If you're new to our system? OK, well, I don't normally sign things unless I'm asked to sign them. I mean, that's you know, that's fair. I was out of his hand up for a while, Madam Chair. Oh, John. OK. I just would be very careful about creating a problem. If it says anywhere, even if it's part of a sentence, sign the ballot if it has do not in front of it. I guarantee you, you know, I've had one of these, I think, in nine years. I will get more. Yeah, I think we should leave it alone. So it's pretty rare. Very rare. OK, can we? Can we put something about within 72 hours of receipt of the ballot? It should be processed to the point of determining whether it's defective or not. And then notifying that they will put that will have that amaranth put that in the language also. And so that on the next thing on our list, we're just zipping right through these is the postmark receipt. Should we accept ballots? Up. Is the Election Day the deadline for receiving a ballot or is do we will we receive them if they're postmarked by Election Day? That is the question and committee. I don't know if you want. Do you want to hear from people first to weigh in on these issues or do you want to weigh in first? And Senator Polina have a question because what that implies is the possibility of taking a ballot that maybe comes in three days after the election, let's say, as an example. And I think things have to be certified now within 48 hours of the election. So I'm wondering if that would I would say would screw things up in other ways. In other words, if we had we'd have to change one to date when the ballots are certified, what would that mean to other dates? I actually mentioned this. I mentioned by sent a message to to Will asking for some clarity on this because I was curious. Yes, I think you're you're right on that. Senator Collamore. Thank you, Madam Chair, I might also prevent a community from reporting the results of an election on election night. And obviously, in a very small amount of cases, depending on how many ballots arrived after the post or after the election day, it could turn the ballot or it could turn the election around, too. So if if a town reported such and such a person, one, whatever race, but we allow kind of like a bunch of ballots after it might overturn that, it just I think it creates some issues. Senator Clarkson. Yeah, it definitely creates issues. If it's postmarked, I mean, I just got a thank you note from Christmas that was mailed before Christmas, and I only just got it. I mean, but I don't know. I'm sort of torn about this issue. Go to somebody else first. You still would have to. You still would have to have some kind of a deadline would have to be. Yes, oh, I think. I think it's like having much more than a day after it's having. It's like having a grace period. Yeah, if you have a grace period for paying your property taxes, then somebody comes in and says, but I'm only one day past the grace period anyway. Anthony's got his hand up. I just wanted to I just wanted to I didn't mean to say that I was opposed to the idea. I might might was a question as to how we impact other things. I'm not I'm not I'm not close to the idea. And we are going to hear from Will, but I first just wanted to give a sense of where the committee was on this before Senator Rahm. I'm just really open to hearing and understanding more. I could I could either way on this one. That's my response, Will. Will, tell us what if we did it two days after, four days after, 14 days after, 24 days after, I think California does 21 days. What would it do to the rest of our elections timetable? It would push everything back as far back as you allow us to accept balance. So right now they do unofficial results on election night. The official return of votes from each town from each clerk is to 48 hours after the election. So I now get those by five p.m. Thursday after a two Tuesday election, the canvases for. Let's just stick with the general election. That's what we're talking about. Canvases for the general election all occur one week after on the Tuesday after. So we get those official returns of vote in our office. They're also sent to the county clerks, the representative district clerks to canvass those offices up the line. And so those happen a week after the election. So you'd have to move the you could do unofficial results reporting on election night. Vermonters would have to get used to the idea that they are very unofficial at that point, much more unofficial than they are now. That it's not even the true result. Not all ballots have been counted. These are all things we can say right now. And then you'd have this period of time where we can still accept ballots that they would want to be adding to their official result. And then you'd want the official results to come in probably another 48 hours like it is now after whatever your final cutoff is for the ballots. And then you'd need another two to three days after that for those to be put together and canvassing documents prepared. So if we think it through, yeah, you're pushing stuff out at least a week until we're getting a final canvass of the results that also would push out the recount filing deadline, which is a week. So the canvasses happen and then you have to file for recounts with the court on that day, actually a week after the election. And there's the contest of election deadline that's 15 days after the election. I would think you'd want to extend that because people won't know whether there's an election to contest or not until they have the final vote. Having said all that of all of the suggestions here, it's the one I'm most strongly opposed and don't think is necessary at this time. I think I want to update some testimony I gave you guys who knows how long we go now when I was talking about a handful received after the election, I can do a little better than that. Right now, I believe what we have reported. I was just asking my staff by the clerks is 207 ballots returned late from the statewide. Yep. Now that's only as good as the data reported by clerks. Yeah. And not all of them maybe going in there and telling us that. But that's a pretty good indication. And if I divide 207 by three hundred and seventy thousand. Zero zero zero five percent. I think we did a really good job with education campaign. People like the Perg helping us out in that effort. Letting people know that their ballots have to be back by seven p.m. on election night. It's a really clear message. You know the clerks and the election workers on the ground right then know that when the polls close at seven, they have all the ballots in the building and they're going to count them. Be done, they're counted whatever got off a hour that night, report the results to the state and then come back and do their or be the next day. I think it's a fundamental change of the way we do elections to allow for ballots to continue to trickle in for some time after election day. And you saw it. I mean, Senator Callum or you were describing, right? What that could potentially lead to results changes. We see it at the presidential level across the country all the time now where the election night result, it was looking really good for President Trump on election night and as ballots came in, the results can change. And so it's just a whole new way of thinking about the results of an election. And there are good arguments on both sides. I acknowledge that too. Nobody wants to have to be the one to tell somebody that their ballot came in late and wasn't counted for that reason. We have 45 days of early voting where you can request those ballots and with plenty of time to get them back by mail to the election officials by 7 p.m. I'll cut myself off there. Well, I have some strong feelings about this one, too. And I but I will let Paul and then when Paul is done, I will I'm going to throw my thoughts in. Thank you, Madam Chair. It's the first time I have heard a figure for how many ballots had come in after election day. So I appreciate the information on that, Will. We have noted before in testimony, however, that there is no requirement for clerks to capture that data and report it to the clerk or to the Secretary of State. So nowhere in law are they required to do that. So that's 207 that we know about. We don't know how many more. And I don't care what the percentage is. I'm glad that it's small, but that's still more than 200 voters who tried to do the right thing, whose ballots weren't counted. Nobody's talking about allowing votes to be cast after election day. Senator Collomer suggests the results might change. And as Will said, that's true. Certain states, the the outcome was different on election night than it was three days later because the votes were counted. It's important to count every vote that is submitted, that is cast by a citizen of that state. And so I strongly support the idea of moving in this direction. However, having said that, we would not consider this to be the most essential change to be made in this year by February 19th. It is really just the time constraints that were under and all of the other challenges that would have to be addressed if you made this change. That makes me say, I get it. We are not, you know, urging you to make this change in this bill. But I strongly believe that over time, this is something that should be looked at carefully and considered perhaps after the 2022 election season. So I I actually feel strongly about this as does Will. And I think that that to if 207, even if 207 isn't the right number, even if it's a thousand, we are upsetting an entire election calendar and system for a few voters who didn't get their votes, their ballots in on time. And I have to say that when I mail my credit card bill, I know that I should allow a certain number of dates and days. And if it doesn't get there on time, I get socked with a penalty. So I think we're all used to dealing with deadlines. And if we were to go in this direction for voters, then I would say that we need to do the same thing for candidates. If I if the deadline is five p.m. to get my my petitions into the county clerk's office, I wanted to be the postmark of five p.m. that day, not not having to get them there on time. But we're all used to dealing with deadlines. And I agree with Will here. I don't think that we should that this is it. It sounds good and it will. But there has to be some voter responsibility that I mean and no matter what deadline you say, if you say two days after the election, we'll accept them for two days, then the vote that comes in three days after says, wait a minute, my vote didn't count. I tried to get it in, but the mail I mean, I mailed it after midnight on election day, so it didn't get postmarked there because our post office isn't open after five o'clock in the after. I think they need to be in by election day. So anyway, committee. Do you want to keep going on this, Brian? No, I fully support your position and wills. You know, I think of all the things that we face, taxes that are due at a certain point. I was unfortunately late once. I was happy. But when in the very next day with the check that and that all they did was smile at me and say, that'll be another $80, please. And there was no arguing about it. That was just and I didn't try to argue. I do think there's with every right that we have, there's, I think, a corresponding responsibility and this is just part of it. And you've got to learn the system. You have to understand how to vote. You have to know not to sign your ballot. I mean, all these things. I don't know how much more we can do for folks. I think we we've really a particular leading example of making it easy for people to vote and that's all I got. OK, so the next one that was on our list was the absentee deadline, same as in-person deadline, which I assume, which knowing where it came from means that we will not use a postmark receipt. You get your absentee ballot in on election day. So I don't think so. I'm going to check that one off too. So. Yes. So, you know, if we didn't have 45 days of early voting, I agree with you. That totally balances out all the things and we, yeah, I actually hear you and will. And I hear Brian, too. I, yeah, I have to say I'm sort of weighing in with the three of you. I understand Paul's passionate belief in this. But I think for the moment, I think I will support sticking with how we do it now. Senator Rom. Yeah, I'm sorry, I was kind of rubbing my shoulder, but I will just weigh in to say I found what will said really compelling about the numbers that, you know, it too were a state that loves the tradition of sort of hearing from the floor, the vote and waiting for the ticker tape and, you know, having that information that night and to change all of that. You know, 1.0005 percent of voters, when I also want to compliment our postal service, you know, who have done a really good job making sure all ballots went where they needed to go on time, doesn't feel like a compelling thing to do this year, particularly in at this time. So I'm ready to let this issue go. Thank you, Senator Polina. Well, I'm glad I asked the question originally. I appreciate Will's response. Now, I hear everybody saying and I would tend to agree with with the majority on the committee. OK, so the one other thing that was on the ballot list and I did not get an answer, it came from Deb Belladot and I will try and get more specific information about it. It was addressed. I'm not I'm just going to point it out and then we're not going to discuss it because we don't know exactly what the issue was about delivering ballots to nursing homes. So we'll take that up when I get I sent her a note asking her what the issues were, but I don't want to talk about it now because we don't know what her issue was. And so we're going to move on to the next one. OK, OK, OK. You want my guess at what that issue? No, no, because we don't have time for that. And we know we hear you. Thank you. So I don't know. Do you not understand what you say to your children? So let's go to the next to the town clerk list. Committee, do you want to keep going here? Do you want to take a five minute break? How about a five minute break? Because we've been sitting for two hours and five minutes. So let us skip the first one just for now on there. The town clerk's independence from the select board, because I think that I don't know that that's really an issue for select boards who appoint the town clerks and then they run for election and the town clerk those collect boards. Or anyway, we'll have that discussion, but I think that we need to go on to specific things that might require legislation. So allow municipalities to mail out ballots. That is on here and it isn't a mandate, it says to allow. So Gwen, would you like to weigh in on that one first? Thank you. So this would just be enabling just to allow the ability to mail out. We would have no problem with that. We would support that. It's just giving more options. Will. I would support that also. I think we would have to work on the details, but we don't have to do that now. But any sort of parameters when they would have to be sent out by prior to the election, etc. But I think as a concept, I would I would want the clerks the way I support it. OK, clerks. I see Carol's here. Oh, there's John. Yeah, as as Will said, I and and Gwen, I think that as long as it's enabling and not mandated, it makes perfect sense. Berry City is choosing not to mail out for town meeting. I know there's a lot of other towns that are. To me, the bigger question is, particularly with local elections, is the need to coordinate between municipalities. And I think that may be on your list, too. So it is. I agree. OK. Committee members, Brian, is that a thumbs up or a question? A question just quickly. This is just town meeting, right? Well, it would be for their town, their local elections. OK. I just wanted to be clear. It wasn't the general election, but municipalities were mailing out ballots for. This is just the town meeting. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think we would allow some municipalities to mail out in the general and some not to just ask good, good, good catch. And I'm fine with it. OK. Senator Clarkson, I thought towns always could mail out ballots. No. We gave them special permission to do it this year for their town meeting. We had to pass that, remember? Right. No, I realize, but I mean, absentee ballots. I mean, we have absentee ballots for town meeting, too. Ab. Yes, but this would allow them to mail out. The whole. Yes. Right. I have no I think it's great. I mean, yes, I have no problem. Senator Rom. Senator Polina. Good. OK. Anybody else want to weigh in on this one? So we'll get some language. Oh, Will. Sorry, I just thought of something while we're sitting here discussing it. Carol mentioned the coordination that makes me think about school districts. We've got that on the list. I know, but I would advise probably having this only applied to towns and cities, not all municipalities. OK. Because before we authorize again, the legislative body of a municipality, which in the case of a school district, is the school board to decide to mail out ballots. We need to address the gaps in title 16 about who is to do that. So if because that's a pretty big project, it might make sense to have this provision be limited to towns and cities and tackle that later. Got that. OK. We changed it to allow towns and cities to mail out ballots. OK, multiple return options. Do we need to? Is there any legislative? Oh, John, I'm sorry. That's OK. I would just say that if you specifically did it only for for towns and municipalities, it's something my city council has said they wanted to do. We then couldn't do it. Why? Because we share a ballot with with the schools and with another municipality entity, the Central Vermont. And you couldn't do it. So if they can't, then we can't. And that would set us back, honestly. Well, they can. The schools have been very reluctant to my understanding is to coordinate the timing and to figure out how to do this and until we can get that worked out. I mean, if you you'd have to print a separate ballot that John, you'd have to make a separate city ballot. Unfortunate, I will let my city council know. Yeah. So we'll put cities, towns and villages. OK, multiple return options. Do we need to do anything legislatively about that to allow multiple return options of mailed out ballots so that they don't have to be mailed in, they can be dropped off, they can. We have drop boxes on the next item. Do we have to do anything about that? Or is that just an administrative issue? Well, Brian, that would be administrative. Thank you, Madam Chair. Can someone bring back someone else's ballot to the town clerk? Yes. So we don't have to change that. I guess I'm OK. Is Senator Clarkson. Yeah, I think that that if we can just let that be up to each town to do as they want, isn't that fine? And can't I just if we're going to allow it for the general election? I'm not we're not talking about local elections now. We're talking about any election. If. Do we need to put anything in legislation that would allow multiple returns, including drop boxes, or is that simply an administrative issue? That's a question. Is that a will sending answer? Yes. I think I would prefer some legislation around drop boxes. But that's it. I think other than that, you've identified that we have a wide variety of return options, and Carol knows if this was coming from someplace else. But the most important thing with the drop boxes, why I might want to put some language in is some some general parameters about where they should be located and security around them. OK. Senator Ron. Yeah, I mean, I just hope we never have to deal with what we heard about in much larger cities where people put fake drop boxes in place, etc. But, you know, I think regulating them or having it named is helpful to make sure that we're clear about what they should be and what they're not in case we need to look at the issue in the future with some kind of fraud issue. I think most states this is also something that Audrey can probably chime in on. Most states, for instance, require video surveillance of drop boxes. Are we going to? I mean, most states might. Are we going to put that in that we are going to require surveillance? That means that my guess is that Putney will never have a drop box. That's that's the tough choice. You know, then you imagine somebody dropping a match into a drop box full of balance. Audrey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, it's kind of an interesting example. Depending on what kind of drop boxes you're you're purchasing, we have some preferred vendors that we work with across other states. They actually seal enough that they're actually fireproof. There's no oxygen inside of them. So, you know, the matches aren't necessarily a problem, but we do recommend some sort of security features and and the easiest recommendation is to actually put those boxes in a place where there already are some cameras. So we love like public libraries. They often have, you know, maybe a security camera. City Hall usually has some. So there's a lot of these these scenarios that you can also sort of match them up to where they are, but we understand there's a lot. There's a lot of leeway here. And it it might even be a recommendation that the Secretary of State's office sets the parameters for what the security and the the sort of specifications for these boxes are, they could be standardized. They could not. There's a lot of options there and we're always happy to consult. Yeah, I think that we shouldn't try to define the parent. I think that that's something that the Secretary of State works with the town clerks and VLCT around. And I cannot think of a surveillance camera in the village of Putney anywhere. I don't think there is. So I would not want to see you put that in as a requirement. I was thrown that out thrown that out as an example of no purity. I would be happy to have the security parameters left to the Secretary of State's office. I think there's still maybe a few minor things you could set out, you know, how many per community. And in our directive, for instance, this year week, for the reasons Audrey was talking about, I believe we at least suggested that they be located at a municipal property of some kind, whether it's police, fire, town, office or whatever. Senator Calmer. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just thinking about a person dropping a ballot off. Somebody else's ballot off at the town clerk's office. And so I'll ask Carol or John if I went by my neighbor's house and he said, hey, do me a favor and take my ballot down to the town clerk and I brought it in. Do you normally say, first of all, who are you? And I mean, how would you know that? I'm just trying to get a little bit of assurance that at this local level, most town clerks would realize who it was that I was getting the ballot from and be able to provide a little bit of security here. Well, I think it was a different, you know, the current thing where the with the ballot has to be sealed in a signature envelope, then I think it's sort of a moot question. It's sealed up, you know, and I think you can tell if somebody holds a seal under some steam and opens it up and closes it, then it becomes sort of irrelevant who it is, I think without it being sealed in a ballot or just with a card. I'm not sure how to answer the question. Yeah, certainly we, you know, I we're small enough that that I know the people who do that for their community. And so I'm used to having, you know, Jean come from East Parkside Terrace, where she makes the rounds of all her neighbors and brings stuff in. But but but certainly if somebody drove up to our drive up drop box or the one we have through the door on, you know, we we wouldn't know who was returning it. And and we don't we don't worry about who's returning it as long as what they're returning is a legitimate envelope that was sent to to a voter. OK, yeah, I guess I'm OK. So, well, can you work with Amron to get some language around what what should be in the legislation? And then how language about leaving it to the Secretary of State and the town clerks to work out the details? I think that's. OK, so flexibility for types of elections. Horseback, ice arenas. How do we need to put something in legislation about that, or is that really an administrative issue? Will. So are we we're talking about like what we've done drive through options or outdoor options? Yeah, I could think about some kind of authorizing legislation for that that would cover those kind of activities. OK, so we should have some language about that. Do committee, do we want to have language about that? Well, depending on how creative will can be, you know, whenever you make a list, what you don't include on the list might be an option for another community. So if you make it too tight, you're sort of hamstringing. I would think that you could just let a community kind of decide for itself the best way to do it. Yeah, we have to have some legislation that allows them to decide. That's what we need to have there. Right now, they don't have any ability to to make those decisions. How did Carol get permission to do the hockey rink? Covid bills. Oh, did we just vote wherever they wanted? We gave them permission to to do different things because of Covid. But. You know, it's interesting, though, I thought all along and Carol, I'd be curious, your opinion on this, that I wasn't sure the authorization for outside was actually even necessary in that if you look at Title 17 right now, I don't think there's anywhere that says the polling place has to be in a building or inside talks about entrance and exit checklist and guard rails and how those are set up and the flow of voters. But I had the thought on numerous occasions, they probably could do it outside if they wanted to anyway. I agree. Yeah, OK. And so it may be that we could leave that alone and leave it to emergency authorizations, you know, from our office. It's right now the BCA has to decide the polling place location. I think you'd want to leave that as is. And I guess let me think about it. If a line in there that said a polling place may be located outside, if necessary, couldn't hurt either, I don't think. OK, other than that, I don't think it's that prescriptive or restrictive right now. Yeah, the only things we had to do were what we would normally do anyway. We had to get BCA approval and we had to let the Secretary of State's office know of the change of venue. OK. So we don't have to put in there. And we don't have to put in there that you can do it on horseback, but not camel. Sorry, Brian. OK, so if we need just something in there that's permissive, we'll do that if we don't, we don't have to do it. OK. All right, the next thing on the list is consistent polling hours across the state. And I know that this has been talked about before. And I'd like to hear from people about what you think about that. And I will start, I think, here with Will and then go to the town clerks and BLCT. I would mostly defer to the town clerk's opinion on this issues that, of course, would make my job easier. I think it would lead to slightly less confusion for voters, although I think that voters are pretty familiar with their individual towns polling hours and have every opportunity to be aware of them through notification from the clerks. So I don't have strong feelings either way on this, to be honest. Carol. As an individual, I'm probably the wrong person to ask. I'm a seven to seven. So I'm as long as you can well know, because I don't do five a.m. By my charter, I'm seven to seven. I think probably the towns you want to talk to more are the ones who don't start until 10 o'clock in the morning and what they would think about having to start three hours earlier. John. No, same here. I was about to say the same thing. I'm not sure what the challenges would be for the ones who started 10. So I feel like I can't really speak to them. We're seven to seven, too, and we don't have an issue. Yeah, without having an opportunity to, you know, pull the Association's members to get some feedback, I can't really speak to that issue. Sorry. No, that that's fine. I just it was on our list. And I know that in Bennington, when Tim Corcoran was the town clerk, they started at five o'clock in the morning because they had a lot of people who went to work at six who started work at six. So he started at five o'clock in the morning at the fire station that was near where people went to work or something like that. Senator Clarkson. I think maybe, you know, we're going to be working on this bill for a bit. It would be great to get some sense, Carol, from your listserv of where clerk's way in, but I have to say, I've had a lot of voters frustrated that some towns of the path. I've had a lot of voters tell me they're frustrated at the patchwork of times that that they would love to know that everybody was seven to seven or eight to eight or whatever. You know, it just it's particularly if people have moved within Vermont. It's it and even from outside, because most places open at seven in the morning around the country, I mean, Audrey could maybe weigh in on that. But it does strike me that seven to seven captures people at both ends. And it would be great if it was consistently seven to seven. I'm I, I, Senator Palmer and Polina, do you want to weigh in? And then I have my feelings. Sure. I think it falls in the category of the name broke. Don't fix it. We're always advocating for local, local, local. So if a particular community is not happy with the hours, I think they can make that known to the town clerk and they can change it. I don't think we need to get involved with this at all. And I I don't even know that there's a problem with it. I think. Yeah, let it go. And that's why Carol could, you know, pull people if she wanted. Senator Polina. I think uniform hours would be good, but I don't really think it's a problem. I think uniform hours would would be better, but I think it's fine to let local towns decide if they want to make their clerk open up earlier, Senator Ron. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think for it is not broken if if you're, you know, you you have lived in the same town, you know when to vote or you're the clerk and you haven't heard particular complaints in your town. I think, you know, as someone who tries to do a lot of education for new voters, I'm constantly trying to figure out, you know, in a county setting, OK, when does Westford, you know, open up their polls? Oh, they, you know, this particular ward moved its its polling place and that means they have different hours. So, you know, I think it's just a matter of how much communication is out there that helps us share that with with people. But I'm constantly digging in each town to figure out when are there hours to make sure I can communicate that clearly and not give misinformation to people and, you know, I think it would certainly make it easier for those of us who try to communicate with new voters and unpracticed voters that it's 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. around the state that, you know, there's a lot of things that people of certain generations emerging tend to expect about standardization and the ability to count on something for a certain time, you know, standard timeframe. So, you know, I would I would advocate for more standardized hours around the state, but would be really open to hearing from towns that for that's a burden or, you know, very problematic for them. Gwen, do you want to? Is this is this including all elections, local and statewide or. Some out of the list that I got just said, it's consistent hours, voting hours, polling, poll hours across the state. OK, well, I think that there's probably an easier, not easier, but more opportunity for conversation about moving towards more consistent hours when you're talking about statewide elections. I think it's we would strongly advocate against that applying to local elections, just given how town meetings work in general and how over the place they are. That would be at least a more voter confusion. But I, too, would be interested in hearing from the smaller communities and in figuring out what the problems might be and how the state might be able to help get towards standardization because there's a big difference between seven to seven to ten to seven or something else. So that's it would I wouldn't want to be immediate, but I think that I think it's something worth talking about. But I think that we only have two clerks here from larger communities that already have their own ways of doing things that even by charter. So like if we were to set different times, if Carol's charter in Berry City says something differently, that could also cause an issue moving forward. But yeah, I think statewide, yes, conversation local, most likely no. So I actually am one of those people who doesn't think we need to address this at all. I do think that it's another issue of it would be it would be consistent and people would know. But people know what town they live in. They know what where they're going to vote or they find out where they're going to vote and when they find out where they're going to vote, they can find out what time they are going to vote. And it is another example, I think, of voters having to take some responsibility for figuring out where it is and when they're voting. And we have inconsistent town clerk hours all over the state. So it isn't just the voting that we have inconsistent town clerks hours. And that could be as much of an issue or even more of an issue for people who are looking for land records or something like that. So I don't think we need to address this at all, even though I would do almost anything to make Will's job easier. I'm not going to support doing it this way. Anybody else want to weigh in on on that? OK, I will put the I will put the poll out to the Association, if you'd like me to just to have the information. I mean, if two hundred and fifty one town clerks came back saying, yes, then we don't even need to do it. Because if they agree that it should be seven to seven, they can just do it. I mean, well, it would be interesting to see if it's an issue for, you know, if it's an issue larger than those of us who are here and larger than the people who set things into your list. It's an issue for small towns. So anyway, Will, did you want to I was just going to tell you as a point of information, it's really pretty evenly spread out. So starting at seven o'clock, eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock, there's a pretty even number of towns that do that. They're not all grouped in one. And so whatever time you pick is going to make a large percentage of them have to change to that time. And I won't speak for Carol or I shouldn't. But I I think I can tell you what the response to that survey is going to be. And if you did make it consistent and said seven to seven, would that mean that Tim Corcoran, who is no longer with us, couldn't open at five in Bennington to accommodate his early voters? He wouldn't be allowed to do that. You could set it as a minimum, but you can have to be open seven to seven earlier, that would be fine. But why would OK? Anyway, all right, I just kind of one one thing here. I think if we put a survey out to the to the clerks, I think that is in and of itself helpful to figuring out why. You know, just to saying yes or no is not really helpful. You know, right, whether they're willing to do it, understanding why they set their hours the way they do is actually more helpful because we can probably glean from the responses the barriers that are there and whether or not the state can step up or we can educate the select boards about what resources the town clerks might need. But without having that information, we don't really know, you know, reason behind setting certain hours. Yeah, good idea. Lila, did you have your hand up? Did I see? Oh, no. OK. Senator Rahm, I think you did again. Well, yeah, I mean, if I could just add, I think that the. The I want to just say for the conversation, the value is not just consistency, but making sure that people who work can go either before work or after work and, you know, knowing, oh, well, every town has at least an option where someone could go before or after work. If they work eight to five is helpful to know. But I'm just, you know, I think it's really helpful to hear we want to do more. We want to be open more hours. But this is our barrier and not really valuable for us to know. And I think the statutes do say they have to be open till seven. Yes, they have no ability to close before seven. Am I right about that? OK. All right. So, OK, early. Somebody's going to have to tell me when to stop. Because should we? It's four. It's four ten. How about doing one more issue? Let's do early processing. That's the next one on the list. And there were four kind of sub suggestions under there. One was to limit the early processing to one day before the election. One was just said work with the clerks to determine what it was, what it is, and one said require periodic processing, at least once a week or something. And one said, let's have clear guidelines on it. So, Will, do you want to take that one on to start with? And then we'll go to the town clerks. Sure. To me, this is a critically important piece, especially if we go to mailing a ballot to all voters, because we saw how many people take advantage of that and mail them back throughout the early voting period. It's what we put in place in our directive. So I have a good approach and language prepared that I could work with Amarin on. I would suggest that being available for at least 30 days for the clerks. And just to be clear, again, we're talking about the ability for them to remove the ballots from the certificate envelopes and put them in a ballot box or a tabulator. They already have the ability to take them out and check the voter in off the checklist based on the certificate envelope for the 30 days. But I believe that we heard from many of them that they appreciated the ability to get them into the tabulator or ballot box so that your poll workers at the polls are focusing on the voters at the polls and not processing absentee ballots all day. Carol, John. Actually, we represent two different approaches. John did the early processing. I didn't. And and that, to me, is the most important thing is that whatever is put in place, I support the idea of having up to 30 days. But whatever is put in place gives the clerks the opportunity to pick whatever degree of processing works best for them. And it's hard for me to overstate how terrific that 30 days was for us to get a consistent, manageable workflow throughout the election, particularly on election day. It was tremendous. I would say, you know, the wheel was is invented for you. There were no, as far as I know, any problems that arose from it. So. Yeah, I mean, it was those of us who did it, it was great. And I don't know that you would need to I might, you know, reconsider the deadlines or this, you know, you've got to you've got a pilot project out there. And it seems to me it was a roaring success. Senator Clarkson. Oh, I great. Everybody I heard from said that was just terrific and really relieved the burden on on election day and let them focus on, particularly with COVID, let them focus on, you know, making sure there were six feet, you know, making enabling the election to run as smoothly and safely as possible. And we just got kudos for being able to use 30 days. Lila. I just wanted to make sure that this is consistent with the discussion about curing ballots because they're very closely related. And I'm not sure the 30 days actually covers the entire period, if you really want the clerks to to review ballots as they're coming in and the ballots are sent out 40 days in advance, if 30 days. Covers that. So I'm just concerned that whatever is done, you know, has has to in terms of of the system for curing. I think it's very important for the clerks from everything I've heard to be able to to process in advance of election day and certainly nobody feels that it's that it's helpful to wait until the day before. I'm not sure what that, you know, what that suggestion would accomplish. But I don't think anyone's moving in that direction. So does it will does this conflict with what we talked about for curing to have the them processed within a certain time of receipt? Not necessarily, but that's a very good point made by Lila that the two are closely related and should be thought about together. That's why I mentioned that what we're talking about here is the ability to actually open the certificate envelope and put the ballot in the tabulator ballot box. You can make the defective determination like we were talking about without doing that. And so right now they during the 30 days before under current statute, they can get it down to the certificate envelope and get somebody checked in. That gets you to the point of determining effective or not. I think that I want to acknowledge with Carol and make sure she understands I know she does because she's smarter than I am, that when we're talking about the putting the 72 hour requirement on making a defective determination, that is what is now reducing options for them. Because under the current law, they don't have to open the mailing envelope until the day of the election for some of them or the day before and get those people checked off the checklist. If you say they have 72 hours to determine whether a ballot's defective or not, that means they have to take action on the mailing envelope that they get within those 72 hours, that's reducing that flexibility that Carol was talking about. But you're reducing that flexibility just for that piece of the process. OK, you got to within 72 hours, get it to the certificate envelope and see that it's signed with ballots in there. Then you can choose from there on during that whole 30 day period, whether you also open the certificate envelope and put it in the tabulator. That's what your framework you've put forth right now is that's what I'm hearing. And I think that's slight of a change for the clerks. I'm hearing maybe OK from Carol's perspective, at least. My perspective, yeah, particularly if we put something in place like like a postcard that we can toss in the mail to people whose ballots have been deemed defective, has a little check box, something easy to toss in the mail. If we're if we're required to try to track people down by phone numbers, by emails that we don't have, then it then it becomes considerably more burdensome. But I think while it certainly is more of a of a task to put it in that 72 hour time frame, I don't see that as insurmountable. There will be a few clerks that do, but I don't. So is this something that do we have to put this in? Let in statute to allow the because that was an emergency border, right? Yes. So we need to this needs to be in. Yeah. OK. Yeah, because right now statute only allows it to happen one day before the day before. Right. Yeah. Just chime in and Carol just just I'm sorry, just because you mentioned it just then, I feel the same way. I think I'm comfortable with the postcard. It makes it very easy, hopefully for you to pull that off the stack, put a stamp on it and say you're defective. The other and we can do this through guidance or potentially put it in the law though, too, at that same time, you want them to mark defective in BEMS in our election management system. Yes. So then the people who do have the My Voter Page and do use the My Voter Page can get the notice quickly that way, too. Not just the postcard. And I've thought a lot about that curing and notification requirement, and I think we're ending up at a pretty reasonable place. Yeah. The nice thing about the postcard is, A, it's cheaper to mail out and B, it's something that a voter or anybody is apt to look at quickly anyway, without having to open an envelope. You know, John, really, really quick at my main. You're really. Is anybody else having trouble hearing, John? Yeah. Yeah, you sound like Darth Vader. Really? With a cold. I'll take Darth Vader. Well, I'll try to speak up a little just that you all were talking about. Don't speak up. It isn't it isn't the volume. OK, somehow it's rattling. It's like a super vibrator has been put on to your vocal cords. Yeah. Well, I'm sure he has and I will let's see if I can get the point out really quickly. Then I know you were talking about the idea of doing away with the envelope, the certificate, and instead of just having a card in there alongside it. I just think that would have implications for this, too, since half the definition of pre-processing ballots would be eliminated. There would be no internal certificate valid. Just open it up there. There they are. So it just makes it if you go that way, it just makes me processing really about the tabulator itself. Yeah, everything. I think we got that. Yeah. OK. Anybody else have anything they want to say about any of the things that we've talked about so far today? Except nicknames. I was going to say I want to develop a nickname now. I mean, I think. Do you have to? Will, do you have to have proved you've had the nickname for at least 10 years? That's why it's going to be tough to actually to craft the right language for that one, but yeah, I'm thinking about it. I don't want to get into, you know, trying to figure out whether it's a real nickname or not. Anybody else have anything they would like to throw out right now about any of these things? Anybody? OK, so on Thursday, I believe we're going to do the juvenile public records issue and Tucker will have a draft for us. So hopefully we can finish that up as much as possible on Thursday. And then we're going to continue this elections discussion on Thursday with the ones that the right in declared writings have to be declared before they can, before they'll be counted, report the totals, the close of polls, voter ID required, multi-party observers, and same day register, same day voters get a provisional ballot instead of a permanent ballot. And then I think we'll maybe move on to the next set of issues which starts with candidates. Well, if we have time, we'll move on to that. Does that make sense? Yes. OK. So, well, I was going to send you. I found this list the last time we did this. I found this list of what we did, the wish list and what we did with them. I was going to send it to you and ask you to say, oh, you passed this, you passed this, you passed this, you passed this, but I don't want to make any more work for you. So I'm not going to do it. I'm at your service. Because we did, we did a number of things. We did, we did quite a bit last election bill. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Anything else, committee, that you want to? I just want to take a point of personal privilege with Lila. Lila being and and her dear spouse being two of our most regular Farmers Night attendees, I would just like to say that tonight we actually have a virtual Farmers Night, which is being done by the Vermont Humanities Council at seven o'clock. It's a Abinacke father and son storytelling with music. Just wanted to let you two know that. Thank you, Senator. I actually did have it written down on my calendar. You guys are the best. And, Amron, I will send you what I think is the list that we came up with, what needs legislation. And I think that Will and Chris will be willing to work with you around the language and what we need to get in there. And hopefully by the end of next week, we'll have a bill that we can then either pass or not pass. OK. Right.