 So we're back Senate government operations, we took a little five minute jumping jack break here and now we're back and we're going to be looking at. The changes that house government operations and potentially floor amendments are making to s 15 so that we can better understand them we went through them. I think it was yesterday and had some, or maybe it was Friday I honestly can't remember but we have gone through them we had some concerns and I think that will and Chris are here with some explanations for us, I think our three. One was the 25 dropping off 25 ballots. One was around the notification by the town clerk by town clerks for. What is that called defective hearing and the third was the electronics at the pole having to have electronics at the pole. And the other one was around the report that was coming back. That seemed to assume that we should have a voter identification system so if I remember right those were the issues that were brought up and then we don't know what amendments are being proposed now so if you can just help us understand those a little bit better now that you've heard our concerns. Yeah, or madam chair. If possible I'd like to have will go first on this one and talk to you about the electronic return the one that Senator column or pointed out to us yesterday I do have trouble remembering what day we last talked about this. I think people can can get into that and and just you know one of the three amendments being proposed floor today is to fix that very oversight on the house side and I think that's what's coming up shortly on the house floor. And I think that amendment meant that's coming up was do entirely to Senator column Mars eagle eye. I think that's correct. It puts me in a funny position madam chair. It does it does but you're up to it. Thank you. Okay well do you want to. Sure. As Chris mentioned there were three amendments proposed on the floor today I think the anticipation is that only one of them will pass and that's the one that we brought forward to address the issue that Senator column or raise so I think that will be the only change you will have seen from what Amar and walk through yesterday. And that's really simple. And I don't know if you guys have it in front of you or not but if you go to the main house page. Interestingly they have those three amendments right at the front and center on the top of their main house page. And it's, and it's the McCarthy amendment. So what do you mean the main house page you mean current house calendar. I don't know if you just click like on the top bar of your thing on house. Yeah, I got it house homepage. Yeah, that's where I just found it. Well you have to go to their current calendar right. I think you have to go to current calendar or. No, just click on House of Representatives. I did house overview. Wait. Oh, over there. I can click. Okay. And then it says floor amendments. And it says representative to offer to to the second one is McCarthy's which is the one that will happen. Oh yeah. And that's the one addressing the concerns and their column or raise and you'll see it's very simple. Okay. It adds a clause at the end of that paragraph we were looking about about return of the affidavit. And it basically just sets out that electronically it has to come in by the close of business the day before the ones that can return by the election day or by mail or in person. And the only thing I would note if you're at all concerned about the mail return there of an affidavit is to remind you that absentee ballots themselves can be returned by mail on the day of the election so the clerks already are checking their mail on the day of the election one way or another, and we'll see affidavits also. But this essentially means that if a person doesn't do an electronic return of that affidavit to the clerk before they close, check their email and the election management system on the day before the election then it would be late. So Senator column or does that answer your concern. Yeah. Okay. I'm fine with that so we don't need to. If that passes that'll take care of one of our. It was a good catch and I took the head over there and apologize to them for not having seen it on the first run through. They didn't see it either so I was going to say it wasn't cheerful. So, the other one was the 25 ballots do you want to talk about that a little bit. I can start off with that one will. That one kind of took us by surprise I will I will say we didn't really discuss it we discussed security of the election and the election systems in Vermont in general we talked about the lack of any evidence of voter fraud how we went through 2020 how we didn't see any any double voting we had that one instance that I think we talked to you about. We talked about how we executed that the Attorney General's office prosecuted that. And there was some concern expressed about how in other states, lots of people, not lots of people there are certain groups that might go around and collect larger numbers and turn them in. My honor to that is it's it's helping people vote in a lot of ways there are valid reasons for picking up your neighbors ballots or helping people who might not be able to get down to the polling place or even to the to the mailbox to deliver their ballots. So on the house side. There was some discussion of so called ballot harvesting even though we have no evidence of it happening in the state of Vermont. I think to help get support of some of the other members of the committee as you may have noticed it was an 11 oh vote out of out of House government operations and I think that helped to get a strong vote on the floor on second reading. And we think it's, it's a provision that was unnecessary we didn't suggest it, but we thought we could go along with it we could live with it. We don't see it happening we don't think it's going to stop anything from happening but maybe it just kind of puts us on record saying mass collection of ballots 25 or more is something that we don't think is a good idea, and then people shouldn't do. We also you talked a little bit about yesterday I listened to your testimony with will there about how it's important that we don't ask town clerks to enforce this they can't keep track they can't keep watch over their secure ballot drop boxes. It's not on them to enforce this, but it is going to be in the law and sort of a message to people out there organizations that they shouldn't be collecting more than 25 ballots. So this is kind of going to be like many of our campaign laws, complaint driven, if my neighbors is keep is watching me and says that I delivered 26 ballots because she knows who I picked them up from, then she would file a complaint, but I'm going to report myself if I deliver 26 and the town clerk isn't going to keep track of it so it really is just as you said, kind of a public message. Correct. And the fact that we're sending these out with postage prepaid back. There's just not going to be a big need for anyone to collect and return a lot of ballots people can drop them in the mailbox very easily. Senator Clarkson. Have you had a single complaint of this in Vermont. Well, I for one certainly wouldn't want this bill to be delayed over this issue. I don't want it delayed but I think it's completely unnecessary and is pandering to an extreme view of things I mean I'm a little concerned about about it. I because I think there are as many good instances of its use of conceivably having more people bring things in from an assisted living facility from a neighborhood as we've discussed I if it's unnecessary and we've had no incidences of this being a problem. I don't know why we overreach it's like a piece of overreach. If I can, we do many things to as compromise. And I know that this is my guess is that many places that have say 30 or 40 residences won't bring them in anyway they'll mail them from their resident. That's the way I know the assisted living places down here some of them do it they they mail them in and it gives the actually the residents the more independence because they can just put it in the in the outgoing mail for the for the place itself and so they don't they don't actually deliver them to the town clerk's office most of them I don't think but anyway so I would just add really quickly to Senator Clarkson I think that's that is what you want to be thinking about that's a that's a good concern to have of course and it's the one we've had the whole time but as I thought through this limit more. I think it's a reasonable middle ground in that what we don't want to do is this implement this kind of protection if it would do a lot of harm that we don't want it to do and the harm we talked about as the instances you were talking about of neighborhood, gathering or assisted living homes and I just don't think that there's going to be a lot of people who are looking to collect more than 25 ballots for their neighbors or folks in a home, folks in a home I think it'd be pretty easy to split that into two or three staff members in the home if there were in fact more than 25 ballots so I just didn't weigh in the harms and then you do you send a message that if anybody ever were to consider engaging in the kind of large scale fraud that we certainly have seen no evidence of to this point. This would at least be a deterrent of some kind to that. So I think I think it's a reasonable compromise policy wise. Senator Rom. I don't think we have to resolve this this year but I've always felt that this is all the more reason to allow satellite ballot boxes on places like college campuses because you know I would collect 50 or more voter registration forms in a week and bring them all to the city hall when I was a student running for the legislature. So, you know, I often have advocated just have a ballot box in the student center so people can drop off their own ballot that is a way to stop quote unquote ballot harvesting but ensure that people who don't, you know, can't get to a ballot box or don't know where it is can still have their ballot counted rather than making it inconvenient and stopping someone else from collecting them all and bringing them down like from a university or a group setting. Wouldn't wouldn't that be a lot and there's nothing to disallow that now Burlington could yes, we've put it on municipal property the ballot boxes have to be on municipal property. I guess there isn't an appropriate municipal property within that district. Well, if you're talking about people with mobility issues or you're talking about students who have, you know, other challenges getting to the library or to city hall. So it just feels like you should, it should be up to a municipality to say yeah you can have a satellite box at this large affordable housing complex or the student center. Right. And I'm not sure the language is that flexible right now so we'll have to stick into that. I or review it anyway, because I think it's a little more restrictive than that. Is that right. Well, yeah, that's right Senator Romney really quickly I think like you said we're not going to go into that entire discussion now but just for you to start thinking about that the nut to crack there the challenge to me is that that is going to really push us towards some kind of central processing potentially, which would be okay if that's where it needs to, but it's figuring out how to make sure that the right ballots get in the right boxes, or a way to divvy them up afterward. Like some kind of supervisory, you know, like someone has to be responsible at the student center for this process or whatever. You know there are multiple districts even on campus and so we don't want to expect the students to know which one they have to put their ballot. Yeah, that's true. You could advertise at the university for example, you could advertise ballot collections will be you know they'll be a BC a member at the student center at X time and then they can tell you which box to put it in your law actually pretty much allows for that already with what are known as mobile polling stations but yes it's a great idea. Great, so that we could work on. Okay, great. All right, so does anybody have any concerns about. I do think it's probably unnecessary, but it sends a message, and I think this bill is important enough to get out that I, if it caused any delay or any angst, I would not want to do anything about it. Anybody else. I'm fine with it. Okay. All right. I agree with, I agree with that Allison was saying before. I think it's unnecessary, obviously we all think it's unnecessary and it's sort of pandering towards a perspective that we should try to avoid. On the other hand, I don't think we should delay the bill, I just think it's, you know, I saw I say okay with regret. Yes, I support it. I might, I mean, I really just think like I have had over 25 voter registration forms in my hand I might collect them over a few days to help people access the ballot and, you know, volunteers do that in in communities where there's a lot of people who aren't otherwise going the way I would increase it to 50. If we've increased it to 50, we would have to wait for it to come from the house because they haven't passed it yet. We would not get it until next Wednesday, probably, or Tuesday, they haven't passed it out of the house yet. It's voting. It's, it's, it's, oh it's second reading today. It's not third reading today. Third reading today. I think it's third. It's third. We would get it, we would get it on Friday. Friday. We would couldn't do anything with it. We could change it, we could do something Friday, and then send it back to them. I think this is putting a real first of all, I will say that voter, this does not have anything to do with voter registrations. You can collect as many of them as you want, right, but it and turn them in. This is balance. Yeah, I have turned in many voter registrations at the same time. Yeah, no we all have I mean that's but but if I had somebody's ballot. I'm going to turn it in right away. I'm not going to sit on them and collect 25 or 30 of them, and then go down and turn them in because I don't want to be responsible for those ballots I'm going to turn them in the minute I pick them up. But so this is like 25 at a time like you just. You keep track of it yourself. If you want to do 50 unless somebody complains about it. There's not. It's okay. If we all agree this is a useless provision. I'm fine. I'm fine. It's really useless. I don't want to be characterized as saying that it's useless or that we're candoring anybody I think I'm taking will send exposition that it's a good middle ground and I'll support the amendment that I'm not supporting changing. If we try to change it, we are going to screw this bill. That's my, my feeling because I don't know how much time government operations will have if we get it on Friday, and we voted out on, we send it back to them even on Friday they won't get it till Tuesday. And I don't know if they're even going to meet after that and then it would have to go back to the House floor anyway. I think it's a death knell for that if we do anything. That's fine as long as an avid, you know, volunteer who helps people vote is not, you know, implicated in something I think that would be a shame. It just, I think the challenge for some of us is that it just verges on on vote suppression. That's all I'm just going to say it and it's, it verges on it and it's as Mrs. Bennett in pride and prejudice would say she's teetering on the brink. And I just think that that's where our concern is. I don't like it particularly, but let's in the next time we have an election. Let's look at it and see if it was an issue for anybody. If somebody felt that they had to put on the cloak and dagger to run down to the town clerk's office with their 27th ballot, or if anything happened as a result of this and Well, I don't think it's necessary. I think it's, I don't want to see this bill. Right. It's exciting for at the moment. I think we're just wanting to register our concern. Yep. I got that I just I was reacting to case a suggestion that we change it to 50. And I might be wrong that that would really not get this bill passed. I think you're probably right. And our time, we have a week and a half. So I think we all have to be cognizant of what we want to accomplish this year. We're right with you. Okay. All right. So the third the other issue was. Oh, that report that report. Was it the report or was it the database comparison. And before that it's the curing of the balance. Okay, but let me go back to the report. It was what the report said they that the Secretary of State should report on a system of voter identification system that could be implemented that didn't disenfranchise voters. The assumption is, and I, this is just an issue of mine all the time is that we've made the assumption that we should have one, and I would rather have it say whether or not we should have a voter identification system but I'm not going to. Again, I'm not going to do anything about it because I think that it would. It's a little point. And it's a pet peeve of mine. But I'm not going to go there. Senator White. Just to try and help I totally understand that but make you feel better too if you read it really closely right the introductory language to what's in the report. So what page you on will have the bill. It's way toward the end page 35 last one. And it says that we will come back with its findings and any recommendations for legislative action on. Yeah, and then number three is implementing a voter verification system. I know our findings and recommendations could be to do nothing. Yeah, I, I realize that if I was, if I was writing it I would have said on whether or not there should be. And if so, how to implement, but I'm not going to go there because I think it'll delay anything if I do so. Senator Clarkson. Sadly, I mean the term voter verification, sadly now has, you know, again, voter suppression connotations. And I think that's the concern is that is that asking, you know, like, do we have a problem with our voter verification now that's on the register voter register form. I don't think so. So I think that I think your language would be an improvement. Voter anyway just to me sort of again is taking us in the direction of voter ID stuff which makes me a little anxious. Well remember any recommendations they come back with have to have to be implemented by us. Yeah. Madam Chair, we're, we're comfortable with the language we there was a lot of discussion in the house as there was here in the Senate about signature verification and how that has the potential to disenfranchise some voters and how it's a very imperfect solution to a problem that we have yet to see evidence of. So we're going to be very thorough in looking at other options at carefully weighing things like signature matching and our recommendation will give you a lot of information and a lot of options to choose from and one of the options maybe to do nothing. So maybe we should create an option for people to update their signatures, because, you know, you know, something like that I mean there might be ways to update things. Senator Clarkson, you wanted to go back to hearing the balance I because I think we let as I recall, it sounded like the clerks had were okay with where they landed in the house where they ended up landing. Is that correct. Yes. I mean I can't speak for 246 clerks but. Don't you dare. No. Carol. Okay, so the, so the care work, are we all okay with the, what, what they landed on. It's a lot of, it's a lot. It's not as beautiful and simple as. But it's. Well, I was, I was particularly concerned about the, the section that you ended up working out with representative pay, because, yeah. We'll work very, we'll work closely with her, and with Carol Dawes, and trying to to alleviate their concerns that they had about the kind of a lack of clarity of what a reasonable attempt meant. And they all seem to be really satisfied with, with what he had put together with the committee, and with representative McCarthy's amendment that passed yesterday. Right. So other, what are the other amendments, just out of curiosity. Sure, the, the, there was another amendment from representative to to require local mail ballots for all Australian ballot towns in 24. So again, we kind of came back with our response was, you know, we're, we're going to report back in January 2023 you'll have more information we'll have another couple of elections under our belt will have the towns that did do mail mail out balloting for all their local elections will get data from them their experiences. This is a decision that the, that the legislature really doesn't have to make right now. So that was a decision that was made by the House of Ops Committee and was just rejected on the House floor as well by a pretty strong vote over 100 in favor, I'm pretty sure of rejecting that amendment. They are, they are right now I believe considering representative Strong's amendment that is to delay all of the vote by mail provisions for this for the general election until 2024. So everything that's in S 15 that relates to mailing out ballots for a general election would not be in place for 2022 but would start in 2024 under her proposal. And it's also soundly rejected by the House Government Operations Committee and is being debated on the House floor right now. And then the third amendment there is the McCarthy amendment that fixes Senator Colin Moore's catch there on on electronic return of ballots. All right, so committee assuming that they will send us. This is the third reading so they'll send us. My guess is that they won't be able to suspend rules. So we will get it on Friday. And we'll get it Friday morning. It, it would be on the Senate calendar on Friday morning or Tuesday. I'm not sure the timing here probably Tuesday right for because if we don't get it till Friday. They can't put it on the Senate calendar until Tuesday. And then, are we okay with assuming that they don't make any other changes except Senator or representative McCarthy's amendment about the electronic response. Are we okay with accepting their changes. Yes, or no. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I not happily but you know, I would like to see the bill passed this year and I have a lot of thoughts about January. Me too. All right. Okay. Well, whatever it appears on the, on the calendar will accept their changes. Okay. Anything else. So, yes, I'm off to get my second shot. Good luck. Good luck. Good luck. Thanks very much you guys. Thank you. Senator Clarkson. So we would concur without further amendment. I think that's what you're proposing. And January is coming and we'll see how we. Yeah, okay. We can't change anything about elections in January though. Well, we, we can change some things. Because you can't change things like campaign finance and major changes during a election because we're already into that election cycle. Right, but, but we can make administrative changes. The problem with making changes during next year is that if there are changes that have a huge impact on the town clerks, that's a real problem. And if their campaign finance changes, they can't be made because we're already in that cycle. But other than that, Chris, I think that we can make tweaks and small administrative changes. That's right, Senator. We try to only come to you every, every other year in the off years for, for changes, but I think that's what you're right as long as it's not a change to like a deadline or something that requires a system change or a lot of clerk training or candidate or voter outreach. Then we would, we're fine to tinker around the edges with those sort of things in an election year. So in January, if we, if people have ideas, we'll, we'll talk about them then. I can't believe that the clerks would be think that this new way of curing balance is an improvement over what we sent them. It just seems crazy. I can't either. What we sent them was so much simpler. Yep. Just to try to clarify a little bit. So they, we thought the same thing. We thought give them flexibility. But there was real concern, a real, I guess they didn't pay attention to the bill as much in the Senate as they did in the House as it's coming to the floor, kind of becoming a reality. And they all started talking on their, on their listserv. And it was real concern about unequal treatment across towns and wanting explicit guidance. Like I don't want to get in trouble for not going too far and I don't want someone to go much farther for, for their town than we'd go in the next town over. So they wanted more clarity and not the flexibility. And that's how we ended up where, where we did on that. And we think we satisfied most clerk's concerns through that amendment. That's interesting. Cause I understood it. Um, That the changes that the house made gave them more flexibility that ours just said, send out a postcard. End of story. And the, the, that that gave them a real. Really, really, really strong. Baseline and a re and an action. And the house version gives them more flexibility to make decisions, which they didn't want. And actually it might result in different towns doing things differently. It was that last five days, the postcard all stayed the same right up until that, that last five days, what would it mean to make a reasonable attempt to contact the voter? And they wanted explicit guidance that I only, I need to go to the law firm. I only need to go to the law firm's management system and I don't need to be, you know, looking through other town records or searching Facebook or whatever it might be. To try to reach that voter, especially in those last five days, which are real crunch time for them right before an election. So that's the kind of clarity that they were looking for, which we would have given them, I think in the, in our elections guidance and our procedures, the bulletins that will sends out constantly, but, um, and you can't speak for them all as one unit. A lot of different opinions among the town clerks, but we think this satisfied the majority of their concerns and gave them some clarity. So it was only within the last five days that they, okay, I get it. Yeah, but then there was more change about being able to cure by affidavit. That was something that came up, the National Vote at Home Institute recommended and the house took up and added that ability. The postcard can also have a return affidavit so that you don't have to get another ballot and totally revote. You can just put in the affidavit that says, yes, this is me. Yes, I'm fixing the defect and I do want to vote. Yeah. All right, committee, are we okay with the elections bill? I'm sorry, they never took up our other elections bill, but our campaign finance bill. Yeah, what's happening with that? Nothing. January, we're gonna put the big squeeze on them for January. Yeah. They can't pass it in January. No, they could pass it, but for the next election cycle. Right, so it would be good two years from then. Yeah. Okay. So S15 is a great bill. It's still a great bill and I really appreciate all of your work on it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. It is, I think we're very proud of it.