 Thank you all for joining us today. They are CCTV. This is Ali Jiang, the secretary of the Vermont New American Advisory Council. I am here today with distinguished guests, such as former, I mean, city councilor, Jean Bergman of war two, and Sarah Montgomery, deputy director of the city clerk office, I think, right? But you'll introduce yourself. And just wanted to let you know a little bit about the Vermont New American Advisory Council. It's a coalition of new American leaders that came together in order to increase civic engagement amongst new Americans, increase opportunities for new Americans to strive civically, economically, and culturally in the great state of Vermont. We are made up of new Americans from all walks of life, from Asia, from Africa, and we do great, wonderful work. VNAC is made up of a technical, cultural, and linguistic diverse group of new American leaders who work in many sectors across Vermont, including but not limited to city councils, program managers, health providers, educators, and business owners. We were formed in 2020 during the pandemic, but since then we've been doing great, amazing work. We wanna thank CCTV for hosting us here, and we have a great partnership with this amazing public television for each and every single one of us. As you know, the city of Burlington has new voting procedures, and that is, that's what we are going to discuss here today. Non-citizen voting, what does it mean, what are the differences, right? And also rank choice voting. But these great people here, and let's allow us, allow them to introduce themselves, and let's go first with Sarah Montgomery from the city of Burlington. Thank you, and thank you for inviting us to join tonight. My name is Sarah Montgomery. I'm the assistant city clerk for the city of Burlington. I've been in this role for about two years, and my primary focus in that role is election administration. Sarah, wonderful. And I am Gene Bergman. I'm the Ward II city councilor. I actually worked with Sarah over the last few years as a city councilor, and I have found her to be just great to work with. So it's been a pleasure to work with both of you. And I was on the Charter Change Committee that brought forward both the legal resident voting and the rank choice. So very happy that we're moving forward on this. Excellent, wonderful, wonderful. Thank you all so much for the introduction. So we now have a level of experience for city council and also Sarah to tell us a little bit about these new voting procedures. Okay, so now let's start with rank choice voting. What is rank choice voting? Sure, okay. So quite simply, it's sort of like you're choosing which candidates you like in which order. You get one vote and your top candidate it only really works with three candidates because otherwise you're voting for one of two candidates and your first choice is your first choice and if the second choice wins then it's all done. But if there are three candidates or four candidates or five candidates and sometimes in Burlington we actually have that many then you get to say I would like to this person to be my number one, but if that person does not get more votes than the other say two then I get to choose who would be the next person that I would like in line. And so the thing which is different, we actually have had this for a few years in city council races. This year it's different because we have a mayoral election that it applies to and apparently there are three candidates for mayor so you get to pick your first and if that one doesn't come in the top two then you get to pick your second choice and then there'll be a comparison between those other two. So the beauty of this is that you're not wasting your vote. You can vote for somebody even if they don't necessarily have a perfect shot or even a good shot because you think they really represent you and you can vote your heart and you can vote your head and you can vote both of those on the flip side with your second choice. And as long as if somebody gets to 50% then it's all over. So that's the way that that works. Okay. Cera do you have something to add with the definition that you just heard from Councillor Bergman? No I think that was really thorough. Thank you Councillor Bergman. And then now what if for example we have three candidates I am a voter but I'm not interested in ranking any of them can I choose to just cast my vote for the one candidate and will my vote be counted? Yes absolutely. You just put a one there or you put your check there and it is going to be it'll be counted and if that person in the say a three way race is one of the top two and then but nobody gets 50% then they'll re rank and it'll continue to vote. Before this you could win in the mayor's seat I think actually in all of the elections with just 40% of the vote. So what we've done with ranked choice voting is say you got to get 50% plus one person. You got to get more than half of the people to say they want you to be their representative. Okay wonderful. I'll come back to you for more question but now let's talk about the tabulation of the votes. Now it's no longer just the machine to tabulate all what has been the experience with you and your work with the city and it seemed that we tried it already with the city council. How has been the experience for you and the staff that you work with? So we have had two elections so far where we've used ranked choice voting in both of the elections. All of the races landed on a 50% majority for the candidate in the first round so we didn't actually need to go to rank choice tabulation for either of those races. We did test it out and it worked smoothly but in order for the rank choice tabulation to actually go into an effect we need to have a race where that 50% majority isn't met immediately. As far as practicality it's just another round of tabulation going through our software on election night so it just takes a few extra minutes to get those ranked choice vote results. So basically if I understand it correctly if we count the votes and none of the candidates have 50% then will we ask people to come back and vote again or how does it work in order to make the decision that we have a winner? Yeah, people don't need to vote again or make any additional marks. We have all of the data from their ballots on the memory cards from the tabulators so we're just taking that data and running it through another round where the software does the calculation to get that winner. Excellent, wonderful. So basically not too much work for you it's just the same thing. Exactly. Exactly, wonderful. And now why did the city of Burlington, Councillor Bergman, choose to basically change the voting system? What are the benefits for the voters and for the city? One benefit is that the person who's elected gets 50% of the vote. The current mayor, when you know well, did not win in either of his last two elections with 50% of the vote. That puts a cloud in a lot of ways. We can deal with that but it really is better when somebody has a majority of the people behind them. The second reason is because, and I said this before, you get to vote the way you really want to. Nobody is telling you that your vote is wasted. You get to say, I like this person and I wanna vote for them and I'm gonna vote for them knowing full well that if they don't have the greatest chance that if you do your second choice and that second choice lands ahead of yours that they're gonna be counted to. That really means that the more extreme campaigning somebody has to really think about whether they're going to alienate people. It doesn't mean that it won't happen and it doesn't also mean that people will not speak their truths but it does mean that a person who is running for office has to consider whether they're gonna say things to be very incendiary, likely to mean that nobody who doesn't love them is gonna vote for them. So it means that the debate has a real chance of being more productive, being more civil but there's no guarantee on that and there shouldn't be. People will and do say what they want to say. Okay, wonderful. Seda, let's switch back to you and then ask you basically when is a deadline for actually candidates to file to be on the ballot? January 29th, so this coming Monday at five o'clock p.m. At five o'clock p.m. And what do you need to do in order to be on the ballot? So you need to submit petition signatures from registered voters within Burlington for mayors. That's mayoral candidates. That's 150 signatures for candidates for city councilors or any other offices. That's 30 signatures. They also need to submit a consent of candidate form and if they're running under one of the major parties an endorsement from that party. Okay, wonderful. And I think for city councilors there have to be 30. 30, right. Less registered voters in the ward for you to do that. Wonderful, that's great. So you mentioned a little bit about the candidate, basically the party endorse candidate and we know that in Burlington couple weeks ago there was a caucuses, the Democrat hard one, the progressive hard one. Do you think we can legally request for these caucuses to include now rank choice voting? Can we do that or is this at the discretion of the parties to make that decision? I would think it's the discussion of the parties themselves but that is a good question. That would be a discussion we'd have to have with our attorneys too. Yeah, you keep calling me former and I think that's because I was a former city attorney but I actually was the attorney for the city on elections and it's my understanding and I'm not speaking as an acting attorney right now. But my understanding is that state law governs that, it's the parties that organize themselves in terms of their nominating process. So if we were to want to do that as a city we would have to change our charter which is a special state law to allow that to happen. Okay, wonderful. All right, so everyone for the listeners you heard it that rank choice voting in the now a new way of voting in the city of Burlington you have more than one choice, more than two you have many choices in order for you to pick who's the first, who's the second and who's the third, right? And also the 29 at 5 p.m. is when candidates need to file secure signatures in order to be on the ballot. We still have some times, okay. Also wanted to remind the viewers that you can call anytime here at CCTV to ask a question to our distinguished guests and the number is 802-862-3966. 862-3966. Now let's move to non-citizen voting. Let's start with you and please Sarah tell us a little bit what is non-citizen voting? So non-citizen voting also known as all legal resident voting in Burlington allows Burlington's residents who do not have US citizenship to vote in local elections. So this includes all city and school elections and all offices within Burlington as well. Okay, wonderful. And for rank choice voting do we also include school board members? So basically everyone on the ballot will need to be ranked. It can be ranked. Can be ranked. Okay, excellent. And non-citizen voting, would you like to add anything about the definition? For me, and I hearken back to the great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, that it is really a way that we can have government of the people by the people and for the people. So that if you are legally in this country, you haven't and you live in the city of Burlington, you have an interest in the way that the schools are run. You might have kids and many have kids in the school. So the school board and the budget, it's essential that I think it's essential that people have a say and that really happens when you've got a vote. The same thing is true of the streets and sidewalks. We're here on a street where we've just put in bike lanes and there's needs for new ways of getting around. And so people have a real interest in what we do and how we're going to support people getting around. Buses and bikes and alternative ways of doing that in cars and fixing the streets. So I think it is great that the mayor would be responsible to all the people who are really living here legally and that means voters and them having the chance to vote. And whenever we talk about living here legally, I can have a visa from my country of origin to work or to go to school here. Does this law apply to me? Or is it you have to have a green card? You have to be a green card holder in order to participate. I'll leave that to the administrator. It is anybody who's legally residing here. So there's no specific parameters about how they're residing here as long as they are considering themselves residents of Burlington. So if I just moved to this beautiful city and it's just been six months ago, I may not even have a better understanding of the culture, but I still can register and vote. Now, how do people register in order to vote since you are not a citizen? Our registration process for our non-citizen voters is pretty close to the one for our citizen voters. There's a separate form that they will need to fill out and it can be returned to City Hall either in person or somebody else can drop it off for them. They can also return it via email if that's easier for folks or by mail. And they can also register to vote on election day. And this is not to send it to the federal government or the state of Vermont, but to the municipality in which you reside where non-citizen is allowed. Exactly, they would send it straight to us at the city clerk's office. Yes, and now, again, another question is basically the list. These are the list of the citizen, these are the list of the non-citizen. Would they put their ballots in the same exact voter tabulation machine? Yeah, there will be two separate checklists, one for our citizen voters and one for our non-citizen voters, although the check-in process on election day will be the same for everybody. Our election workers will have that distinguished within their checklists. Once the voter is issued a ballot, then the process is the same for our citizens and non-citizen voters. They'll be using the same ballots and depositing them into the same tabulators. Wow, amazing. And you said also that people can register and vote on the same spot the same day. And now what type of proof they need to bring in order for the worker, poor workers to know that he's legally here or she's legally here? Again, it's a similar process for a Vermont voter registration process. So we are asking our non-citizen voters to write their Vermont ID number down on their voter registration form. If they don't have a Vermont ID number, they can also bring an alternate form of identity to present that can include a current invalid photo ID, a utility bill, a bank statement, or a government letter with their name and address on it. Okay, wonderful. Maybe, Councillor Bergman, you can come back to, you know, why it's important to allow everyone who live here, who legally live here to be able to vote. Well, you know, sort of like the ranked choice where you getting 50% is important. Being able to say that you represent all of the people that live here and that they matter and they have a chance to influence the way that their elected officials will be and also who they are, that's really important, I think, for the integrity of the city, of the government, of the process. So, you know, we've got a housing project by BHA, Burlington Housing Authority, right around the corner. Many new Americans are living there and they have a real interest in how those sidewalks function, how the street and the bus stop and all of the stuff that their daily lives go, that are something that I as an elected official and you as an elected official and all sorts of folks have to deal with. So, it's important that for, it's important for elected officials to know that people there, if they're angry with you, if you're not meeting their needs, they can vote you out. You can't just ignore them because them people aren't citizens and it's important for them to know that they can do that. And I think that when people have and use the power of the power that is given them, their democratic rights, that we become much, much stronger as a community. It just brings us together in a much more way and when people are alienated and they're in their little subgroups and what have you, they're little enclaves, then it becomes so much harder to solve any of the problems that we've got. So, I think it's wonderful and I'm, yeah. Wonderful and maybe both of you, can you please remind us how this became a law? How both of these voting procedures became a law? Did the citizen of Burlington had a say to say, yes, allow it to do it or no? Any of you? So, Sarah, what was that vote that we had the vote last year and we can talk about that, but the voters by what percentage? So, for all legal resident voting it was 68% support. 68% of the voters of Burlington allowed it to become a law. Yes, so we had to change our charter, the state law, and we did that after Montpelier and after Winooski did it, both of those had court challenges that the Vermont Supreme Court said, not a problem here. Go ahead and do that. So, we haven't been sued yet as far as I know. And so, we voted by over two thirds of the people and then the legislature gets it, they've got to approve all of our charter changes. The governor did veto, the governor, Governor Scott like he did with the other two, I believe, vetoed our charter change that the legislature passed and in order for it to overcome a veto, you have to have a super, super majority of the legislature and they did, we did. And I just want to thank the person who led the passage of all of our charter changes, Representative Malavane Estanik, I just want to give a shout out to the leadership that she showed in Montpelier on that. But we were able to prevail and it's the law and now Sarah is the lucky duck to implement it. Wonderful. And, you know, this is relatively new, the non-citizen and it did not happen yet to the previous elections where rank choice voting were already tried, right? This will be for the first time. And is Burlington the first city in the state of Vermont who allowed non-citizens to vote? Are there others and what has been the experience for them? We're actually the third with both Wendyski and Montpelier implemented this before us and they've had elections where they had their non-citizen voters eligible to vote already. So we've been in conversations with them and been able to learn from them through the process, starting with the charter change and moving forward into implementation as well. Amazing. Okay, you talked about we have not been sued yet. Have those municipalities been sued and what was the outcome? They have been sued and those lawsuits were, the cities were supported by the courts. The courts said that these are legal, these are constitutional and you can go ahead and do this for local elections. And we're very happy. I think that that was the right decision. Okay, wonderful. So as you all heard now, non-citizen, if you are legally here in the state of Vermont, in the city of Burlington you can now legally vote and you can register on the spot by bringing some level of proof and then be able to vote on the spot. This is just amazing. So more people would have a say around city affairs but the school district, the city council and the mayor. This is just very good. Now let's talk a little bit about what you have heard specifically from the other communities that already implemented it, like in details, like how to manage, easy to manage, what are they saying? There's a little bit of extra administrative work around this one, especially since we're not able to enter our non-citizen voters into our Vermont state-wide voter registration system. So it just has an extra layer of managing that separate checklist. The numbers haven't been huge for resident registered voters in either community. So I think that's made it pretty manageable. So far, we have 23 resident voters registered and the data was estimating that about 5.5% of our population might be non-citizen voters. So I think we have a higher threshold of voters that would be eligible to register in Burlington, then Winooski and Montpelier. So we might hit a higher number there. But I think their experiences were positive so far. Wonderful. Now, I mean, I believe, let's talk about this, this issue. And I still cannot understand how it will work. I voted for the first time as a non-citizen in 2022, let's say. And in 2023, I became now a citizen, right? Now, am I able to vote twice? Because you have a list where my name is as a non-citizen. And also, I am now a citizen and I'm in both lists. How would you make sure that now these two lists are accurate? There is no basically duplication of the same voter if they become citizen. Yeah, so a voter is only eligible to be registered on one of the lists. When we're registering our resident voters, we're checking our statewide voter registration list to make sure they don't exist on that list already. And the same, we would do moving forward for citizen registrations. Okay, wonderful. And now, what's the age of voting? Does it, is it the same, 17, 18 or 19? What's the age? I believe it's the same, 18. 18, okay. So you are 18 years old, even if you are a student, now you can register and vote on the spot. And I believe that you have to be 18 by the election day. So if you are 17 today, but you're going to turn 18 on March 5th, which is town meeting day, our city election day, then you could register and vote because you could actually register on the day of the election and you would be 18 years old. And the same would be true with any city election. But you cannot do that for the state elections or you can't do that for the federal presidential elections. So there is no voting on those for all legal resident voters or we're not citizens. That's great. And now this question is about being able to be on the ballot. I am a non-citizen. I want to run for office. Am I allowed to run for office as a non-citizen? Yes. For mayor, city council. For all city positions. If you are registered to vote. Yes, yes. First you register, then you run. Okay. Wow, this is great. This is exactly what Vinak is about, civic engagement amongst the new Americans that live here. Most of them have lived in different countries, have experienced hardship. They came here and now the city, the queen city is giving them a voice to run for office and also to be able to have your voices heard and respected. At any level that you will look at it, thank you the city of Burlington. Thank you, Jean. Thank you, Emma Mulvaney-Sanek, who you said has done an amazing job behind the scene at the state to make this pass, to override the veto of the governor. And now we are going to test it out and we are going to see how it's gonna happen. Yes, yes. Now, where do people can find more information about both non-citizen voting and also rank-choice voting? We have information about both posted on our website, BurlingtonVT.gov, and we're always happy to take calls from people who need more information at the city clerk's office as well. And what phone number do they need to call? It's 802-865-7000. Exactly, so you can see it on the screen, more information, rank-choice voting, city of Burlington legal resident voting, and also at VNAC, we will make sure that we have this information on the website as well. I think that there may also be QR codes that people can use, although I don't see it. Okay, that's great. This is amazing. If there are any good information that I miss to ask that you think is great for the voters, for the citizens to know, and non-citizens to know. I, you didn't miss it. The only other thing is that you can think about it, you can decide, oh, I'm gonna do it, oh, I'm not gonna do it, and you actually have between January 24th today and Tuesday, March 5th to make that decision, you can go to the polls if you can get there before seven o'clock in the night when the polls close, then you can register then. So it's something where people can get the information, but they can also think about it and decide and figure out, if they register early, then they can vote early as well. If you wait, then you have to vote on election day, but say you have to go to the doctor, you're gonna be at the hospital for a while, you gotta go to the doctor, it's gonna be very hard for you to get back. You can register to vote now and then, I think it is gonna be February 14th, Valentine's Day, that ballots will be mailed and you'll be able to mail that and get it mailed to you and you'll be able to mail it back in and vote and have it counted as long as you register to vote. So that's pretty exciting. Yep, yep, this is, it is exciting. Now, the second list of non-citizens that you will be gathering, how would you protect that list in order to make sure that those potential voters are not targeted by federal government or Trump or I don't know. Now, that's a good question. It is public record as is all voter registration information. So there's certain pieces of voters' information that's protected, their date of birth is protected, any contact information is protected, any ID number that they provide is, but the actual names themselves and addresses are public record if somebody requests that information. Wonderful, all right. We know exactly where to find information it was put just right now. We also know that now, Burlingtonians who is 18 years and older without the citizenship status can now vote. We know also how we vote, which is by rank, just voting by ranking your best second or third candidate, right? And I think this is just an amazing thing for the city of Burlington. We wanna thank you both for your time, for your energy. And just if you have last words to say, say it. Thank you, thank you for having us here. Thank you for the work that you do. We don't really make this as good a community as it is and as it can be without folks like you Ali. So thank you. My pleasure, my pleasure. Thank you, Sarah. Yeah, thank you. All right, wonderful. And also we wanna thank also CCTV, Channel 17, for bringing the voices of the people together. And now it's all about town meeting television and it's election time. Make sure that you research very well the candidates. Make sure that you have your IDs ready. Make sure you know where you need to go to vote. And for more information or so, you can just call the city of Burlington. You can call Jean Bergman. You can call Vinak people to ask you the question. Thank you again so much for your time, CCTV. Thank you both of you for being here today. And happy town meeting day, everyone. Thank you all so much.