 Some of these are Christmas bills. Let's see. So what we thought we would do is look at, we have four bills that kind of deal with lobbyists, campaigns, public financing and stuff. We thought we would lump them all together because it would be basically the same people interested in all of those. And we don't know where any of them are going to go. We haven't yet decided if we want to pursue any of them. So what I think makes sense, tell me if you think I'm right here, Brian, is to just look at these bills and ask if anybody has any, you know, take them one at a time and see if anybody has anything to say about them, and then we'll make a decision as a committee of where to go with any of them. Okay, does that make sense? Okay, so let's start with 120, which is a bill that limits corporate campaign contributions to some percentage of whatever anybody else can contribute to a campaign. We went through this last year. Yeah. And does anybody, would anybody like to weigh in on this one? 120. Yes, you are late. The protest is really demanding. We just finished 120, and we're not going to take it up. Yeah, we decided 120 is done. You weren't here to talk about it, so we're done. Well, I object to that decision. I think it's important to talk about it. We didn't make that decision. But the pro tem kept you? Yes. We must speak to the pro tem. Well, it was 1 o'clock. I didn't have a quorum this morning for about 10 minutes. Yeah, terrible. If I'm being more direct, it was Peter talking about something. And he can't talk to you? Well, I'm also busy, as you know. I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. I got out of the way. Okay, let me put on your gear shirt, and let's go forward. Before we begin. So all those in favor of 120. So, Allison, what did you have to say? I just want to say, look, we have three beautiful blooms. And three on the way. And last but not least, very exciting. Yes, it's all this wonderful hot air that we're going to every one. Actually, that would be cool. It's all the fertile grounds here. Exactly. Okay, so what we talked about, Chris, was that we would pump these four together because they're kind of all the same audience, not the same issue necessarily, but the same audience who might be interested. So we just put them here to talk about whether we should go forward with any or not. So we'll start with 120 and see if anybody has anything they would like to say now about 120 and then we can have your say. But we'll hear, Dan, did you? Dan, right? Yes, all the conflicts we can. Right. Did you want to weigh in? At this time. Well, this may be your chance. I mean, we're either going to do it or we're not going to do it. Okay. I don't have it. I don't have comments prepared. Okay. I can say this is something that people would support. Oh, that's what we wanted to hear. Okay, did the attorney general's office want to weigh in on this one? Yes. Okay, would you join us? Sure. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the committee. Dan, I didn't mean to put you on the spot, but. My name's Joshua Diamond. I'm the deputy attorney general. And so we have not had an opportunity to do a deep dive, but what I'd like to do is identify some legal issues that I think the committee should think about if they're going to take up this bill. My comments really aren't designed to address the policy questions that are addressed here, but to identify some legal issues that might come up that I think would warrant further examination. So as I understand it, the scope of S120 is really to limit campaign contributions to corporations to 5% of the contribution rates. If I understand that correctly. Yeah. And historically, the jurisprudence in this area has recognized two policy objectives, pre-citizens united, that would allow for something like this. In the 80s, early 90s, the Supreme Court identified the interests of protecting the shareholders, the minority shareholder interests, and also the concern that corporate ability to amass wealth could unfairly influence elections or the election process. And those were under a First Amendment jurisprudence kind of compelling governmental interests that could justify these types of restrictions on arguably the free speech rights of corporations and their ability to contribute or their association rights, I should say, to candidates. As I'm sure to no surprise all of you since United kind of upended that analysis, identifying really quick pro quo as the policy objective that could allow for those types of contributions. And so one concern is that such a limited amount of documentation may run up against the First Amendment here. There is a case out of the Western District of Michigan from 2010 whereby the Michigan statute, I think similar to our statute, would not only impact contributions to candidates, but also impact contributions to independent PACs. And that was struck down as an infringement upon the First Amendment. The IEP PACs? Yes. Not the regular PACs? And I didn't read the decision closely, it was a last minute. I'm not sure how deeply they dove into the definition of an IEP PAC for months definition that you probably know is more expensive than the federal definition. But the idea of being an entity that was not coordinating with a candidate to restrict those contributions would not reach the quick pro quo concern and therefore run afoul of the First Amendment. The other issue here is that corporations are not defined beyond corporations. So are you trying to capture LLPs, LLCs, other entities? And also should you consider exempting certain types of corporations as well, certain nonprofits? There is Supreme Court precedent from the 1980s, FEC versus Massachusetts Citizens Life that dealt with corporate restrictions on campaign contributions and basically said that to the extent that you were going after nonprofit corporations that did not make their money from business activities, that that would impact their First Amendment interests and they struck down a corporate contribution that went after these types of nonprofits. So further examination, I think. Could you tell me again what these kinds of nonprofits are? You're talking about the... Maybe, I don't have, I haven't done the research on how to be a membership nonprofit as opposed to a corporate entity that's selling goods. If you think about the idea of the concern of amassing wealth that could upend the election system, membership, organization, maybe certain co-ops, I'm speculating, I don't know, but there is a case out there that would warrant examination as to whether to survive a potential legal challenge that the definition of corporation should be narrowly drawn in some instances and maybe brought in others to capture LLCs and LLPs and other business entities. So that is the scope of my comments with regards to S120, and are there any questions? There are, as I understand, there's several states that banned corporate donations. Are you aware of any of them? I mean, you probably haven't dug into it too much, but that have seen any challenge post-citizens United to me, has that changed the legal underpinning for those bans? So, that's the Michigan case. So I haven't done a deep dive, but Michigan was the one case that I pulled up quickly that seems to be addressing this. Because I'm off here. So what we have here from before last year, 22 states completed the level. Yeah. Six allow corporations to contribute an unlimited amount, and 19 impose the same restrictions on corporate contributions as individuals, which we would be in that category. Right, ma'am, we're right. Ma'am, Chair, I would say my interest, I don't understand why this draft has this 5%, that seems very odd to me. The way it was introduced. Yeah, no, I get that, but so to a state house you could, some corporate agent could give 50 bucks, but the CEO could give you 1,000 bucks, that's kind of weird. So, to me, we should either ban them or not. I would say, maybe from the witness, I have never taken corporate money in my campaigns, and last year for the first time, I've taken PAC money, some of the PACs, their checks would say, I can't remember exactly what, blah, blah, blah, ick, and so this would flummox a lot of us, and we would call and say, what's going on here? I thought this was your PAC, and so that seems like a new distinction, and I don't know if there's a way to thread that needle, but if there is, I would like us to figure it out. I mean, it's a little bit what you were talking about around the profit. I'm speculating here, and maybe my colleague from the Secretary of State's office can elaborate a little bit further, and I hesitate to speculate, but Vermont, I believe, has broadly defined what a political action community can be as a result of captures corporations, and so you can coexist as a corporation and a PAC at the same time. It's not a PAC, could be a separate entity under the IRS codes, but it also under Vermont law can be a corporation. So, we will hear from the Secretary of State about that, and I know that when we were dealing with this before we had, we heard that it's something like 100,000 corporations in Vermont, I mean, registered corporations. Well, most of our farms are incorporated in it, and it has a lot of our farms are incorporated. And we did, we looked at the federal guidelines when we were dealing with this before, and the federal guidelines are 134 pages, so it isn't simply banning corporate contributions. So if you wear green socks on Tuesday, you can donate, but if you wear red socks and striped socks on Thursday, you can't. I mean, it is not clear that a corporation is a corporation all the time, and anyway, we can hear from the Secretary of State. So is Eve not with us? So Eve was in court this week. Oh. What did she do? She had a hell of a hard time. Oh, I just teased her. Knowing Eve. Really? Yeah. Oh, she could have many. She could be there as a journey member. Right, but Claire was just teasing. So, okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Will, would you like to join us? Sure. Will Sanding, Director of Elections and the Secretary of State's office. I think this is the first time you've been here. Nice to see you guys. Yeah. A new session. Welcome. Thank you. I did not have a whole lot to say on 120, to be honest. My one comment, my first comment was going to be to consult the AG's office, which I know that. My second was going to be that, I think this bill or any bill in whatever form that attempts to win it and or ban corporate contributions, I immediately try and think of it from the administrative standpoint, of course, which is what I do with my role in the process. It would essentially have to be a self-regulating system at this point without serious further investment in our software. And particularly around that dovetails with difficulty of defining what a corporation is and which corporations would be. However you end up writing that deal or parsing that, it would be tough for our system to do an analysis of that entity as you're just typing your name in, whoever Inc. has your contributor. So either be a place where the file or you, the candidate, PAC or party would have to check a box that's corporate or not, but then that would place that analysis kind of on you, which I suppose that person would have a duty anyway in terms of am I going to accept this or not. But the only function of doing that, I was trying to think as I'm sitting here, would be to enable like the flags that come up in the system for you guys when a contribution is above the limit. You get a warning with no heart stops in the system to that effect, but if you have a contributor goes over the limit or a single contribution, you get a message pop up. And to make that same kind of message pop up on either a 5% analysis, we would have to know whether that contributor name you typed in fit the definition in the law. And that's either very tough to do in the software or I think the better approach would be it's on the candidate to figure it out and for the contribution into the current system like it is, and then you deal with the enforcement from the office with you in reports. But I think that the issues that Mr. Diamond pointed out are the appropriate ones to think about from a legal perspective. Last year you, last, oh, I'm sorry. No, I'm just curious. Well, I hadn't realized that you had pop up warnings. You don't have anything that identifies people who have a trial. I mean, we talked about this last year. I mean, it's always a frustration when you try and report on time and other people don't and you don't have anything to enforce that and you don't, it strikes me that I wouldn't want to have it fully self enforced, self regulated. I'd love to have you guys do spot checks on it and flag even if you call the candidate and say what is this? Are we talking about corporate contributions? Yeah, we did this. I wouldn't want it to be fully self regulated. I would want it to be spot checks. Yeah, I would want to have spot checks and encourage you to do more spot checks on all the candidates reporting because as you know, it's a very vague. So if you were going to do that, we would have to have a clear definition of what a corporation like that. Well, I think that's part of what we're being asked for. When you were here last year, you had one other concern and that is that you can only identify Vermont corporations. So we would have other people, a lot of people from out of state who are corporations who want to give us money. Thank you. That goes to another potential method for that would be to have some communication between our database and the corporations divisions database, which there isn't yet or maybe a few under the name, we would fly, hey, there are registered entity in the Vermont corporations division. So that is a possibility. That also would be invested in the software and would not be able to be done outside of Vermont. So if you had everybody, if we passed something like this, whether it's a total ban or whatever and it just said corporations, anybody who's registered, any one of those 100,000 people registered in the corporate division would fall under this unless we more closely define, why would they not? They're all registered as corporations. Well, I have a corporation, but I can write you a check. Why would you be able to? You're a corporation. Because it's my money. No, no, no, that's not what we're saying. We're not saying anyone who owns a corporation can't donate. We're saying Pearson and company can't write you a check. Right, no, no, no, I'm saying, but so here's what happened in the primary a few times ago in our campaign. The question was, would you take corporate money? There were four of us. I had been here and I said, there's no ban. I'll decide who I take money from. Becca said, same thing. She decided, one candidate said, I would never take corporate money. And afterwards I said to him privately, you should be really careful because you have taken corporate money. I looked at your report and he said, no, I haven't. And I said, you took money from Mountain Mowing's Farm, Inc. Right. And he said, but that's not the kind of corporation I'm in. I'm in Montanto. So we would have, anybody that had Inc. or LLP or LLC or anything behind their name could not contribute. Correct, that's the point. So it's any of the 100,000 entities registered. Okay. I mean, I think that's the point because those are, there's people behind them. Right. And the people can write you a check. They just can't, you know, I mean, it doesn't sound evil when you talk about the farmer down the road using their business account and it's not. But it's also not hard for that farmer to just write your personal check or use it up to their chemical. If they have a personal check account. Most. Right. They can give you some cash. Oh, we can't take cash. We can't take cash. Up to $50. Up to $50. We can take cash. Still can't. Okay, Alison. So another way to get added is through the increasing number of political, of online contribution, poor points for the Democrats. It's act blue for the Republicans. It's act red. I don't know what is it. Anyway, there are online ways you can get back to your things. That's weird. Yeah. I would look forward to that. Anyway, you could also have a, because they're specific to your state and to your race, you could have a reminder that you, on those that you couldn't give that corporations couldn't give that they'd have to give us individuals. There are increasingly numbers of ways you could be with mine donors as well as candidates. So I guess the question that we need to answer first is do we want, if we decide we want to pursue this and we want to ban corporate contributions, that's if we decide that, then we can figure out what we mean by it and how we go forward with it. But I don't think trying to figure out how we would go forward with this, how we would notify people before we decide whether we want to go forward with it makes a lot of sense in terms of the conversation. Chris. Will, am I hearing you right in saying that actually, from your system point of view, the 5% as is drafted here is impossible. I mean, they're both sort of impossible, but also including this percentage is sort of extra difficult, is that right? Yes. I wouldn't say impossible. Yeah. Virtually. So I know that the medical society and the dental society, because it both contributed to my campaigns, have formed separate political packs. So I mean, I just can't figure it. They're not corporations, but I'm guessing corporations can do the same thing. Sure. Can the Monsanto form a pack? So what have we done, except for the court lawyers? Those packs have to file. If they're in Vermont, they have to tell you where their money comes from and where they're spending their money. So we have a disclosure. It's still, you're right that it's a workaround for them or a loophole, but it does have much better transparency from where that money is coming from. Well, you know, I, can I find my mom's chair? I'm thinking, you know. That's true. Hmm? That's true. Oh, it is true. But so what kind of pack, and you know I'm going there, what kind of pack did Bernie make that we don't know, and he's sent money to lots of people. Yeah. We don't know who put that money in, do we? Is it a different, are there different kinds of packs? Any pack. Yes, there are. Not the got money ones. They don't have to. Well, I mean, that's my question, if there are different kinds of packs. There's different kinds. Yeah. That does not all are transparent. Well, that's true. So the C4 can give money to a pack and that pack will say, I got money from the C4. Right. Oh, okay. Oh, gave money to the C4. To the C4. That's another, but again, so is this perfect? No. Is it a move towards better transparency? I would say absolutely. So my question is, now I'm not, I don't know if I've taken money from my corporation or not, because I can't remember. I mean, are the troopers association? I don't think that's appropriate. They probably have a political action. They do. And so, but so why is it more transparent if it says I took money from Pepsi Cola or I took money from Vermont Yankee, okay? Or Vermont Democrats. Or Vermont Democrats. No, no, no. I'm talking about a corporation here. I took money from Endergy or I took money from Vermonters for Happy Families, which is a pack of Endergy. So if I dig deep enough, I can find out who Vermonters for Happy Families are and that they're funded by Endergy. But I have to dig for that where if I just take money from Endergy, it says I took money from Endergy. You don't have to dig. You know where that money came from? It came from Endergy. So why is that more transparent? That's a good point. I guess I've flipped the question if you're asking me. Why do we have a democratic process where corporations contribute to campaigns? This is, they don't vote. They don't, they're, you know, I mean, I'd be open to banning tax, but I don't think that's kind of- Oh, you can ban tax. Why would you even want to? You can't. So, so you can't. Why would you ban taxes? Because I actually happen to think that democracy should be fueled by people. I agree. A PAC is just a bunch of people that come together with a similar- That's right. So we can't ban them. So, but we can clearly say to me there is a very clear distinction that Pepsi-Cola should not be engaged directly in the political process. You can't ban PACs, so they're still gonna have that people. But they're, you know, you see people, some people use the corporate ability to give corporate donations to double their donation. So I give to you, I max out to you $1,500 and then Pearson Company gives you $1,500. You know, I deserve twice the influence, then is available to somebody that doesn't have a corporation. I don't think so. Well, how is it different if spouses get money? Spouses a voter. They're a person. Yeah, but they have, but that family has twice the influence that otherwise have that. I was just thinking back to- What is the most transparent? To me the issue is, as I have this assumption that voters think about who they're gonna vote for and they look at information and facts instead of who has the most TV commercials. I don't know. And if that were the case, then what would influence me the most just to see where you got your money? Who stands behind you? What does that mean? I mean, we have a piece of legislation and I happen to know that groups that I don't agree with ever on anything are in favor of this and I'm working really hard on myself not to be in disfavor of it because they're in favor of it, makes a difference. So maybe it is more, and we did not collude on this, but I tend to think maybe it is more straightforward if I know that energy and global foundries and I don't know, I can't think of any big energy corporation that has sponsored your campaign rather than... A quota company. A quota. Yeah, well, I don't, you know, I don't know who any of them are, but I do know who energy is. I know who global foundries is. I know who Pepsi-Cola is. I guess that's what I'm saying. Well, I guess I would also point out that... Yeah. I think the public has a perception that the way we fund campaigns and elections in this country is broken. Yeah, well, they're right. They're deeply... Well, around... Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the whole souped-enough is unsatisfactory. And I think that this is, I would be a small step to acknowledge that, to take a step that we clearly can take with, I think, not very much legal liability, to kind of push back and try, as best we can, to push the election process back into the hands of voters and individuals. Here, here. So here's one of the questions that came up when we did this before. And if I can just raise this. It came from a member of the Senate on the floor. So I can't take a contribution from mobile oil because they're a corporation, right? But I have bazillions of dollars invested in mobile oil and I get that money as a dividend and I can fund my own campaign or I can take money from you because all of your money comes from mobile oil. I mean, I can fund my own campaign out of my dividends from mobile oil. Does mobile oil have, is that straightforward? Well, we did include that in the ethics bill that if you were getting more than 10, more than 10 different from your mobile oil shares, you'd have to, Well, that, from all, you would have to, we have begun the process. Remaining one space, we have, right. And you know, I don't think any of us would argue our ethics bill was perfect but it was a step forward. It's perfect. Put this in the same kind of way. And I actually think that it's very different. I mean, I mean, my guess is that the individuals' priorities are not aligned fully with the corporations they invest in, necessarily. I mean, I think they're two separate things. So they should not invest in them. No, that's a different question altogether. Okay, so committee, do we wanna go forward with this or not, with or without a percentage? I would vote yes. Sir? I would think about it. I'd like to see finance reform. I think this is kind of a blunt instrument. But I don't have a lot of enthusiasm for starting from scratch right now. This is a better idea, I'll listen. Well, we can take some more testimony. I don't know what else we'll hear. But, Well, maybe we ought to hear testimony on something in addition to this. I'd like to hear from other states. I'd like to hear from the states. There are 22 states that have done this. That's on half the states in the country. And it would be interesting to me to see how they tackled the knot of defining corporations. I think it would be worth a little more testimony and then deciding what we're doing. Well, who should we hear from then? We're not gonna hear from the states. We have to report from all the states. And then put this out, N-C-O? N-C-S-L. N-C-S-L. Okay, that's what I mean. Yeah, maybe they have some sort of analysis of it. Well, they do, right here, it's in our folder. Well, I mean, here's, it's the spreadsheet or whatever you want to call it. Interesting how they don't line up. The ones that are prohibited are not the ones. They're all different. Kentucky's a bastion of progressives. Yeah, right. Right, and... Massachusetts. And these are for their state candidates, not all, is this true for all? Well, we can't, we don't do federal. Right, right, we don't do federal. This is, I guess we can hear some more. I don't know who we, well, do we want to make a walk us through this? I don't know. Well, to follow up on some of Josh's questions, I think we should, it might be worth further examination on the legal issues Josh identified. And which, and identify which corporations and we're trying to capture and identify them. I would ask the test if I address the question of is it more or less transparent and Monsanto moves to a pack and gives money. So I just, it has to be an improvement. And I'm not sure that particular thing is an improvement. Because we know they'll go random. In my mind, transparency is really the issue here. You have to show who gave you the money. And I don't know if it's, who would we hear from about whether it was more or less transparent? I'm sure, I don't know. That's why you get paid so much for being chair. Oh, damn. Darn. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. I know, I don't know who that would be. Okay, well, we'll... But I'll ask the people who are promoting this. And maybe we'll have Eve come in and she's out of court and walk us through some more. Okay. So we're leaving this side. We said, keep going. We said, keep going. All right, we did trash it. Okay, let's move on to one, two, three, two and see what we think about that one. Oh yeah, this one's awesome. Should we combine with the badge? Yes. Forget the badge. I thought this was the badge. No, this is saying that if you represent a group, you have to be able to disclose who your members are. I'm not exactly sure who it refers to or what it means. So if somebody... Well, we've had... We'll explain this to us. Yes. You are one of the sponsors. I wish. Thank you. I could explain that because from my first year in finance, 15 years ago, we had a witness that said, I represent 150 industries, state-wide, and we think this bill is really awful, and here's why. And I said, so what do you represent? What kind of business is this? Well, he couldn't say. We looked on the website, no, it wasn't there. I called the Secretary of State's office and they said, well, they don't have to disclose that. So I don't know if that lobbyist represents himself and his best friend or just himself, and I still don't know, 15 years later, he's still here, and he still represents a whole bunch of businesses and I don't know who they are. They're not corporations. I don't know. I thought that was a joke. Oh, oh. They probably are. Well, I don't know, and it occurred to me at the time that it's a small state and we don't know how, how, all testimony is important, but if you think you're hearing from half the state, I mean, that's different than if you're hearing from two or three special interest groups, and we can't tell. But this refers to a contracted lobbyist, right? Or is it the employer contract? It's when you're registering. Lobbyist employers. Yes, but. At our membership organizations. Well, do you know who this refers to? Is it the contract employees or is it the, does, if VEPERG has corporate members, members who aren't an individual, but groups who are members, I don't know if you do or not, but if they do, do they have to give that information or is it Andy McClain who says, I represent the happy families? Do I have to say who's a member, what organizations are a member of happy families? Which is it? Do you have to go? Members that are not natural persons. I think that's the first thing you said. It's the first thing. It's not the contract employee. I mean the contract lobbyist. It's the employer lobbyist. Well, back. This is, this is, the way I read this, is targeted at the employer. At the employer. The side of the employee. And so you have these employers in RLR, the clients of the lobbyists. They're the people who retain the lobbyists. They hire the lobbyists. Be it public, OLA, Viver, whoever. So if that employer is a membership organization, a group or coalition of members, including a business trader and super interest association, then they say how many there are and if any of them aren't individuals, they disclose the name. So when, when Andy McClain registers and one of his clients. His lobbyists. He's a contract lobbyist. Not the contract worker, don't worry. Oh yeah, right, right. He's the, yeah, the lobbyist. He's a contract lobbyist. He registers and one of his clients is the automobile association. Yeah. Good easy. Then he has to say who the member. Sorry. The automobile association. The automobile association has to say who the members, the non-individual members of the automobile association. It's Frank's automotive center in Bella's Falls. And the, okay. And is the automobile association already have to register because they're hiring a lobbyist? Yes. So they're already in there on their home and then somewhere it says Andy McClain is our. They both link each other. They're right. They're right. They're, Andy doesn't have any burden in this case. Only they have to say, all right, we are the automobile association but we're actually my dealership and my brother's dealership. Right, right, that's all we are. So. And that's the point. Right, right, no, I get that. But my question is then, does it also apply to the lobbyist that is the employer is also the, the lobbyist is also the employer. I mean, V-Purd doesn't contract lobbyists. They are their own lobbyists. They are their own lobbyists. So they would have to do the same thing if it's a, if it's an employer. Correct. That has memberships that aren't individuals. Okay, all right. Best way I would answer that question is there's no distinction right now between filing requirements for people who have contract lobbyists or people who have an in-house lobbyist. You and V-Purd skates with in-house lobbyists, all the lobbyists are registered and V-Purd registered as an employer. As an employer, okay. And it'd be on that registration for V-Purd. And you did say V-Purd would be subject to the same disclosures of non-natural persons. Depend on how this definition is interpreted. I don't know the nature of how V-Purd is set up, but yes. Do you think we need to get a legal interpretation from Eve or somebody? Or is this pretty clear? It's pretty clear to me now that. Yeah, I mean. I don't care if they. I want to let you counsel to help us through that. The one thing that's come up is a random freedom of association piece to this. Are we limiting that? But I'm gonna, I'm not gonna, I mean it seems hard to say that this would be limiting their right to associate. So that'd be a question for Eve. And is that correct? Yeah, I can speak to that. Okay. Yeah, please do. Do I need to introduce myself or go now? No, no, no. Could you be here every day for those? I love these issues. I do actually. So, there's a case. Now, I understand the interests of what the committee is trying to accomplish, but think back to 1958. And it's made in a deep sound. And the state of Alabama wanted to get the membership lists of the NAACP. And so the NAACP sued and the First Amendment was alleged that this violates theirs and their members write a freedom of association with the Supreme Court agreed. And so the question is whether or not entities that aren't individuals have First Amendment rights and the Supreme Court has said yes. And therefore, and I don't know what degree of scrutiny would be applied, but let's assume that it's something more than what's called rationality review. It's strict scrutiny or an exacting scrutiny. What is the important or compelling governmental interest that justifies that disclosure? And is that disclosure narrowly tailored to achieve that compelling governmental interest? And that would be something that would need to be explored and would encourage this committee to identify those issues if they're down that path. So, we had this come up today in economic development because we have a lobbyist in the building who represents a manufacturing association who does not disclose their members. So, many of our... We just talked about this. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Okay. And we had to already ask those questions here. And to me, there are compelling reasons to understand that because we give the state support so much manufacturing with so many different capacities through tax expenditures, through training programs, through tons of stuff. There is a state investment in that association and it's members and very important to know it would be important to know in that capacity who they're representing. And so, what I can't tell you is I haven't done enough research to identify whether the courts have recognized certain compelling governmental interests that can give you a sense of what would be that would pass judicial scrutiny under the circumstances. And I think further research would be needed. That makes, if, Claire, did you? Well, I have another question, but I'm not done with that issue. Well, that is, you said we'd have to define a governmental interest. Why would that be so hard to know who we're electing? Who's sponsoring that? Well, the question is whether it's a compelling or substantial important governmental interest. Oh. To know who. Who determines that. Of course. Of course. But we explain our attempt to justify. Yeah, if we pass this on. What's the public policy? What is the inquiry doing this? It is interesting to me that our ability to acquire lobbyists to register, right? Pay a fee to, just because you're part of a profession seems strange in a sense. And yet courts are comfortable with that. And we're saying that's because we, it's very plain that you wanna influence policy and influence government. And this seems to me to be just very keeping with that. For example, if a big drug company had paid membership in the Vermont Medical Society and the Medical Society lobbied for some certain kind of medical treatment or treatment in a certain place or special prices for a certain treatment, it would tell us a lot to know that that drug company was one of their big members or was a member and paid more money than others. But you're not the court, so you're not sitting. Is that correct? I'm just trying to identify some legal issues that I think are in further examination. Okay. And are you the person that would do that for us? Or is that back to Eve again? Because it's a. One of us would. One of you. Get it squared away. Okay. Is there something? So this would also include unions? No, because this is that we've drawn a line for individuals. So I don't think unions can have anything other than individuals. So if you had a court, if you had an employer that was made up of membership of individuals, I'm trying to think now, the Ethan Allen Institute. If they have membership, I don't know if they do, but if they had memberships, individual memberships, and they hired a lobbyist, they would not be required to give a list because they're individual members. It's only members that aren't individuals. Okay, and Will's whispering to me here, in the case of a union, it seems like maybe they would have to devolve to the number of them in this. So VSEA represents, I don't know, 6,000. 6,000. Anything? Oh, I see it, yes. And they certainly influence. Yeah, yeah. Right, but we know what we get. When they sit down and say we're from VSEA, we have a media picture and scale in our minds that is accurate, and then you interpret their testimony as you will with some sense of accuracy, I think of who they're sitting there on behalf of. But if McMillan were a member of VSEA, they wouldn't be able to qualify as a labor organization, is that correct? It was. McMillan, it used to be a big textbook company. If they were a member of VSEA, yeah. How could they be a member of VSEA? That's just it. So they could have corporate members, and if they could have corporate members, that would be of interest to us, but they only have individual members who qualify by some sort of participation in the workforce. We know it's teachers and people who work for schools, right? So that they would have to comply with them. If it's a member organization, they would have to disclose the number of members, but not the names, unless they were not an individual. And they couldn't be a labor union if they had anything other than member organizations, is that what I'm hearing? I don't agree with that, to be truthful. I don't know that either, but that's what I thought you were saying, yeah. Yeah, I can't fathom how that could be a case. I mean, that's what I... Well, that would be a good question to ask, because it's clear that unions, labor unions are exempt, so they can have other kinds of members. Maybe they shouldn't be exempt. We can ask V-Purk, but I believe V-Purk is made up of individuals, and I don't know if they have corporate members. Maybe they do. VBSR would clearly have to discuss... Corporate members, they would not have to... Is this the same issue? Yeah, VBSR would have to give us a list. They saw they also data... But they're on their website. ...discreetly to the... Are they, they're transparent? Yeah. Yeah, but they would have to... And so they would have to push that into their lobby service. Yeah, but, yeah. So then the next question is, is your system capable of handling the 700 names of the VBSR members? And, okay. I'd have to add a field, and somebody would have to type it in, not me. But that's... Yeah. Let's read that up to the employer. Oh, that's right. Yep, VBSR. Okay. I hesitate to add, but there could be some membership organizations like the American Chamber of Commerce that could be quite full of us in their membership roles. There are national trade associations. But we've developed, most likely, an upload in that situation where they could upload in Excel file that you would assume they have. Yeah, it's important to think about. And this is applied to only instinct? Or any employer, so... It could probably be a lot. It's the employer. Yeah. So, if it was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that would be mostly a Chamber of Commerce. Or central for much. But if the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a lobbyist here. Or the lobbyist. They wouldn't have to. Lead a lot of out-of-state employers. Yeah. The lobbyist. Yeah, okay. All right. But it's not every corporation, for instance. It's just if they're a coalition of members of a trade or consumer interest association like there. We'd have to make sure we get that right. But it's not every single entity that matters. Just people that purport to represent more than themselves, basically, or on behalf of them. If it's a group or a coalition of members. Yeah. But I'm saying, if Monsanto's lobbying, they're just Monsanto, they're not. Right. They don't have members. But the Petrochemical Association, we need to understand who they are. They're the key dealers of the association. I would say I'm glad that's where your focus is. That's where the line always is, is the administrator. I think it's just got the scope that you're including here. I think it's important to legal matter, too. An important phrase here is group or coalition of members. That's pretty broad. The including language is just including. It's not limiting. Right. Group or coalition of members. So just if you're moving forward with this, we'll pay attention to that as well. Yeah, okay. Then the example comes to my mind very quickly. Just to give you another good, different example. It is the VMCD adding your municipal parks and treasurers. All right. And so they're members of towns. Well, all right. But they have the same principle to towns that were members of that group. Just another example of a wide variety of sectors with grant benefit, BLCT. But in each case, we are agreeing that should someone who's not a town official or a town but is a corporation or a business, then they would have to. If it's a town, they have to register because they're not an individual. They'd have to be listed. If it's the BLCT and the T.R.D. or the T.R.D. But I would assume that those are the, that's who the members are, but just the same way I assume who the members of the state employees union are. All towns. All towns aren't an organization. Right, okay. So, and we can't say that because we know the organization, they don't have to list them. All the, all the, all the, if Claire knows who the organization is, then they don't have to list them here. F-O-C-U-C-S. Oh, friends of Claire? Yeah, I know, okay. So we should just make sure that the definition is appropriate and not so broad. And I believe further research is needed as to whether or not these entities have a large number of interests are protected under the law. Yeah. Okay. We did, we were talking about national organizations, like the Chamber of Commerce is when you mentioned, but I'm thinking about, for example, the ACLU. We have a Vermont chapter and then we have a national. Thanks to having, doesn't that make it easier if there's a Vermont chapter and the Vermont chapter has non-sentient beings or whatever that thing is, not natural persons? It's about a caring member, I, yeah. But I assume you're a natural person, so we don't know about you. And I'm a member also, but if a non-natural person is a member, then that makes a difference. Well, if NPR, if VPR hired a lobbyist to come in here to lobbyists on something, they have both individual and non-individual members. They would have to say how many members they had, they have 20,762 members. And of those, 1,400 are non-individual members and here's the list of them. Is that the way this reads right now? If that's how they define membership. So the question is, how do you define membership? Does everyone that makes a contribution to a non-profit member? So probably not. Actually, generally, that is the assumption. If you do underwriting, is that a membership? Yes. Why? My guess is you'll find that most of them now, because of the pain in the neck differentiation of member, that they just, most of them assume that all donors and whatever capacity are members. I think what organizations identify for publicity sake and what corporate violence may identify as members are, could be two different things. They cover, but they've moved to simplify that in the last several years, people. But non-profits will have very mixed membership. Yes. All right, well this seems like a nice little bill. You didn't even have a name. Well, it says on page four that you're gonna publish 500 booklets. So is there some cost to... Huh? It just says publish no fewer than 500. Continuing up the listing of all registered lobbyists, including at a minimum, current passport type photo. Facts, numbers. Well, that's the lobbyist. That isn't the employers. It's the secretary of state. But wait a minute, where are you? That's all current. Last? Page four. Yeah, four. That's current law. We get that book once a dining. We get the listing of who are the registered lobbyists. I have thank goodness, it's a fake, it's face pictures, so you know who are the lobbyists. His question I believe now that I read it is, does, if they register, if they have to publish this list of lobbyists and their employers, and one of the things that the employers had to disclose is the list of their membership. Does that have to be in the booklet itself and if so, this booklet would be about the size of the OED? Thank you, Madam Chair. Is that what you wrote? That's where I was headed, yeah. That's your survey and the point. I don't even see what it would need to be, but we should be careful. I'm assuming a constant dynamic addition or subtraction from that list, how current does it have to be? Two answers, the straight answer is no. The way this is written, the book contains lobbyists and their employers. Okay. And we can see in that it's the employer membership list that also needs to be included in the book, and you can tell what's said about it. Number two is we don't publish a book anymore. I know, which one, we don't like that. We don't like that. I always thought you did. Why don't you do it? Last plan and we have one. You can print. You can go up there. They did not. That's pretty clear. 500 booklets in five minutes. And a minute. There are areas of law you could completely ignore. So is that, is it a booklets? That's never. Sorry, well, I know we used to be friends. There's an argument about publication and online publication, but we believe it's this one. So it's accessible online, right? Just your lobbyist booklets. Very nice, presentable booklets. It's really nice. Really, really nice. And it's under your area? Is it under elections? It's under lobbyists. You can go right on their website and find it, sure. You type in Vermont better. You type in, well, you can print it on. You can print off at all people. You know what's nice about the online, but it's so good, in fact, that every couple weeks it changes and it updates. And you print the book that you get to the end. Current pictures. Yes, current pictures. Claire, did you have a question? Well, I was just thinking one of the times it's of the most interest to us would be the second year of the biennium when we're running for office and where I'm wondering who's contributing to whom. So, if we're looking at the list of lobbyists and there's no requirement that it be updated, you said it is. He does. They do. It's the primary benefit of it. But should the BMX bring in Roche as a member before at the, you know, in the second year of the biennium and they start sponsoring different legislators, it would be good for the public to know that. Yeah. Not that Roche is a bad company. I see one I could think of offhand. But that would co-assume it's online. It would be, as they add and subtract members, they would, that would be recorded. It isn't in the lobbyist book, but it would be recorded on the membership list. It would be the responsibility of the organization to supply that information to the, Right. Yeah. I don't, I don't think it says that. That's true, we can talk about fines. Well, that's because we don't have that now. I guess that was my point that maybe we should add that the, everybody who's registered has a responsibility to have up-to-date information by some expectation of currentness, right? Well, they do it with the lobbyist. So they probably, okay. All right. So we'll get some more information on that one. It's actually updated overnight. I think Allison's gonna print a version of it right now. I use it all the time. Well, you are great. I use my book actually with some regularity. I don't because they're so out of the most recent one. Thank you, Josh. You're welcome. So, 213. Senator Pierce, another one of yours. Yeah. And on this one, I think Will is the, the person to weigh in on this and how that would work. Sure. And you can do it from right there if you want to, Will. We're staying a little bit informal. Should I just give you a reminder? He says don't move me from Allison because she's gonna make me. So a rank, a rank choice ballot is one that doesn't just have you fill out an oval. It allows you to say one, two, three, for instance. And this is, so that's something broadly that I've supported for a long time, but this is much more discreet. And this is already in play in a number of states and I don't know the number, but it's more than zero. Yes. This only applies to presidential primaries and only two people who are voting from overseas. And we can talk about that, but that's how this is drafted. And what happens is somebody gets a ballot in mid-February. They have to quickly turn it around to get it mailed back to have it counted by early March. And shoot, I'm gonna not think of a name, but they voted for, who's your owner? Woodsville Levinsky. Pearson. Well, I'm trying to give you a real example because there were thousands of votes that didn't count in the Republican primaries, specifically because there was a thousand candidates, only a hundred of them were left by March. Yeah, so Ted Cruz, so March, February 15th, I'm overseas, I love Ted Cruz. You mail it back, Ted Cruz is not even in the race by the time for March votes. Right. And so that person overseas, their ballot, it's just tossed out, it doesn't count for nothing. If there would be a standard, and they do in Louisiana, it's the one place that I'm confident it does this. There's a standard that basically says when your candidate's no longer actively campaigning or whatever the standard is, and you pick Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz is no longer in, then we look at what we said number two should be, and if number two is still active, boom, it counts for that person. And I think it was, somebody did the analysis, but I want to say, and I don't quote me on this, but it was like 4,000 votes that were tossed because they were, yeah. Because they were voting for people who weren't there. They were, they had withdrawn from the election, but they're still on the ballot because Will has to print the ballots a long time ahead. So this is, everybody understands my interest is sort of showing us it's not so exotic that there's a way to do this, but because it's overseas, it's a small, small slice of the electorate. It's a kind of a pretty clear need in that sense. And I'd love to see if we could work it out. And we have a bit of time. So actually, I might not go over four today. I might actually go over one for three. But this one, and I've read the bill, is it one in two, or is it one through 16? I don't remember exactly how it's drafted. If you don't have any mention of it, you just say rank. Yeah, so then it would be one through whatever you got. And we could, different, yeah, we could easily say top five, whatever. We could see top two. Yeah, I mean, I think it, huh? I mean, you have 17 people in there. Yeah, I know, but I think at some point you might be introducing voter fatigue just to expect somebody to sit there with 12 choices. Well, just to be clear, you don't have to, you could do one if you want. Okay. You're not acquired. And so it would be to the voter's advantage to pick some number. But absolutely, if you wanted to say, no, up to five, whatever, that'd be an improvement. But why wouldn't we let the voter decide how many numbers they want to? Well, we'll, we'll, no doubt. We'll, we'll. Way in that the ballot gets bigger because you have to have some room this way to go next to your rankings. So there might be some practical reasons to limit it to five. But I don't know, those ballots don't have a lot of them. Because they're just a primary button. Claire, did you have a question? Yes, a question for Chris. You may have to look this up. He said you're, you couldn't remember exactly 4,000 votes that went uncounted in terms of their weight. Did it make any difference? Would it have made any difference? That's a good question. I don't, that is a great question. I'm not sure. You mean, in other words, did Trump, Trump wanted to, I don't believe. So did he win by less than 4,000 votes? That's a good question, I don't know. I would suspect one more annually than that, sure. You know, I don't know that, that primary, I think there were, I'm not sure in the primary thing. Well, if only we had an expert who knew where they wanted to result from. I thought the case of Trump didn't matter. Yeah, it didn't matter. You know, that's where it went. I thought he did too. Yeah. I thought the case of Trump didn't matter. I thought the case of Trump didn't matter. I thought the case of Trump didn't matter. Oh really? Case of Trump didn't matter. No, you didn't win the primary, sadly. I thought he was going to. I remember that Bernie was tied in a poll. I'm pretty sure it's Trump. Really? Well, I was hoping the case it would win. It would be interesting to know if that sort of thing would make a difference in our elections. But even above and beyond that, I think just the fact that it didn't get counted is a people concern. I agree, I agree. So what do we need to, Will, what do we need to do around this one to, you don't have to. Can't I, though? Oh, you can't. You can't, that's made of error. I hate sitting back here. You don't have to say no just to look at him, guys. He did? 32% to John Kuzix, 30%. Yeah, he won. Trump won, what's the wrong number? 32%. Let's see. Trump got 19,968 votes. In case it got 18,500 votes, 4,000 votes had been forgotten. Let me find if I can figure out. So that's why I said, well, I think I want to. OK. So Will, what do we need to do to do this? So this, I hadn't had a whole lot of time to absorb this particular concept of Bill in the actual language in here. I know I can feel comfortable saying that the secretary supports the concept of grand choice voting. And I think especially for military and overseen voters, for all the reasons Senator Pearson identified, I think my overall comment here is if the committee is considering moving forward with this concept, that I need to really consider all the implications of it. And that there are more than are addressed here. That's not in a way to try and deter you from doing it. I think it's doable. Primarily, I'm thinking about the counting process. I saw it's addressed somewhat here. And it's simplified. I keep thinking back to some rank choice voting, but what's the other alternative for all the voting? Higher V, thank you. There you go. Absolutely same. Not really. Oh, I would have found out. Either way, this is great. Well, OK. I mean, there's no majority of the time. But I look at a single ballot. Yeah. And I look at your 1, 2, 3, 4. I go with your 1 no matter what, unless that person's up. There's not a majority requirement, but the ballot is all the same. IRB is, you look at the whole result, whether. Yeah. The difference is the 1 didn't win. Yes. There's no majority requirement, which is what you're referring to. But the ballot is why I would be more concerned if we were creating a little subset IRB in our counters. This, I think, I can write some pretty good procedures to say during the presidential primary, when this kind of ballot comes through in your stack as you're counting, this is how you record the vote on the township ballot, which is what that is. Do these? Yeah. A couple other distinct issues. We're at your leisure center. I just wonder how complicated it is. When I count our votes, we count it by hand. And I can't, so you count each ballot, you count each ballot four times, essentially, if you rank your top four choices. I've never done it with IRB. No, so if number one is Kasek, that's just a count for Kasek, you're done with that ballot. If number one is Cruz, and Cruz is gone, then you. But you don't know until you're partway through the count or is this it with Drone? No, because it's Cruz with Drew. It's with Drone from the race. So that is it. So let's just take a minute. What we think of as instant runoff voting demands that some candidate reach a 50% threshold, which you don't know until you've counted it alone. I see the difference. I see it. That is a counting process. The ballot is just like what we know. Is updating the ballot. This is not that at all. But it is the same-looking ballot. And just you look at number two, if number one is with Drone voluntarily. I mean, if they're still some long shot and you picked it, that's fine. It just means that the counters, if they count by hand, they're going to have to know who the actual candidates are. They probably shouldn't. I was just thinking that. So they're also going to have to have a little list. Here's the do not count names from the ballot. Do the overseas ballots get processed by tenors? Yes. So will you spend some time thinking about this one? Yeah. Can I put a couple more just notions in your head so you know that you're prepared when I'm coming back? Yeah. There is language in this bill. I don't know if it was intended or not. But on line 10 of page two, they require the ballot to be sent to every military and overseas vote, which is not the case right now. They have to be requested by each individual. Oh, you're requested on that one. That was not intentional. Yeah. So we would change that language. We want to change that, and especially so because what I can tell you, it does still have an effect with this bill, though. You all should know, we do not identify a voter as military or overseas. It's just overseas. Just about. No. They're not distinguished from anybody else. Well, how do you know where it is? Do you have to know where it is then? They self-identify that when they make an absentee ballot request. Oh, so they're just an absentee ballot request like anybody else? It doesn't follow their voter record. Their status as a military voter. It's interesting. We've thought about whether we want to do that. And there are some reasons to do that, just data-driven reasons anyway. But I want to make an absentee ballot request. They click like any other voter that you do. Then there's an option, I'm military and overseas. They check that box. Then they get the option of being emailed. Their ballot doesn't have distinction. I just want to talk about. But so that's why the blanket wouldn't work in the first place. And just so you recognize also that it's not somebody has to first tell you I'm overseas and then they get this option. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't look at that. Yeah, we would change that language. So can they do that online? Yes, they can request and print. You've got an email request. I want to make sure you're aware of that. So we've held address the late military ballots problem with the email transmission out. I think that the sort of more overall way that this committee could consider addressing the problem in general is moving toward electronic return, allowing these people to email their ballot back, which other states do. We don't hear yet. We still require a paper ballot in the mail. I think we can incorporate that into here. Potentially. Right. I don't know whether the AG's office would want to chime in. And I'd want to think further too about that. And I don't know if you looked at this at all. This offends the one person, one vote. I don't think in general, because it's allowed, just because I know it's allowed in other places and other contexts, I guess those were the high level issues. So this will also require the creation of a separate ballot. And that's really, to me, the biggest thing, is it's right now all ballots that come back and are counted on election night look the same, feel the same, and are treated the same. And so it's a good trend. Except for the people that printed it at home. That printed it in France. They look the same. The only difference is the stock. Right? You said that. Yeah. You're right. OK. OK. He's right. Feel, feel. It would require a different counting process for a certain subset of ballots, which is new. And the last thing that just occurred, although I think the way we're an Etch-it senator, I mean, you think of it, I think we would need a provision in here, or I would probably advocate for one, that these ballots are hand counted. Because I know for a fact that a tabulator is on it. That's right. Yeah. And we don't want to have to go to that at length. So they would then be identified as they were open and then put into different piles, both fed through them. And you wouldn't want to. They'd have to be open in here. They're all coming into the world by definition. I know I must miss something on this, but I'm thinking, if we allow e-voting, in essence, why would we need to rank anything if they're up to speed as to who's still left? Why would we need to? If we get there, this wouldn't be necessary. OK. Good. I thought I was missing something. No. And just to be clear, I think we're really far away from actually casting a vote via the internet. The electronic return is either an upload of a PDF or an attachment to an email. But that could be done 24 hours ahead of the election jump, or did not? No, everything you said is OK. So this, you know what you understand what I'm saying? Yeah. Even if you're overseas, you could keep up to date with who's still left. And then 24 hours before, you send your vote. When I'm overseas and I register through the website and I click, I'm overseas. Does your office email me the ballot? Or does the city of Brompton email me the ballot after I've done it through your website? Does the legal matter of the city of Brompton does, as a practical matter, our system does? Well, does the, OK, is it? Coming from the city, though. The request is made to the city, and it's coming from the city. So all the clarification is actually sent to you? Yes. Yeah, no, and it's the clerk, actually. And that really is the case, because it's that clerk Amy saying yes, send, you know, seeing the request. Right. Do it. Yeah. That's right. I think it's got legs. Could be a little democracy package. Could do a whole package, yeah. It really might be the kind of thing that's most appropriate to do next year. Well, one year. Well, we could do it. We made this president's trip from the city of Brompton. Right. I mean, we wouldn't, we could do it and make it effective at the next presidential or primary. In 2020. Yeah. Starting November 8th, we'll shall figure it out. OK. You would want to hear from your templates on that. Yes. I guess we can get some of our templates. We always do. OK. OK. Anything else on this bill? So the next one we had on here is the public campaigns finance debt. And may I ask, well, I guess I can ask, the two of you are here representing your bosses in some way. Have they yet submitted a report on their campaign finance tour that they did this summer? We have not seen it. We would like it. We are working on it. Because whatever you submit is not going to happen this year unless there's a vehicle for it to happen. But it's a, I will just register a complaint here that this tour went on all summer long. And it was, there was a big deal made of it. And yet, and so we are the ones who are going to get the grief about not having responded to any of the suggestions that came out of this tour. But we have not seen any kind of a report so we can't respond to anything. So I'm just registering a complaint here that it is taking an awful long time since last summer to come up with this report. So you can pass that on to your two respected bosses. Thank you. This is called Tilda Messenger. But I mean, I think it's true. Is it not? That it's taking a long time? I mean, how complicated is it to write what has happened to suggestions from four meetings? Yeah. This campaign finance report, we can't think. Yeah. Yeah, but they're working on it. But I'm just saying it's taking them an awful long time to come up with a report there, because nothing is going to happen this year as a result of it. So I'm just registering my complaint. And I want you to pass it on to your two bosses. Thank you. OK, if we took that long to file, chaos would ensue. Or a certain amount of disgruntling. Well, I think there will be disgruntlement and it'll be aimed at us. As I said, I'm disgruntling. That wasn't a good point. Yes, OK. 248. 248. Look, I think this is a deeply principled discussion that is really important. Yes, I. There's a big price tag here. I haven't identified it as a funny source. We need a fist on this sucker. You know, it is a vehicle, and it would be something to any time we're talking about other areas of campaign finance, you know. To me, it's very useful for us to have this, like our corporate donations discussions. Kind of believe this is in some way very simple. But I don't know how much time it warrants, given that it's really hard to me to picture us being able to fund this. A, fund would be at the time to really be able to fund this. What I would suggest is maybe that certainly today we don't have time to delve into it, is that hopefully we will get some suggestions pretty soon. And I think that one of the things that came up over the summer was the issue of public financing. So when we get that report that we take this up at the same time. This could be the vehicle for something. Yeah, it could be the vehicle for something. But also, I really appreciate you asking JFO for a fiscal note on it. I think they usually will be interested in doing a fiscal note if they believe there's any shot of us. We don't want them to do a fiscal note if it's something that we're not even going to seriously consider. Well, you and I could figure out a fiscal note. Because we know there's only 50 houses and everything. But quite honestly, the fiscal note has impact on whether anybody would want to take it up. It's a catch 22. We could do a crude one by just figuring out how many members there are in the average 188 time. How many, the average of what it costs to run a campaign. And in some ways, this was an attempt to sketch an outline that we could use based a little bit on our public financing for governor and lieutenant governor, and a little bit on Maine and Connecticut, which have two very successful public finance systems where Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly use it. So when I first got on this committee, Bill Doyle was the chair. And he was really promoting this and had a bunch of people from Maine talking to us. Oh. Where they have much more robust public financing and all their members. And they had terminal issues. Yeah, but we don't want to go there. Unless you want to go there. Well, they do have term limits, but that has nothing to do with their public financing. I'm just saying they have both of those things. They have a lot of things. They also have branches. They also have that governor. That's why they're going to be promoting. They also, they have a lot of things that we don't want to emulate. So you know what they have that I'd love tonight is lost. Lost. What? What? What else? I just said it. The most divine. Nothing. OK. Moving on. Sorry.