 So I guess we get started here. For those of you who don't know me, I'm John Odom. I'm the city clerk. We've got Dan Richardson here, who's probably a lot of you all know, an attorney in town who's done some work on the subject of non-citizen voting and is familiar with the work on it for the Burlington City Council a few years ago. I've also got Skyping in. Great to have you. It's Doug Chapin who works on, what is it, the Center for, it's a big long thing here. It's the Center for Excellence in, oh I'm going to get it wrong. Anyway he works at the Humphrey School for Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. And I'm Dan's here to put the issue, just to sort of set the stage and then we'll just open it up to folks. Dan will set the, in sort of a Vermont context. I'm going to have Doug just spend a few minutes first to put the issue in a national context. And I'm not sure how long. I think we've got Dan here for the whole time. I know Doug's going to have to go at some point. So when, when done, you know, if there are any questions, I think I've got him pointed at the microphone. And I would ask the people who want to make comments, ask questions to come up to the microphone because we've got Orchie here and nobody will be able to hear you unless you're speaking over the microphone. So having said that, let me just briefly say that every year around town meeting day this question has come up for me. Somebody asks why can't, generally it's, it's always someone asking about their spouse. It's never about themselves, right? Generally asking, you know, why can't my spouse vote in city elections? You know, we're landowners, we have kids in school, this is our community. And we should have a right to vote on the budget or, you know, our city councilors. And I've always, I tried to be polite. I don't think I was polite. I've always tried to be polite. And but, you know, I always thought the question was sort of like, you know, why can't we launch our own communication satellite or something? It's like, well, that's nice. But it's just not something that can be done. Well, this year, come to find that it's not such a crazy question after all. So, so I was Roberta who contacted me this year and I, I contacted her back and I said, hey, guess what? I don't have to blow up this discussion anymore. We can actually have it. There's, there's, there's light in this. So having said that, I'm going to bump this to Doug who can put this in a sort of national and international context for us and help frame the debate. Doug, if you want to go ahead, you're a little pale up there on the screen. Yeah. Okay. Great. Well, good evening, everybody. Thank you for a much better inviting me to be here. The big one name John was mentioning is the program for excellence in election administration at the Hubert H. Humphrey School at the University of Minnesota. But those of us who know it and love it, call it the Election Academy for short. And in that capacity, I teach a bunch of classes, one of which John is taking on election administration in the United States. And so what he asked me to do and what I thought I'd do really quickly this evening is just give you a little background on the issue of citizenship and voting and sort of how it fits into election qualifications, generally, both in the United States and Iraq, the world. Most folks assume that you have to be a citizen to catch the ballot in the United States. And that's definitely true under federal law. There's a federal law title 18 section 611 that prohibits so called aliens, which are which is the legal term for non citizens from casting ballots in federal elections. That's part of the enforcement of the citizenship requirement, at least at the federal level. But that law itself very specifically says that the prohibition does not apply in elections that are held for another purpose, pursuant to a law in a state or locality that allows an alien to vote in those elections. And when you think about citizenship status for elections, it really isn't necessarily that different from some of the other changes in the franchise that we've seen over the years, whether it's extending the franchise to men without property and then to women and then to people of different races, lowering the voting age to 18. The franchise in this country has expanded and to be honest, contracted from time to time through the years. But the important thing and I guess the takeaway that I wanted to give for you all tonight is to highlight that unless you're running up against a strict prohibition, like we see in federal law, communities are free to do what they want with voting qualifications in their own community. We're seeing that in communities across the country. I'm really both before this year, but especially this year in the wake of the student march on Washington and the shooting in Parkland, increasing interest in lowering the voting age in communities lower the age of 18, which is the federal voting age pursuant to the Constitution. By the same token, there are communities across the country. Tacoma Park, Maryland is one of them where non-citizens who are lawfully here with permanent residency or other documentation are allowed to vote in local elections, with the argument being that one can be a citizen of a community without being a citizen of the United States. That is a policy decision that the local government, the voters as a local government that they made. It's not like it's some sort of something that's different or unusual. It's just a policy choice that those communities have made. And it's consistent with experiences around the world. You get communities that have multiple overlapping communities. I was telling students a while back I recently had the opportunity to meet with an election official from Ireland. In Ireland, you've got European Union elections, you've got United Kingdom elections, you've got the Republic of Ireland elections. And depending on what's on the ballot and what your integration status is, you can vote in different elections in Ireland. You might be eligible to vote in a European election, in a local Irish election, but not in a United Kingdom election, or two out of three or all three, depending on your citizenship status. But again, that's purely the decision of the local community in deciding its own voting qualifications. So whether it's age, whether it's other requirements for casting a ballot, whether it is citizenship status, communities like yours with either direct input from voters or indirect input through your policy makers, state legislature, what have you, you get to decide who qualifies for the ballot and sort of the extent that there is a question, why can't non-citizens cast a ballot in local elections? That's really a question that you have to ask one another and your policy makers, more than some sort of abstract concept of who is qualified to vote. Thanks very much. Thank you very much. I'm going to turn, I'm going to turn this over now to Dan, who can talk a little bit about the Vermont perspective. Doug, you may have a hard time hearing because I couldn't set up a good mic situation, so I'll try to move you over a little. That's right, I might even plug in a pair of your phones and just listen loudly. Oh, we're going to get the light back. You're going to become very pale in the end. That's all right, no worries. You got your table mic. Tell applicants that all the time. As John said, my name is Dan Richardson. I'm an attorney here in Montpelier and I've had the singular pleasure of having both researched this issue and litigated various election and voting issues in the state. So to start off, maybe picking up where Doug had mentioned, there is a lawn for Montt that does control and that's 17 VSA 2121 and that has four requirements for voter eligibility. That says you have to be a citizen of the United States, you have to be a resident of Vermont, you have to take the voter's oath, and you have to be 18 years of age. Those are the four elements to be a voter in Vermont. And on top of that, there's the issue of how much local control can municipalities exercise. And we are in what is known as a Dylan's rule state, which means not much. It means that municipalities don't have any inherent powers. So if it's not in statute, we don't have it. And so that said, there's actually a very interesting history of voting in Vermont. And I want to discuss that a little bit as sort of a prelude and background and I think it flushes out some of the context. So Vermont prior to 1828 didn't have a citizenship requirement in its constitution and I think this is consistent and this is a bit of speculation, but it's historically consistent with the nature of the country at that time. We were a country of not quite citizens yet. They were a lot of people coming over that were immigrating to the United States and the issue of are you a citizen or are you an immigrant wasn't quite as well defined. And certainly you see this in a lot of the western states. But in 1828, the Vermont Constitution was modified to create the citizenship requirement that resides in its constitution. And that's actually, it says that every person of the full age of 18 years who was a citizen of the United States having resided in this state for the period established by the General Assembly and who is of a quiet and peaceable behavior and will take the following oath or affirmation shall be entitled all privileges of a voter of this state. So it's in the Constitution that talks about this is often known as the Freemans oath of the Freemans requirement. But historically, there was a distinction drawn between that requirement at the state level and local elections. And so in 1863, there's a very interesting case called Woodstock versus Bolster. And Woodstock versus Bolster involves an Irishman who was not a US citizen who was put up for school board and challenged. And the Vermont Supreme Court said that's fine. And that's fine because on the local level, the key was property ownership and local elections were seen as different than the elections that a freeman could participate in. So that at least in 1863, if you own property in town, whether you were citizen or not, you were eligible to vote in local elections, school board and municipal elections, you may not be able to vote in federal or state elections, but you could vote on local issues because those you had property interests. Vice versa, if you didn't own property in town, you might not be eligible to vote. But because you've resided for the requisite amount of time and you were a citizen, you could vote in state elections. So there was this distinction at the time recognized in the law. And what seems to have happened since then was, you know, in the 20th century, early 20th century, there was a movement away from property right, property based election theory and a unification of the citizenship, you know, certainly a lot of the early 20th century, the anti immigrant waves tied together the citizenship concepts. So that at least as in its current form, the there is no sort of individual or different distinction in Vermont law between a voter who wishes to register for a municipal election and a voter who wishes to register to be a state voter. But that said, there's nothing in the bones or the DNA that would stop that from being changed as long as the General Assembly approved it. The constitutional provision I just read to you was in full effect at the time of the 1863 decision. And so the Vermont Supreme Court implicitly has recognized that the freemen's oath, the constitutional provisions don't apply to local level elections, or at least that they don't necessarily apply. So Woodstock v. Bolster is kind of this weird orphan that's out there of a case because a lot of the laws changed and it's sort of this fly and amber as it were. The other changes, of course, is that, you know, we no longer have property requirements to how you can become eligible to vote. So you can be a renter, you can be a guest, you can be living in your parent's house, you can be homeless, you can have just moved to town, got off the bus, but ready to set up shop. And technically, the law would allow you to register to vote as long as you had the requisite intent. And this is, at least in Vermont, the intent is a combination of subjective. You intend this to be in its fairly precise language. That means a resident shall mean a person who is domiciled in the town as evidenced by an intent to maintain a principal dwelling place in the town indefinitely. So it's a subjective component. It means you intend this to be your home, coupled with an act or acts consistent with that intent. So you have to actually do something that's consistent. You can't just, you know, get off the greyhound and say, it's my home now. You have to do something consistent with that, whether it means getting into a lease, setting up shop somewhere, opening a bank account, something. Something has to be coupled with that. And that's actually been some of the litigation that I've been involved in with some of the other towns where you've had out of state or out of town residents that have sought to become voters in the particular town. And the court has said, well, look, the intent, the subjective intent is fine, but it has to be coupled with immediate and consequential actions. So you can't just simply say, well, I intend to move there someday, or I always see it in my mind as my home. That's, that's different. And so, you know, there's that requirement there. And basically what, you know, one of the, one of the ideas here is to take citizenship off, off the, the table as a requirement and that leaves, you know, residency carrying the fold up. Now, for most of us, that's not a big deal if we're citizens of the U.S. already. I mean, it's sort of a foregone, it's not something we think about, but, you know, it does mean that this, this statute and this provision would either take center of stage or would have to become modified in, in how we chose to, to change this. And, and I can talk a little bit about sort of legal mechanisms that are in place. So, I mean, 17 VSA 21, 21, 21 and the subsequent sex statutory sections are the default rule that applies everywhere. There, there is no other place in, in Vermont. There is no other rule for voter, voter eligibility in Vermont. So what Montpelier, if they wanted to go down this road would have to do would be to basically create a charter change that would be adopted by the legislature and signed by the governor after having been approved by the, the general population in a, in a popular vote here in Vermont, I mean, in Montpelier. And then it would, what it would do is it would create a different standard. It would separate out municipal elections and voter eligibility for that from the 17 VSA regimen of, of how voter eligibility is created. And that would, you know, that would essentially be creating it from whole cloth because right now the statutory structure doesn't envision differences. It doesn't envision non-citizen voting. It would be creating something that would be unique. And we, if we've learned anything by living in Vermont, it's that we fear new and unique things. It's like the old light bulb joke, you know, how many Vermonters does it take to change a light bulb? Answer, what are you talking about? That was my grandfather's light bulb. So those are some, some of, those are some of the issues. And I can tell you that, you know, the, the voter eligibility, the residency requirement is definitely one that is, there's not a lot of case law out there defining it and how somebody would establish their residency for the purposes of registering to vote. There, there can be some issues with that. It's not intended to be a test. It's intended to rely on affidavits and people's representations. So it does pose its own sort of unique set of challenges. And I guess I would pose this other question, which is, you know, the question that's implied here is, is, is one of how far would, would this decision go? And I, and I think it often helps to think of what people we're talking about when we talk about expanding these issues. So, you know, I think, I think the most sympathetic person that I can think of for this is somebody who lives here, who's not a U.S. citizen, who owns property, has kids in the schools, who is, you know, either employed or, you know, part of a family unit that's employed. It's clearly a part of the community that can't make decisions for election purposes on their, you know, as, as we would expect on, on what money they're contributing, where their kids are going. You know, they can't vote on the school board that their kids attend. That's a fairly sympathetic and reasonable person that you would say, it's fair that they should have some, some voice in the, in the popular election. But the question is always in the law, where do you draw that line? Because it's easy to say, yes, that person should fit in. But what about the person who lives here only part of the time? Or what if the person owns property here and actually resides a great deal of time back up, you know, we're close to the border in Montreal or, you know, crossing Canada or, you know, lives in another area. And then, of course, there's the question of, well, what if a person's a U.S. citizen, but wants to vote here because they spend a certain portion of their time here? You know, they're a U.S. citizen. They live seven months in Florida, but the remaining five months are up here and they own a house. And, you know, they might seek that kind of eligibility to vote too. And when you shift some of these paradigms, there are these unintended consequences. And so a lot of this might end up being a very interesting line drawing exercise to how you would think about where these would go. And, of course, we're talking about equal protection as well. So when you draw these lines, you have to be careful that you're not excluding a certain group of people by adding a new one. So that's sort of an overview and seeding the... All right. Well, I want to open this up here. Just say, just to sort of summarize that, but also just give you all a sense of the environment here. You know, so internationally, nationally, this is not unprecedented. Here locally, you'd have to... It's not hard-wired that the Constitution is an impossibility, but we would have to get over to the legislature through the process of a charter change, which is going to be no small task. So what I'm hoping we can do today is this is just for gauging interest. You know, if everybody who showed up said, forget it, I don't want to do this, discussion over. If there's a sense of desire to do it, then what I would do is plan another meeting where the actual nuts and bolts and logistics could be hammered out. And there are logistics to be hammered out. For example, I mean, we're just talking about the municipal body here. So on our town meeting ballots, we share our ballot with the schools. We share our ballot with the Central Vermont Public Safety Authority. Those are individual separate entities, and if we make a charter change with the city of Montpelier and it goes through and non-citizens can vote, that doesn't mean that they can vote for those other entities. So there are logistical challenges. A charter change, I know we all know charter changes, there's always at least one on the ballot every year, right? But so we'll be normally talking about the next opportunity being next town meeting day in March, but there is likely to be a special town meeting called concurrent to the November general election. So there might be an opportunity earlier than that to get on the ballot. And if it were to work, and if the legislature were to pass it quickly, then that could conceivably make, at least on paper, the possibility of eligibility for folks to vote in the next marches town meeting day. So having said all that, I want to just open it up and just get the pulse of the community here and you know feel free to ask questions of myself or Dan or Doug for as long as he's here. And yeah, so come on up. Come to the microphone though, because I think Doug wanted to talk. Oh, oh, sorry. Hey John. Yeah. I've got a hard to stop. I've got a headcount to the airport tonight, but if you all want to continue this conversation, I'm happy to come back over Skype or in person and have it, but I look forward to hearing how it all turns out. Well, thank you so much for coming. It's great to have you, and yeah we'll definitely keep you in the loop. Excellent. Thanks so much. I'll take care. Now I don't have to do crazy things with my webcam, so that's good. Thank you for giving me a heads up on that. Yeah, if you want to talk to you with mine going up to the microphone so that it can be heard on all kinds of things. I live in Montpelier. I have lived here for 25 years. I'm not a citizen of the United States. I have raised my daughter here. I have worked here. We own a property by now, although we were renters for a long time, and it's always been very difficult to be shut out from the voting process. I paid local taxes, you know, I contribute. I've made this my community, I feel. I'm from Norway originally, and so many people say why don't you go back to Norway? Well, I've made this my place. This is where I want to live, and I would like to be able to participate on a different level than I do now. It would be really important to me. In Norway, non-citizens are allowed to vote in local elections if they have lived in a place for three years, and that's how we kind of thought of it, you know. It's possible other places. Why isn't it possible in this country? Why should not, you know, people like me and others who you are making this their community? Why should we not be able to contribute in that way as well? There's always like a little distance when you cannot participate in that process. There really is. It's a strange distance when you believe in democracy and having a voice. So I'm hoping that we can move forward with it and hammer out lots of details. You're in Vermont over Norway because of our short winters. There's so much more light here in the winter. A lot more. Hi, my name is Allie Thompson-Curtz. I live on St. Street, and thanks Micah for sharing your story and your history here as well. I just wanted to frame, help us like frame this discussion, and I think one of the things that stood out to me about what you were saying was this piece about equal protection, and I think that we could easily stand up for folks who have lived here for a long time, who pay taxes, who have families here, who own property, but I want us to think about the history of disenfranchisement in this country and who has had the right to vote, because as you both were describing, we've made it in the past such that, you know, folks of color couldn't vote, non-property owners couldn't vote, and I don't want to re-replicate that here in creating a new charter. So I just, I would love for this discussion to be couched in that understanding of our history of who has been excluded, and to as we make these decisions, really make them the best that they can be for all the folks who live here, whether they have a home or don't have a home, that's a physical residence, whether they, you know, where they're coming from around the globe, and yeah, keep that in mind as we think about the nuts and the bolts of this decision. Oh, I know there are more people with opinions there. Well, let me maybe throw out an idea, you know, one thing that unifies voting now is citizenship, and what this proposal would do would be to modify, and the question I think that would have to be asked, at least on a, not philosophical, but a fundamental level, is what takes its place? Is it mere residence, and if so, I mean the way Vermont defines residence right now is a very liberal standard, and it mirrors the sort of extension of voting rights that we have, we've gotten away, you know, for to become a freeman in the the voter in the 19th century, you had to live here for a year before you could establish your bonafides to be a voter. We've gotten away from that. We've allowed people to transfer their residency fairly easily, because we've substituted that idea of permanence with the idea of citizenship, and so if we move away from it, you know, what does become sort of the unifying principle, or at least the basis? Is it membership in the community, and how is that established, and how, you know, does it make sense to have that very liberal residency standard as the basis, the premise for, you know, your right to vote, or your eligibility to vote? And I just throw at, I mean, from my perspective, I'm going to echo what Doug said, and this may be an esoteric difference, but I don't think it's a question of whether we changed the standard of citizenship for voting. I think it's much more of a question of can you be a citizen of the community without being a citizen of the country? So I, you know, I feel like it's not necessarily throwing out the idea of citizenship, but really looking at it closely, and really understanding that that's sort of a distinction, a lot of difference from what Dan was saying, but I work in abstractions. Well, I mean, it's not that full of an abstraction, at least on the national level, to become a citizen, you have to meet a set of criteria. You either are born here or born to American parents, or you become naturalized. And there are very set criteria, and if you do look at it as becoming a citizen of the community, which was one of my favorite merit badges in Scouts, but you know, what are that, what is that criteria? What do we consider to be citizens of our community? I'm just going to be short. I'm just well, I'm just referring back to how you can actually prove you're a Montpelier citizen for voting. I mean, it's spelled out, you just, you have to have the intent for whatever. So we kind of have that. Okay, this is how you are a citizen of Montpelier for voting purposes. It's kind of written on already, right? A little bit, but it's a very subjective standard. And I'll give you an example. There's really, like I said, very little case law on this, but there's one case, it's an unpublished Supreme Court decision called In Ray Alvrick. And a woman lived in Manchester and she moved away from Manchester to take care of an alien sister in Pennsylvania, but she said, I will always keep Manchester in my heart and I want to be a resident of Manchester forever. And the Manchester said, well, that's great, but you can't vote. And they threw her off the voting rolls. And the Supreme Court put her back on because even though she was not going to return to Manchester for a foreseeable future, she had a sister with a long term alien illness, she was going to be there for, you know, maybe a year, six years, a dozen years or more. She remained, she retained enough sort of connections to the community. She kept a bank account there. Her kids lived there. It can get beyond sort of the everyday definition of what we think of as a residence. And it's intended to do that. It's intended to be a very liberal standard because we want people to be able to vote. And it may not be the same type of definition that we would all look at as, you know, sitting here together and saying, well, I'm a resident, well, I'm a resident. Or I'm a member of the Montpelier community. It's a little bit broader than that. From the election administrator standpoint, I don't like the idea because it would make my job harder of having really fundamentally different criteria than, you know, I would like to see the criteria basically reflect those of the state why I voted because it would be simpler. Also, from a sort of democracy canon standpoint, which is sort of the approach that we lean in favor of people's rights to vote, I would be afraid a little bit concerned if folks wanted to set a new set of standards that was particularly a higher bar than the state provides for its own because you know, you pull that bar back, set a benchmark back too far, then you open up the room for folks to say, well, why aren't our standards as strict as theirs for other members of the population? So just as a general answer to the question, I hope we could give it kind of reflecting of what the state is to the extent, you know, to the extent folks decide they want to do that, assuming we go forward with this, I'm getting the feeling that that's the vibe in the room. And then I just had a short question about the school board. Like you said, that's a whole separate entity. So how would one kind of make that change? Well, that the school board is especially now that it's a, you know, until recently, it was sort of an odd hybrid of, you know, its own entity created by the state to the, you know, to the department and a department of the city, but it is no longer a department of the city at all. So it's a, it's a state school district that's got two towns in it. So you would have to basically bring that before their school board and have them make a change in their own bylaws to allow for it. And I don't know whether that would need to be approved by the legislature or not. I have absolutely no sense of that dam might. It may well not have to be. It would probably have to be just because the default is there. So if you were making that distinction, because you would be changing the statute, it would have to go up, whether it would mean carving out something, some exception in statute or some exception and in its school charter, but I couldn't see making that change without the legislature weighing in. I mean, if the ball got rolling, though, I mean, there could be momentum and there might be, there might be energy since the school district is obviously far and away, mostly popular. I don't want to disagree in this idea that we, it has to be replaced by something else or the way that we're looking at citizenship as we need to add all these requirements. You know, we're here. We're not going anywhere. Some of us have kids. I'm a citizen, so I'm not going to pretend that I'm speaking for, you know, I have the right to vote now. But I think it's important that Vermont has given driver's license to people who are undocumented. So for example, that driver's license already gives you a little paper that says you live here. And I know a lot of people here might be thinking of voting just for people who are in our residence. There's models in the United States that have also included undocumented folks who live here, who have spouses, who are citizens, who are from here, who have kids, who have not been able to get their babies together. So that's a separate question of who do we talk about. But I think so there is models already in the United States in cities that actually care about their people that live there and do not look at them as the citizens because we're citizens of the world. They're paying taxes, you know, perfect example. Kids in school, we are buying food in the restaurants, we are supporting the economy in so many ways. So for us to think about them as that we need to give them this title of citizen to be able to vote and be part of the system is kind of a little backwards in my mind. And I think that it's not adding requirements because when you decide that you're going to add extra requirements, you're really doing a disfavor to the process that we're trying to make. So I think that if we're going to do we got to have it in the heart that this is an issue is really a human right each at the end of the day to be able to be part of a system that looks at as human beings and part of the system. So I guess the questions I have is what does it mean? I really still don't understand the charter change. What is the process? So like, yeah, so if you can spell that out. Sure. Well, I mean the charter is like, it's sort of like the articles of incorporation for the city. But since Dan said we're a Dylan's rule state, that means that that charter is it's legislation. It's approved by the legislature. It's its own law, our charter. So to carve out special space compared to the rest of the state for us to allow non citizens to vote, we would have to go the process of changing that law that defines what my failure is, right? So that's a very established process. It needs to get onto the ballot and it needs to be approved by voters. Once it's approved by voters, I have to make all kinds of photocopies and things run at the secretary state. And then it goes before the first stop is the House Government Operations Committee, where they have to vote to approve it. They'd have to move it out. They have to be voted on the floor. Then it would go over to the Senate. Our last charter changes we passed just this last time, they haven't been approved yet. They passed through the House. They're in Senate Government Operations right now. And theoretically, they can just say no, forget it and vote it down. They can also do what they did with the charter changes approved by Burlington voters regarding gun control a couple years ago. And in fact virtually the same charter change it was approved by Montpelier voters almost 20 years ago. And that's just ignore it. You know, they don't want to deal with it. It freaks them out. They don't even put it on the wall. They don't even put it on the table. They leave it under the table. And then it just sits there. So they could also go that route. So if something like this were approved by the voters, I think it would be incumbent on all of us. And I would of course get involved because I am the servant of the voters, right, to really lobby the heck out of it up there because it would take some work to get it through. Now getting that charter change on the ballot, there are two ways to do it. The city council can just vote to put it on the ballot. You know, assuming that a comprehensive charter change proposal is put together. The other way would be it could be petitioned to be put on the ballot. And that would take roughly 300 signatures. Now I'm on record. I don't want to be annoying here, but I'm on record actually telling the council that this is a controversial issue. My advice is to let it be petitioned rather than put, you know, unnecessarily put a bullseye on your head. You know, 300 is not much of a bar. You know, let folks go out and, you know, indicate there is support in this community for this, which also I think impacts some of the rhetoric that could come down against people. Oh, it's just a few liberals who want to do this. You can say, no, look, we've got signatures. The town is interested in this. And then, you know, maybe after that signature has reached, you know, that I would encourage the city council to weigh in on it and support if they were so inclined. But my strong advice for a lot of sort of rhetorical and sort of sales person ship reasons would be to petition and try to get 306. I'm Teresa Thomas. I live here in Montpelier. So if the main purpose of this meeting is really to sort of get a gauge on interest in this and the community, I guess, first of all, I just wanted to obviously state the fact that I personally am in support of this. I'm one of those spouses that came to vote this year. And as I came to vote, I was like, wait a minute. Why can't my husband vote? I've also lived in another country where everybody else got to vote. And I was a resident and I was paying taxes and I couldn't vote. So I understand that feeling of separation. I guess I would also there's a bunch of questions and confusion that I'm having listening to this. And I understand the bar of who gets that vote. So I definitely understand this concept of controversy. But I'm not understanding this line. It seems as if what we're talking about is a line between someone, essentially with a green card, someone that's here, this ideal situation that we're talking about where someone has residency, legal, US immigration residency, which is a green card where they can work and they can do everything except vote all the way to an undocumented person here on that other. And so I guess my question is, it seems as if there are a lot of ways to determine residency. So I guess I can't speak for where that line should be. And I definitely know I can appreciate that the further we go this direction, the more controversial it will be. I think there's probably very few people. We're in a room full of people that at some point have had a green card. So they understand what it's like to not be able to vote in a public election. There's an apartness from that. So I think everyone can appreciate this person over here on this side. I guess what I'm not understanding is why is it difficult to define residency when it when it is federally defined? Why? Why is this difficult? Because lawyers are involved. So this is the thing. I mean, we have a card. It's defined. But I mean, I think in part and I'll try and keep the shaggy dog to a minimum. But I think it's important there's some background. So look, I think we have to start out with the idea that voting rights are fundamental, but they're not what are known as natural rights or inalienable rights, which is we're allowed to, as a country, restrict voting rights and have in our history, restricted voting rights and continue in our history to restrict. You know, if you're under 18, you may have a very strong voice. So want to have a strong voice in your community, but you're shut out because you're not 18. Versus say the First Amendment or the right to a jury trial. No matter how young you are, you have those rights. The lines that we've drawn are historical. And so what I was trying to give and maybe it was a little bit too thumbnail-y was, you know, in beginning in the early 19th century, we adopted this idea of citizenship as a unifying feature for a certain type of election. And we adopted property ownership as a stake, as an interest in another set of elections. And what's happened over time is we've said, wait a minute, that's not really fair about property ownership because there's plenty of people in the community that don't own property that made the argument you made exactly. Why should we be set apart and separate? And so we moved away from that. And we kept citizenship as a sort of unifying feature. So I mean, there's a certain level of history and that reflected at the time. If you think about it, citizenship wasn't a big deal in the early 19th century in the late 18th century because the idea of citizen was just really emerging as a concept. And so there were lots of people moving in. There were, you know, I don't think, you know, Thomas Jefferson wouldn't have called himself an American citizen necessarily. You know, they were, because that concept was emerging philosophically. But in the mid to late 19th century and certainly the early 20th century became very pronounced. But it was also coupled with this idea that immigration was not the same way we think of it today, which is borders are much more porous. The idea of going back and forth is a greater reality. You know, that there are people that do. They travel internationally. I'm a yokel. I don't do that. But I know plenty of people and they are citizens of the world. And so the idea of citizenship being the act defining of a feature for voting eligibility is something that may be coming outmoded. But we're seeing right now, at least on a national level, a backlash to that. A sort of resurgence of nationalism, at least in certain sectors and segments. And so you're fighting against these sort of philosophical concepts, which is why I was putting that idea forward because I think whether you change the definition of residency or not, you need that theory. You need that philosophical foundation. Why are we choosing this group of people to be eligible? And I think there's a strong argument to be made. That someone who's lived there here, whether it's 20 years or three years or two years or six months, they've just come and they're now part of the community and they intend to make it part of the community. I think there's a good argument for that. They are members of the community for all intents and purposes, that unless they told you, you wouldn't even know that they had this citizenship issue. But it's not the same feature that it was in the 19th century, but we just haven't gotten to that point yet. And so in answer to your question, it's really a philosophical one much more than a legal one. And so what the law can do is catch up to it. Speaking of the backlash, I should mention, I've been actually delighted. I've been mystified, but I've been delighted that there's been so little press coverage of this. WCAX said something and I did get some calls when it popped up on CNN's website. But for the most part, it's been totally quiet, which I think has been great because it allows us in town to start having the conversation on our own without folks coming in. Because once it popped up on CNN, I did get a lot of calls and stuff from folks outside of Montpelier with very strong opinions. But this is all to say that as this process goes forward, expect pushback, expect dynamic input from both from every side. I've spoken to a few clerks in other towns where this has been an issue. I talked to the clerk in Tacoma Park, Maryland where they've had non-citizen voting since 93. And she's very proud to say we didn't have an issue then, we don't have an issue now. It's the way we do things, it's great, we love it, we're proud of it. I spoke to the clerk in College Park, Maryland. And they got a lot of press attention recently because their city council, they don't have to have this stuff approved by the legislature. They're not a pure Dillon's rule state. Their city council passed a resolution to do what Tacoma Park and Hapa does in other towns in Maryland do, which is a loud non-citizen voting. The backlash they received was incredible. People just packing the rooms, they've got a lot of abusive stuff, a lot of yelling, a lot of nasty emails, nasty phone calls. And when one of the opponents found out, figured out that they had not quite dotted their eyes and crossed their T's when they passed that resolution. So the resolution was invalidated. They did not pick it back up again. They were just exhausted. The clerk I talked to was very disappointed. She was clearly all for it. And I think that's hopeful that they're well again at some point, but they just got too beat up. So they didn't. So it's, you know, it's the difference between now and 1993. So just a fair warning. I'm sort of nervous talking about this, but I have to say that I don't think looking at the history of our voting rights was necessarily something to be proud of. You mentioned the 1920s, and I would suggest that we're in the middle of a wave of ugly anti-immigrant sentiment right now. And so I would, you know, I support change in the charter in an inclusive way. And I would submit that this is Montpelier's opportunity to take the lead in a progressive way. And then maybe other people will follow suit and you know, I just have a few questions. Well, I was thinking that it seems like this legal concept of US citizenship is one thing. But as you were mentioning, John, the citizenship of our community is an entirely different thing. And I know many people who have multiple passports, multiple citizenship, so quite a few countries, but they're not residents necessarily of a community in those countries. They're residents of a community where your heart is, where you are, where you live, where you raise your family, where you're from. And you probably can't be residents of too many communities at the same time, even though you might have a right to have passports because of your parents, because of where you were born. And other people who can't have that because their country says, if you become a citizen of another country, you have to give up your other citizenship and they don't want to do that. But there are many, many reasons, so. I think what you were saying about citizenship, which is a subjective thing, rather than a strict legal definition, citizenship of a community. I mean, that's what we're talking about in voting for municipal elections. So I was just going to ask, and you haven't mentioned, well, you mentioned right now some of the times in Maryland, what about other places around the U.S. And the Northeast, and New England, and Vermont, has this been done in other places? Well, it's been brought up in New England. I don't know, I know it was something that was, I guess, voted down in Brookline, Mass. There's been an ongoing effort to do something in New York City, and that effort is getting more seen again. I think they're gonna go for it again. So Chicago and San Francisco allow voting by non-citizen parents on school issues, if they have kids in the school system. So actually there's lots of precedent, and it's definitely not an issue. I mean, in Vermont, and this is what Dan was working on when the Burlington City Council was looking into this, they opted not to go the route that we're talking about here and try to pass a charter change to allow this. They had a valid question on whether Burlington would urge the legislature to change the constitution to allow municipalities to decide this for themselves. And that did not pass, but honestly, I think this is a fundamentally different animal because we're not talking about the rest of the state. We're just talking about, if this is something folks wanna do, it would be a question of what Montpelier community members, how they wanna run their community. And it's not a statement on what the rest of the state should or shouldn't do. It's us talking about running our own affairs. So I think there's a fundamental difference there. There's a group called the Immigrant Voting Project. They have a website, and they keep track of what communities have allowed non-citizen voting. And I think at least a few years ago, it was about six or so municipalities that allowed non-citizen voting. No, no, no, in the US. They're all in Maryland. A number, yeah, most of them are in Maryland. And part of that is because Maryland has a very unique provision in their constitution that requires citizenship for eligibility to vote in state and federal elections, but also expressly recognizes the right of municipalities to establish their own voting eligibility standards. So it goes further than the Vermont Constitution and making it express this idea that we can derive from prior case law, but it's not necessarily express. Thank you. Sure. Hi, I'm Connor Casey. I represent District 2 here. I just want to thank John and Dan for bringing this issue up. I think it's, you know, we're a small city, but we can cast a pretty large shadow with some bold ideas. So even just bringing the issue up is huge. And we didn't bring it up. Yeah. I'm a dual citizen. I grew up in Ireland. I come from a family of immigrants, so I think I've contributed a lot to this country, but haven't always had a voice. So I really do believe, as far as our family, friends, and neighbors in Montpelier, this is exceptionally meaningful, as far as what they can give back to their community. I think at the national stage, it may be even more meaningful. We live in a time with a despicable president and a Congress who would make people feel like lesser humans and scared just because they weren't born in this country. So if Montpelier could take this step, I believe it can echo around the country even more and really be showing of resistance to the seeds that we're living in. So yeah, again, just want to thank everybody. And I want to echo what John said, because even if we do get this passed here in Montpelier, we have such a big fight ahead of us going through the legislature, but you know, they come into our town, so they shouldn't call all the shots. And I think if we can have a movement where we stuff the GOV-OPS committees, I think we can make a big difference and get this done. So this is just the beginning. We have a long path ahead, but we're up to the task and it's gonna be a fight, but it's a fight worth waging. And I don't mind having a bullseye on myself on the city council here. We'll get on the ballot one way or the other, but I think a good petition drive is a good way to start there. So thanks very much to both of you again. I'm enormous. That's great. You broke it. Yeah. That's coming out of your salary. Hi, I'm Adisa Muller. I'm from Panama, and I've lived in Montpelier for five years, but I'm a non-citizen, so I don't vote, but I'm a very active member of the community, so I'm definitely pro this charter. But I just have a practical question. So you mentioned Maryland. How did they define this, replacements of citizenship or residents, or what are they used to? You know, I'm not sure. I would want to get that. I mean, presumably I would think what would come out of this meeting would be maybe a few people who would maybe step up and be part of a working group that, you know, I would certainly be happy to sort of staff. But I think, I mean, I did get some information from Tacoma Park, and I should have brought it with me. I gave it to the City Council, and I don't know why I didn't think to bring it here. So I've got some of that information. I can't pull it out of my head, but I would think that a working group that would at least want to create sort of a skeleton of a structure to this and then bring it back to another community group like this to really hash out would want to take a look at that stuff and pull it out. Maybe from each of those six or seven towns in Maryland, certainly their clerks are very delightful to speak with, as I have found. So there'd be a lot of support from down there. Yes, Rachel. Yes, what's? I live here in Montpelier, and I'm pleased to hear the definition of citizenship. And I'm wondering, if one of the first steps, if we're really looking at moving forward, and I hope that we do, is that we look at our language, and I have trouble with the word non-citizen. And so just by not using non, if we really start looking at that definition and having a philosophical and our discussions are philosophical, and it's around citizenry rather than us and them because that's what we're setting up when you say citizenship versus non-citizen in my mind. So I would just like to do away with non-citizen completely and just open it up. I liked what you said about citizens of the world and I like the fact that it's liberal definition and I feel that we need to put together and I feel that we need to put it into practice and that that could be very easily done in our use of the language. Do you think that we, I mean in a colloquial sense, I'm all with you there, when we start talking about actual law, we're going to need to have some hard and fast terms. Unfortunately, because that's just how the law works and we can figure out what they might be, but they're going to have to be hard and fast. Can you get rid of alien? Well that's not written in, well actually it may be in some statutes. It's certainly not in the Constitution. It's a federal definition. And it's not, yeah, and it's not something I ever hear used and I don't see why it would need to be. It probably is in the statute. We got rid of Freeman, so. Yeah. And it's now voter, the voter's oath. You know, it's an interesting question of how you would define our community and our members of our community and creating to create that voter eligibility that all members of the community would be eligible to vote. You know, that's a nice way to start it off, but then how do you put the teeth into it which is the tough part of any legislating because, you know, and I really haven't gone into it, but there are, there's all kinds of examples that people can dream up and that can, along the continuum. You know, and there are certain things that, you know, as lawyers we're trained to think about the worst case scenario or, you know, the unanticipated consequences as much as possible, and those are all here. And just as a, for example, you know, one of the controlling factors in voter registration now is that you do have to be a citizen of the United States which means if you're going to be registered to vote you're going to be registered to vote somewhere in the U.S. And so if you register to vote here in Montpelier you can't register to vote elsewhere or if you do, you can't vote in both places. You know, you have to give one up because, you know, that would be to actually cast a ballot, that would be voter fraud but it's this requirement of this primary residence whereas if you were not a resident, a citizen of the United States, Joan Property down here you might say, oh yeah, this is my primary residence and declare it so whether you lived here full year or really part of the community or you just have to own three acres down here and wanted to vote down property taxes because there would be no downside to it. You would still be a resident or a citizen of your country and it wouldn't have that sort of check and balance that exists right now. Those are just things that I think are in the details and don't necessarily at this level and at this stage don't make sense to get into because they tend to bog things down and until you have proposals in front of you. But there are those issues out there and certainly that's why I think it helps to say if we're members of the community how do we define that community? Well, it actually got me thinking maybe we can just avoid the word citizen entirely so maybe so. Well, I had a practical question but just to say that I've lived in so many states and for me to vote all I have to do is when I moved to a new place I gave my license and I registered to vote so I don't have to prove that I've been there for five years or one year. Like when I moved here I got my license and registered to vote and then I voted in the elections because that's what you do. You don't have to prove I've been here five years you just give your address and when you get your license you get your bill or whatever, David, that you need to give and that's it. That's why I'm confusing the big thing. But so what would it take to change the charter so that all municipalities get to decide the Tacoma Park model is that, I mean the Maryland model would that be something? Well, that would be changing state law. Great. That would be a much higher bar obviously. So, which is what Burlington was advocating for its change in the Constitution which it sounds like wasn't really necessary. Right. Well, I mean they were Burlington was that's a different story. But there's there's two I teach municipal law down at the law school and what I always tell my students at the beginning is what governs the municipality in Vermont you know you have the Vermont Constitution that overrides but really on a day-to-day basis you've got state statute which in our case is Title 24. It contains all or most of the municipal regulation most of the municipal statutes that empower and there's a general set of default rules and then on top of that you have charters that only apply to individual municipalities so for example the town of Springfield Vermont wanted to get rid of the elected treasurer position for the town and so to do that because that's the default rule every town has to elect a treasurer if you want to appoint a treasurer you've got to make a charter change so there's a specific charter provision for the town of Springfield says the treasurer shall be appointed and it only applies to the town of Springfield and so that's what charters do is they allow individual municipalities to tweak and change and alter the rules governing them same thing here in Vermont we don't have an elected treasurer we have a chief financial officer that does most of the finances and there are other things we're city council which is not the default rule it's a very special type of rule so charters are ways for individual municipalities and I guess the vision of a proposal like this makes sense on a charter level because it has a lesser impact you change the statute everybody wants to say it's going to affect everyone in this state if you change a charter there's a certain amount of let the city or town change their own rules but a great example of where that can cross over is the Berlin Pond issue we tried when the Supreme Court ruled that the policy we used to keep people off the pond was invalid the first effort they made was to try and change the charter approved by the city members of the city they liked it and it died in the legislature and the reason why it died is that it went against state law and so to a certain extent to let charters change some of the rules but when it's changing a larger state policy or rule they tend to take a closer view and certainly this is what John's indicating that this would create issues and potentially cause some of the legislators to be less than courageous I want to tell you the words that were in my head right before you said that that's hilarious Hi my name is Ali and I live on State Street and I just one thing that I want us to consider as we make this decision and craft this policy is around potential communication with immigration and customs enforcement we know that when the non-citizen driver's licenses were distributed that immigration and customs enforcement had some access to the DMV's database then of who was citizen and who was not and where they lived and as we craft this policy I think it's imperative that we ensure that as ICE becomes more and more aggressive in targeting our communities and tearing apart families and pulling people away from where they're living that there isn't that they were really setting a distinction between who has access to that information we're collecting from folks that even exists in database and where that's going to go so that we're not putting folks at risk that's going to be because I'm also the open records officer here essentially, that's going to be tough it's hard for me to imagine a scenario where voter rolls are not going to be public record and trying to put that in there would potentially create a whole new set of constitutional issues that would certainly be enough of a pretext to sink it but then if it were to actually go through might actually sink it so that's a tough one and I would encourage folks however the community may feel about opening the voting franchise for undocumented residents they should expect that that data is probably going to be available to whoever wants to well that's assuming you asked you don't have to ask the question of the driver's license I think you spelled out question number 5 well this is about the voter rolls though specifically independent of the drivers if I have a you would effectively be creating a separate voter role for the municipality which if you took the state voter people in Montpelier are eligible to vote for state elections and people only eligible to vote for municipal elections you would be essentially creating a non-citizen list you have to keep a separate list it wouldn't necessarily be non-citizen because the driver privilege card at first they had seen it as something for undocumented people it became obvious that that was not true many Americans had come to get the driver's license they don't have all of the documentation to get what's called the real ID so they get the driver's privilege card and some people do it on purpose just because for whatever reason they want to not have a real ID and you don't have to ask the question and the question that was being asked by the local department question number five are you a citizen and do you have documentation to show that you're a lawful resident and when they realize that ICE was accessing that record it says now that you don't have to answer that question unless you're applying for a real ID which has something to do with the federal government so does Montpelier have to ask it? it's not true but it's just not there are very specific rules for who can vote in state elections and who can vote in federal the form the registration form for the state is designed by statute and when you register to vote in the state you have to be affirming under penalties of perjury that you are a citizen of the US so what we're talking about doing is creating our own system and that data can't even merge because that data is all kept in a statewide voter database so I couldn't put folks who registered just for municipal elections outside of the state and federal system into that list I'd be keeping them on a separate list and so that's why just by virtue of creating a separate list it's sort of like you probably wouldn't be on there if you could be on the other one you'd have to open records requests but it would be possible for if I wanted to say I want to vote only in municipal elections because I'm padded with federal government and I'm not voting in federal elections but although there is automatic voter registration when you renew your license so you'd have to opt out and it would be I think that would be the exception rather than the rule and it's just the idea that even if they didn't ask questions about if you had a municipal and it was a very broad and the way the voter registration is set up is it's not really a show your ID kind of thing as John said, you're affirming under the pain of penalties of perjury that you meet these eligibility so you check the boxes and you sign you swear and affirm that you're an eligible citizen even if we created the system that was very loose that didn't ask questions by virtue of creating the second list we're creating a list of potential non-citizens potential and that's all ICE needs or any type of organization like that because they take that list and sorry done for them, they say thank you very much I really appreciate this, you saved us a lot of time and effort you have the government's thanks it's really something to be concerned about and I've had a few immigration advocates say you know they feel really have mixed feelings about it just to contact me privately because it could potentially create a list with the target of course then you don't get to vote in state federal elections if you don't register I want to encourage too if there's folks who feel you know that they're not in favor of this so they have concerns about it I don't want to sound like you're being shut out if anyone wants to come up and speak in that way when I was on the Dave Graham head me on his radio show about a week ago and I tried to take a moment to try to step back and be objective about it because Rob Roper of the Ethan Allen Institute had gotten wind of this and folks asked him well it doesn't make any sense to have citizens who aren't committed to being here well then what about 18 year olds right I said on the radio that's a ridiculous argument but if you want to try to make an actual meaningful argument then you could argue that this is just the nature of citizenship and you know up and down it's all one continuous spectrum and if you engage or you don't this is what defines us as American citizens I know that's a philosophical argument to make because Dan says this is all philosophical stuff so I don't want to alienate anyone in the crowd who just philosophically feels different and I want to make sure anybody out there feels welcome to come up it's a safe space I promise I won't be much I'll just maybe tack on to that I mean I think there's an argument if you you know there's a push in conservative circles and I've I've both been on the opposite side and on the same side with people of this this spent that see that take voting very seriously and see actions like this as something that dilutes a vote and that seems sort of antithetical but there is a drop of truth in it which is and I happen to represent a very small town in the northeast kingdom of 67 people and there was there were voting irregularities and some of the people who were seeking to be registered to vote and as a result that created a huge imbalance it did have an impact on that election the court recognized that and you know there was a dilution which I think is different than what's going what's being proposed here but it's that core point if you want to say what is you know where's the opposition coming from I think that's where they're coming philosophically citizenship is the way we've unified and you start to mess with that you start to dilute those definitions and you start to lessen the impact that citizens or group this group you make leaving my vote count less that's the issue that they take and I think it's important to understand that because I think you have to have your arguments and your position prepared to meet that and to show that's either an issue that's not a real issue or it's an issue that is a real issue but here's the way you deal with it or that it's a secondary issue other issues are more important exactly one other question do we have any idea on how many people would qualify for it? I mean I don't know a dozen people are always asking me that I always respond it is not very many this is much more of just a philosophical statement and you know how many you don't want to leave one person to vote out right? I mean that's the delucius that there are people in this community that are part of this community that deserve a voice and you're to use the word alienating them from exercising that hi Thomas Moore Frostbake Street just wondering how much of an act would it take just to become a citizen instead of going through all this would it be just easier just to apply to become a U.S. citizen then you get all the rights and everything I mean how much work does it take instead of putting a whole community the state and all this and that if an individual just goes to get your citizenship and then you're an American and I can vote I can do everything else that's traditionally how it's how it's been my mother was a ESL teacher so I've seen a lot of people take the path of citizenship and it's not a straightforward or easy path it depends upon the nature of your eligibility for citizenship in the first place and then it's time it's time of your accuracy and money I think that's absolutely true as well but I mean that's that's certainly one solution to an individual's problem and that's and again if the question is we talked about the unifying ideas of citizenship that have dominated the way we think about it the only thing I'm offering is that it isn't the way it always has been there have been periods in our history where we have lowered that bar created what they used to call alien suffrage or non-citizen voting periods and then we've gone back and it's been elastic and there are often reasons why and one of the reasons why is that you have a large number of immigrants which may not have at this period of time if you look historically the periods in which alien suffrage has been allowed have been periods of great migration right after the civil war before 1828 and periods where it's not have been periods where there's been a strong push for the identity of citizenship from 1820 to about 1860 from about 1890 to today where you've had these ideals it's a so I guess it's really a very shaggy dog way of saying it's not mutually exclusive I'm just going to jump in and answer I'm white I'm from a northern European country you would think it would be really easy for me I lived here for 15 years before I was eligible to become a citizen 15 years you know before I even possibly could apply for it and you would think someone in my position would be at the front line so you can imagine how much more difficult it might be for someone who doesn't even have those privileges that might happen to come so it's not that easy I just wanted to I'm Steve I live here in Montpelier I just want to say that even though I was born here and my wife was born here in the United States I do support this I guess it's pretty much an analyst from the people who are here but I did have a point about the list the second list if people have green cards then it doesn't matter because it's not the only reason I bring it up is if a proposal comes out and it does pass and it's structured such that it allows undocumented citizens then that becomes something to be aware of to be conscious of and to consider so undocumented people probably wouldn't sign up for that I mean it'd be up to them if it were available to them depends on how we structure it but I think green card people wouldn't be a problem it just depends on how what the proposal looks like it really does which we're going to do at a different meeting somebody has been a paper that they want to start putting down my recommendation since there seems to be will to do this would be maybe some folks who are about to be interested in a small working group maybe start the process of hashing some of this out maybe we could have a few meetings and maybe set another community meeting down the way some of that stuff can be talked about so there's at least some things on the table and it's not just a bunch of theories out there there's actually some work product that could be tossed around and then after that it might just be a matter of starting circulating a petition I don't know we'll just have to see how it goes but I want to say since I'm the arbiter of elections here you can hear I'm right on the edge of becoming an advocate myself I'm probably not fooling anybody even though I'm planning to facilitate if I do formally start advocating for this I will recuse myself from certifying the final vote just as I would have done if I'd had a challenger on the ballot against me this last year just throwing that out anybody else want to chime in he's pretty unanimous here which is great I didn't know if we'd have some people stomping and yelling at the door actually I'll tell you I've had some rude people contact me over email but a couple people there was one from Rutland and another I think somebody from Barrie who were in Vermont and fell strongly opposed to this and they contacted me they were very polite so I thought that was great especially the Rutland fellow on the phone well you might not want to hear this because you might just tell me it's none of my business up there in Montpelier but I said well thank you for calling so that was kind of encouraging I think it's really it's one of these questions is there a desire from the community you think about something like this it doesn't mean that the elections would cost more or town budgets would be affected it's really a question this is something that people feel strongly about because you can change anything in city government people feel strongly enough about it too many people on the development review board you can feel strongly about that you may be the only person although some nights you may not be but it's you know I mean it's a question of where we put resources and very small resources very small but I mean nevertheless I mean is this is this important is this something you feel strongly about I mean obviously if it affects you personally heck yeah it feels strong but is there support from the community I had somebody arguing on Facebook insisting this argument was this is going to be too much of a waste of half-time and city resources and more money I kept trying to tell them dude I'm the election administrator it's going to take about 10 more minutes of my time it's nothing I'll put it on an access database on a thumb drive I'll back it up and take it home all done so how are you going to do the working group are you going to have people sign up well I would just if there's you know folks who want to stay on the way out get your names on a list and we can sort of go from there I guess well done in Tacoma Park how many people do they have on this separate municipal election I don't know I mean they're Tacoma Park is a lot bigger than Montpelier and they've got a lot bigger immigrant community than Montpelier so I suspect it's quite but that would be something to find out also very liberal now legendarily so did you all have some more to say or are you just well I guess if we're all done thanks for coming out and anybody who wants to maybe get involved with working or getting into the nitty gritty just come on up and give me your contact info I will be in touch thank you