Amen. All right. We're there in John chapter number one. John chapter one is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. I think it's a very, especially the beginning is a very beautifully written, very poetic opening. What I want to do is I want to focus on or start at least on verse 43. John 1 verse 43. Now I think this is kind of interesting because you have this story. Let's start reading in verse 43. The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee to find a fill up and say it unto him, follow me. So Jesus is calling his disciples here. The chapter opens just with this poetic description of who John the Baptist was, who Jesus Christ was. It opens up with John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus Christ. It's very exciting, very upbeat tone to John chapter one. Now Jesus is calling his disciples who are eager to follow him. Verse 44. Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip, find it in Nathaniel and say it unto him. So Jesus is calling all these disciples and they're going and they're telling other people. They're telling their brothers, their family. They're following Jesus. Philip, find it in Nathaniel and say it unto him. We have found him of who Moses in the law and the prophets did right. Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. So this is a very happy upbeat tone here. And I feel like in verse 46 the chapter kind of comes screeching to a halt here. Verse 46. And Nathaniel said unto him, can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? And here we see this optimistic chapter kind of comes screeching to a halt here with this very pessimistic tone that kind of stands out where you have Nathaniel. Nazareth must have been known as a bad area. Must not have been known as a very great part of town or very great part of the country. Because here you have Nathaniel who has someone tell him we found the Messiah. We found the Savior and his reply, can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip say it unto him, come and see. So we're not really going to be looking into the story too much, but it is kind of setting the tone for what we're going to look at this evening. This evening, the title of the sermon is the spectrum of perspective. What I'd like to do is take a few minutes and look at perspective. We have optimism on one side, pessimism on the other. What should we be? Should we as Christians be optimistic? Should we be pessimistic? Does it depend on the situation? Does it depend on what we're going through? What's the balance? Should we be all of one or a balance of both? What should we be? Turn to Exodus chapter 3. Exodus chapter number 3. I love this. The reason I opened with these verses here is, one proof alone that the Bible is not written by man, that it was inspired by God is, I don't know if there's any other book out there that captures the human nature as well as the Bible. If the Bible was written by man, it would not capture the downside of mankind. It would not capture so well just the nature of man, just the nature of everything from the fallen state of man to just man's pessimism and every little avenue of the nature of mankind the Bible captures perfectly. So this evening we're going to look at pessimism, we're going to look at optimism, the dangers of both and the correct balance. So let's start off with pessimism. What are the dangers of pessimism? Here's some things you can watch out for with pessimism. What is pessimism? Pessimism is defined as a tendency to stress the negative or unfavorable or to take the gloomiest possible view. So let's look at a couple issues with pessimism. A couple things we should watch out for with pessimism. Let's make an argument against it this evening. The first thing is this, you're in Exodus chapter 3. One thing about pessimism that is a danger is that pessimism can stem from a lack of faith. They're in Exodus chapter 3. Here we're talking about the story of Moses at the burning bush. Moses is when Moses is called by God, he's standing at the bush that is on fire and is not consumed, the Bible said. And look what God is saying to Moses. Verse 9, Now therefore behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come up unto me. And I also have seen the oppression where the Egyptians oppress them. Come now therefore. So God is giving a command to Moses. He's saying, you know, I see what my people are going through. I see the oppression. I see the, they're in slavery. I hear their cries and his action is come now therefore. And I will send thee into Pharaoh that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. So here God is calling the prophet Moses. And he is telling him, I want you to go to Pharaoh and I want you to tell him to let my people go. And Moses' response is in turn to chapter 4. Look at verse 1. Just flip the page over. Exodus 4 verse 1. And Moses, I'm sorry, verse 9, my bad. Verse 9, And Moses answered and said, But behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice. This is some pessimism here from Moses.  It's going to turn out great. Just don't worry about it. And Moses says, they're not going to believe me. It's not going to work. For they will say, the Lord hath not appeared unto thee. Okay. And so what happens now, basically in between, is where God basically tells Moses of all the miracles. God's still being patient with them. And he's saying, okay, don't worry. I'm going to have you do this miracle and this miracle. And you're going to go in that way, both the Pharaoh and the elders of Israel will know that I have sent you. That should be enough for Moses. But verse 10, And Moses said unto the Lord, Oh, my Lord, use another excuse here. I am not eloquent. He says, I'm not a good speaker. I'm not good at... I didn't pass my public speaking class in high school. Neither here to foreign, Nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant.  So God kind of shoots down his first excuse. And so Moses still sticking to his pessimism, kind of rolls right on to the next thing. He says, well, I can't talk well. I'm not a good speaker. Verse 11, And the Lord said unto him, So here we see God kind of get frustrated at Moses here. God says unto him, Who hath made man's mouth?  Have not I the Lord?  I'm the one who designed the mouth. Who are you to tell me that yours doesn't work good enough? Verse 12, Now therefore go, And I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what thou shalt say. And just as a side note here, this isn't really part of the sermon, but just as a side note, this, you know, not everyone, some people are naturally good at speaking. Some people are naturally good at interacting with other people. That was always a weakness of mine. I'm kind of an introvert, but you don't have to worry about using this excuse as a soul winner. You don't have to turn there, but Isaiah 28-11 says this, This is God speaking, For with the stammering lips and another tongue, will he speak to this people. You don't have to worry about, I can't speak or I'm not good with words. You have the Holy Spirit and God promises that that's enough. But, aside from the point I digress, Moses is being pessimistic here. And you say, why is he being pessimistic? His pessimism is stemming from a lack of faith. That's why Moses is doing this. That's why he's being pessimistic. He doesn't have the faith. He has all these other reasons. Look, there's a time to think logically, and we're going to look at that this evening or in a little bit here. But in this moment where God is telling him, you just need to trust me. I'm telling you it will work. It will be fine. There's no reason to be pessimistic here. Turn to Numbers 13. Look, God gave us a brain. God gave us common sense. He wants us to use it. But not to the point where we doubt the infinite power of God. We need to be careful with that. Numbers 13, this is where God is sending the twelve spies into the land of Canaan. God has promised them this land. God didn't make a mistake here. God didn't forget to look up the demographics of the land. He didn't forget to do a census on how many people live there.  Verse 1 of Numbers 13, the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel, and every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man. Every one a ruler among them. So there's twelve spies. One was from every tribe, representing every tribe. And Moses, by the commandment of the Lord, sent them from the wilderness of Peran, all those men were heads of the children of Israel. Skip to verse 25. And they returned from searching of the land after forty days. And they went and came unto Moses, and Aaron, and all the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of Peran, to Kadesh, and brought back word unto them, unto all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told them and said, We came unto the land, whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey, and this is the fruit of it. Now, keep in mind here, before we continue, I want you just to understand that they were not sent into the land to give everyone an opinion. God had already told them it would work. God had already been telling them for generations that this is the land that he would give them. They were sent there to, you know, scope out the land, to maybe draw a map, or to kind of just get a better idea. Because obviously God fought their battles, but he still expected them to do the due diligence of showing up and fighting the battles, and having enough faith to do that. But they were not sent there to give an opinion. Verse 28, Nevertheless, Nevertheless, these spies are speaking to the people. The people be strong to dwell in the land. In the cities are walled. That shouldn't matter. God already gave them the land. There's no reason for pessimism here. And very great. And moreover, we saw the children of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south, and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and the coast of Jordan. And Caleb stilled the people. So notice, they're just panicking people. You can already tell by the fact that Caleb is having to still the people. That means he's having to calm them down. Caleb stilled the people before Moses and said, Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it. But now the men are arguing with them. But the man that went up with them said, We be not able to go up against the people. That's some serious pessimism here, and it's stemming. Why? Why do they have this pessimism? Because they don't have the faith. We be not able to go up against this people for they are stronger than we. And then just to make sure we get it, the narrator of the Bible here clarifies, and they brought up an evil report to the land, which they had searched into the children of Israel, saying, and then it gives us more context in what they said, the land which we have gone up is a land that either thought the inhabitants thereof and all the people that we saw are men of great stature. And then here they, they're so pessimistic they start to use, they start to blow things out of proportion, which is usually the case. And there we saw giants, the sons of Anac, which are come of the giants, and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers. And so, we were in their sight. Look, we understand there was giants, the Bible tells us there were giants in those days. Okay, there weren't, it wasn't like Jack and the Beanstalker, they were 500 feet tall, 9, 10, 11 feet tall. But by ratio, were they grasshoppers? Were they grasshoppers in the sight? No, they weren't. This is them blowing things out of proportion. They're trying to convince people against what God has already told them he has given them. They're being pessimistic. Now look, from a military perspective, I'm all with them. From a military's perspective, that's what they're doing. They're saying, you know, we're not able to do that with art, but look, God trumps military strategy. Especially in this case. Turn to Nehemiah chapter 4. While you're turning to Nehemiah 4, I'm going to read to you a few verses from John 20, where Jesus has risen from the dead and he has appeared unto some of his disciples. And you have Thomas. He's already appeared to some of the disciples, but the Bible says in verse 24, but Thomas 1 of the 12, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. So all the disciples have seen Jesus at this point except for Thomas. It says, the other disciples therefore sit unto him, we have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, except I see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe. He's being very pessimistic here. And after eight days, his disciples were within and Thomas with them. Then came Jesus. The door's being shut and stood in the midst and said, peace be unto you. Then he said, so obviously God is all knowing. He knows the one that did not have faith. And God singles out Thomas here. And pardon me believe that I don't know this as my opinion, but pardon me believe that maybe this is the reason God on purpose maybe was testing Thomas. That's why he wasn't with him the first time. I don't know. I get a feeling from that because notice how he singles out Thomas. He says, reach hither thy finger and behold my hands and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side. And be not faithless, but believing. We need to be careful because pessimism can obviously arise in us because we lack the faith. They're there in EMI chapter 4. So what's the danger of pessimism? What's the problem with pessimism? Well the first problem is that it can stem from a lack of faith and we need to watch for that and we need to be careful. There's a time for pessimism. We're going to see that in a minute here. But us not having faith is not a time for it. But here's another problem with pessimism. Pessimism can be used to discourage works for God. They're in EMI chapter 4. Look at verse 1. Of course you have the context in EMI. This is after the captivity. This is decades after the captivity and the Israelites, the Hebrews are returning back to the land of Israel to build the walls and build the temple and kind of rebuild everything a generation later. But you have enemies. You have enemies that do not want them to build the wall. You have enemies that don't want them to do this work that God has commanded them to do. Verse 1. But it came to pass when Sam Ballot heard that we built the wall. So this is Nehemiah speaking. Nehemiah wrote the book of Nehemiah and he's speaking kind of first person under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Heard that we built the wall. He was raw. That means he was angry and took great indignation and mocked the Jews. And he spake before his brethren in the army of Samaria and said, Pessimism, what do these people Jews? Will they fortify themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they make an end in a day? Will they revive the stones under the heaps of rubbish which are burned? Now Tobiah the emirate was by him and he said, even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall.  They're using pessimism. He's saying, oh, a fox could push over your wall, your building. They're just, they're using pessimism. Why? This time, it has nothing to do with the lack of faith. This time, it's solely being used to discourage works for God. And we need to be careful of this because this can happen with ourselves, with us doing this to ourselves. We are being pessimistic in discouraging works of God for ourselves or we are allowing other people to do it to us. You don't have to turn there, but I'll read to you Nehemiah 411. It kind of, this is later, but it kind of, it reiterates why they're doing this. And our adversary said, they shall not know and either see till we come in the midst among them and slay them and cause the work to cease. These are enemies of the Lord and they did not want this work being done. So they're using pessimism to discourage. Turn to Isaiah 36. Isaiah chapter 36 and especially in a group like a church where everyone's striving together this can be, this can become a cancer. While you're turning to Isaiah 36 I'm going to read you part a couple verses of the story of Gideon. You have the Midianites that were pressing the children of Israel and God chose a man named Gideon to go against them and the Bible tells us the Midianites had an army that you couldn't even count it, it was so big. It stretched as far as you can see perhaps hundreds of thousands of people in this army and God has chosen this man, Gideon the Bible says in Judges 7.2 you should be in Isaiah 36 and the Lord said unto Gideon the people that are with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands. Let Israel vaunt themselves against me saying my own hand has saved me. So God says you know there's too many people Gideon I don't want you to win the battle and think that it was because you had strength he says I'm going to whittle your numbers down so much verse 3 but notice God removes most of the people but God is very tactful with who he chooses to remove. Verse 3 now therefore go proclaim in the ears of the people saying whoever is fearful and afraid lets him return and depart early from Al-Giliad and they return to the people 20 and 2,000 and there remained 10,000 so the majority of the people leave but notice what I want I want to remove a majority of these people I want you to find everyone that's scared and afraid and I want them to go home you say why because if you have a group of people serving God especially in this Christian life this is a good example because we are vastly outnumbered we are vastly outnumbered and when you have a group of people serving God if you have people that are pessimistic that pessimism even if their pessimism can discourage the work of God that the rest are trying to do so God says if you're fearful if you're afraid we don't need you go home that's harsh but God understands that these people he has he needs them to be strong he needs them to get a job done and he cannot have pessimism ruining that we'll look at one more example of this you're there in Isaiah chapter 36 here this is when Hechah is threatening the nation of Judah they are they had just attacked Israel and now they are at the walls of Jerusalem to attack this city but notice the tactic they don't just go and evade the city right away notice what they try to do to win over the city in an easier way Isaiah 36 look at verse 13 then then Rabbi Shekah so this is a this is a messenger like a general of the Assyrians he's not the king but notice what he said he does then Rabbi Shekah stood and cried with a loud voice in the Jews language and said hear ye the words of the great king the king of Assyria so earlier in the chapter we are told that he was specifically speaking to the people not the king if he was speaking to the king he'd send a messenger he's speaking to everybody here he's trying to get the people's attention they'll say the king will receive you for notice the pessimism he shall not be able to deliver you so what's he trying to do to weaken the people as he goes and he uses pessimism don't trust Hezekiah everything Hezekiah has told you it's a lie it's not going to work he can't deliver you now let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord saying the Lord will surely deliver us the city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria so he goes to them look you got to be careful of this because as a Christian people are going to come to you in your life maybe they're not going to directly say this but in a roundabout way I can promise you they will use pessimism to say don't trust in the Lord that life you're trying to live it's not going to deliver you it's not going to work don't let that happen to you and look it can be like I said it can be the pessimism of other people attacking you it can be pessimism of other people serving God in any capacity but we can also if we're not careful we can let it we can do it to ourselves we can let our own pessimism hinder us from doing great works for God so just beware because this will be used against you whether it's from a lack of faith or it's being used to stop us from serving God pessimism can be a danger and we need to be careful of it but what about optimism you say okay I'm scared nothing's ever nothing's ever I'm going to be super optimistic all the time this is a problem as well what is optimism optimism is defined as a tendency to expect the best possible outcome or dwell on the most hopeful aspects of a situation so you say we can't go wrong with optimism right not quite turn to Jeremiah chapter 5 so just like we looked at two problems or two potential dangers with pessimism we're going to look at two potential dangers of optimism two areas that optimism can actually get us into trouble Jeremiah chapter 5 verse 11 here's the first problem with optimism optimism potentially can cause us to ignore the judgment of God you're there in Jeremiah chapter 5 your God is a problem in Jeremiah of course Jeremiah was not the only prophet that did this but in this particular time frame in this book you have Jeremiah preaching to the to the nation of Judah in particular he's preaching to them about the captivity that would one day come from Babylon this is kind of what in general this is kind of what he spent his life preaching on he talked about other things as well but this was kind of his main mission and you had a problem with people going around kind of denying that this was happening of course people don't like to hear bad news people don't like to hear their wrong they felt very treacherously against me say the Lord he's saying they're in sin they are not they have turned for me verse 12 they have belied the Lord belied meaning to give a false representation of or to misrepresent so they're they're essentially creating a false reality of God they're creating a false picture they're misrepresenting what God actually thinks and said it is not he neither shall evil come upon us neither shall we see sword nor famine so you have these people going around and we know that there are prophets false prophets that were kind of inspiring this in people but this idea was spreading of God wouldn't do that does this sound familiar today God wouldn't I don't believe in a God that would send people to hell I don't believe in a God of judgment this is what they were saying they wanted to deny that this was happening as a result of their sin and so they're denying it they're being optimistic they're saying I don't think God's like that I don't think God would do something like that they're using optimism here verse 13 let's see what God thinks about this and the prophets that tell them this shall become wind and the word is not in them thus shall it be done unto them let me have the famous verse wherefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts because you speak this word behold talking to Jeremiah here I will make my words in thy mouth fire and this people would and it shall devour them I was not very happy about this see but they're being optimistic they're looking at things in the best possible light look at verse 22 look how mad God is about this verse 22 fear ye not me God sees their optimism and you know what God says he says you know what you don't fear me fear ye not me saith the Lord will ye not tremble at my presence which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by perpetual decree that it cannot pass it and the ways thereof tossed themselves that they cannot prevail though they roar yet they cannot pass over it but this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart they are revolted and gone look when it comes to the judgment of God because we're saved meaning we're not going to go to hell but we do face the chastisement of God if we sin against him in this life look the chastisement of God the judgment of God in that area optimism can destroy us if we choose to take utter optimism and we deny that we've done wrong we deny that we've made mistakes it'll get worse and worse and worse and worse for ourselves we need to be careful about that Zephaniah 1.12 you know what the term there says this it shall come to pass at that time that I will search Jerusalem with candles and punish the men that are settled on their leaves that say in their heart the Lord will not do good neither will he do evil and obviously this applies to individuals but this applies to I kind of put the judgment of God I kind of can put into three different I'd like to think about it in three different areas you have saved believers there can be judgment from God in just the form of chastisement of the believer but then there's also the judgment of the unsaved hell and it's the same concept there how many people have you run into out soul-winning oh I don't believe God I'm a good enough person they're using optimism this is optimism in this area I'm pretty sure I'd make it to heaven they don't know for sure but what side do they lean towards I think I'd make it I think I'm good enough I don't think God sends anyone to hell but look not just with unsaved but you know this also applies to a nation that's the particular instance here in Jeremiah in Zephaniah it's a nation and God's punishing or getting ready to punish a nation for their sin and it's just getting worse because the people are in denial they're being too optimistic about the judgment of God they're escaping reality they're saying it wouldn't happen to kind of demonstrate this I want to read you a quote this is obviously I'm reading this quote to show the wrong mentality we should have but I'm going to read you a quote from the great statesmen and heretic Mitt Romney Mitt Romney said this once quote it's fashionable in some circles to be pessimistic about America about conservative solutions about the republican party I utterly reject that pessimism that mentality right there is what will be the downfall of America is that you have this is an area we should be pessimistic when it comes to the sins of our nation look I believe our nation was founded on good principles I believe that we messed it up I believe that it was more than one point then we allowed corruption we allowed everything we kind of took that inheritance and ruined it however we need to be pessimistic about America if we want the hope of getting right or fixing our problems as a country if that's even a possibility anymore we need to be real about the problems we have if we just ignore our problems and say no we're fine God bless America no matter what that's going to destroy us one thing I just thought about even the Star Spangled Banner which is our national anthem and I believe it's the third or fourth verse I forget how it's phrased but there's a phrase in there that says something like God will bless our efforts if our cause it is just so even then it was understood that even John Adams would say that you need a moral this constitution this government it's only going to work for a moral people it's only going to work for a moral and religious people but if we take the state of our country today in the sin we're in the filth that we accept if we go with Mitt Romney here and we reject all pessimism we say you know what it's fine everything's great as everything's burning around us we're like this is wonderful God bless America no matter what that is what will be the ultimate destruction of our country we're not going to get anywhere you can't escape you can't Jonah this you can't run away from God you can't act like the judgment of God isn't real and hope it works it's no different with it saddens me many times because you go soul winning and you run into someone who you say you know for sure if you go to heaven do you want to know? no I'm fine I'm good I don't want to talk about this right now some people will say I don't want to have this discussion right now and it saddens me because I look at this person I think to myself where else would you apply this in life you have a major problem here you don't know if you're going to heaven and so your solution is just to ignore it not think about it put it on the back burner it's no different with the judgment of God in general whether it's us as the chastisement of God to say believers whether it's a nation or whether it's someone who's unsaved ignoring the judgment of God and being optimistic about it and acting like it's not real will only make it worse so dangers of optimism the first thing that we learned is optimism can ignore the judgment of God but here's another thing we can look at optimism turn to Matthew chapter 4 optimism can tempt God turn to Matthew chapter 4 verse 5 here we have the story of Jesus who is right before he begins his ministry he kind of goes through the trial where he is tempted of the devil the devil tests him and tempts him with various things he's trying to get the sinless son of God to make a mistake because Satan knows how salvation works if Jesus Christ was not perfect then there's no hope for salvation if Jesus Christ was not perfect then when he died on the cross he would be dying for his own sin he could not die for the sins of the world if he was a sinner himself verse 5 so here we see one of the things that he does then the devil take them up this is really interesting here take them up into the holy city the Jerusalem instead of him on the pinnacle of the temple and save unto him if thou be the son of God cast thyself down for it is written he shall give his angels charged concerning thee and in their hands they shall bear thee up any time thou dash thy foot against a stone this is a real verse here this is in Psalms this is a real verse this is a real promise from God and Jesus said unto him it is written again thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God so what does this mean? because here you have the devil pull out a Bible verse and quote a Bible verse to Jesus and says God has promised that he will protect you God has promised that he will give his angels charge over you angels are protecting you Jesus cast thyself off the temple and your Jesus counters this and says yeah however it also says you should not tempt the Lord thy God so how is this tempting God? the devil is being optimistic here he is saying God has promised that he will protect you jump off here's why this would be tempting God and I kind of want to focus on because I think a lot of people can miss this there's a lot of promises in the Bible just to name a few there's the promise God will provide for us food and raiment there's the promise of safety safety is of the Lord salvation believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved there's the promise that if we go soul winning we preach the gospel we will bear fruit there's the promise that if someone is seeking the truth they're going to find it but all these promises have something in common the common denominator in all these is that to some extent they all require our input let's think about this imagine if you went through life with utter optimism when it came to the promises of God for men let's just think about go through the first couple as men what if we said God will provide for me and I've seen people do this I've seen men who do this God will provide for me so I'm not going to get a job God has promised he'll provide for me or what if we said safety is of the Lord so I will take no steps to protect me or my family I'll just take perilous risks of my life God's promised God's promised safety is of the Lord God's promised me well what if everyone else what about the mentality of you know everyone I think everyone goes to heaven a lot of people say that that's an optimistic take I think everyone just kind of no input of their own no decision they have to make nothing on their side is automatically everyone saved that's a lot of people think that no matter what religion you are I don't believe in God who would send people to hell or thinking what if a believer told themselves you know if someone's seeking the truth they're going to find it so I'm not going to go soul winning because they'll find the truth anyway and they'll get saved anyway almost this partially Calvinist mentality of anyone who's looking knocking at the door and seeking for the truth to any extent they're just going to get saved somehow somehow they will get saved so why do I need to preach the gospel you see where I'm going with this all these things even salvation look salvation is a free gift and everything is already paid for but if we don't at least put the input in to make the decision to trust Christ we are not saved we cannot be saved God does not save you automatically a human has to make a decision to trust Christ as their savior it goes with all these things let's think about a couple of examples in the Bible the biggest one I can think of is the Israelites promised the promised land we kind of already looked at it a little bit it was a conditional promise God promised them he would give them that land but it was not unconditional look this is a huge misunderstanding this is why the majority of mainstream Christianity today still thinks that the nation of Israel is God gave that to them God gave them that nation God promised the world the whole Old Testament that he would not if they were not serving God he removed them from the land if they were not serving God if they were not right they went into captivity and somehow a nation that still rejects Christ as their savior look the Jews need to be saved just like everybody else they need to be saved just like everybody else Paul said he wished he could he could exchange his own soul for the Jews however they still reject Christ and they're still unsaved there's a whole bunch of people out there that think that it was just apparently an unconditional promise but that's not how it worked it was if you serve me if you keep my commandments then I will bless you with this land turn to 1 Samuel 4 1 Samuel chapter 4 look this is why we already apply this to every year of our life in some extent this is why we have jobs this is why we have jobs because it's still our duty to provide for ourselves our families start our job our duty to go soul winning and look if we don't if you don't go soul winning look I do believe that if someone's knocking at the door and they're seeking the truth God will lead you'll lead them towards a soul winner however if you don't go soul winning there are going to be people over your lifetime who are seeking in some form that are going to go to hell because God was going to lead them to the truth but it was your job to do it and you never did so these are all promises but we still must do our due diligence think about getting we talked about think about all the times in the Bible that God said I'm going to win the battle for you I'm going to fight for you but was there ever a time where they just sat and did nothing and God just miraculously fixed the problem for them no they had even if it was only 300 men they had to have the courage they had to go to battle they had to put their armor on they had to go out get themselves an array they had to swing their sword and then God won the battle for them that's why we have jobs that's why we go soul winning that's why there's a first aid kit in the aviarum here just as a very small example because just because God promises us these things doesn't mean that we don't have responsibilities or he doesn't want us to at least have the faith to follow him on those things think about this think about if you had a boss that was training two people to do a task or a job think about what if you went to both of them and said you know I know you're just learning I know you but I will make sure that you don't make any mistakes I'll make sure I check your work I'll make sure I'll make sure as you're learning that you don't nothing's messed up I'll help you and I'll make sure that I will ensure your success as your boss now what if you had one person I heard this and said well I'm not going to do anything then I'm not going to try and with this boss sees this person is not not trying at all not even putting in the effort because he told me he'd take care of it he told me he'd make sure everything turns out fine what if you looked at the other employee who although he's making mistakes he's learning he's trying as hard as he can he's learning how to do the job he's studying how to do the job he's really putting the effort in even if it's minute because he's just learning he's really trying to do what he can who do you think that boss is going to help more who do you think that he promised to both of them that hey I'm all in sure your success but who do you think he's going to really bless with the most he's going to bless the person who is taking their role seriously he says you know I know I have a job as a protector or a soul winner or provider or whatever it is a follower or an employee I know God is giving me that role in my life and he's insured he's promised me that he'll take care of me through that he's not going to leave me hanging but I'm going to take it seriously I'm going to try as hard as I can to show God that I care and I'm taking it seriously and God will take care of the rest that's the mentality we should have you're there in 1 Samuel 4 this is a great example of this here the nation of Israel is in a bad state they're fallen they're rebellious against God they're in sin and as a result verse 2 opens with judgment of God and the Philistines put themselves in array against Israel and when they joined battle Israel was smitten before the Philistines and they slew the army in the field about 4,000 men and when the people were coming to the camp the elders of Israel said maybe we better get right with God no that's not what they said they went with optimism wherefore would the Lord smitten us today before the Philistines let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us that when it cometh unto us it may save us out of the hand of our enemies so instead of getting right they take this mentality of you know we're just gonna go into battle anyway almost with this entitlement mentality you know what God owes us victory look God doesn't owe us anything God doesn't owe you safety he doesn't owe you protection there is nothing God owes you so even if something is a promise to you just like God promised them victory if they obey him and we take this and we say you know what God just God will just regardless of my input or my heart or how I am spiritually God will just do this for me that's a pretty arrogant mentality to take to the creator of the universe to think that God owes you anything skip to verse 10 see how this went for them going into battle in sin ignoring God daring to take the ark of the covenant and think that somehow it has some it's gonna do some magical thing for them and the Philistines fought and Israel was smitten and they fled every man into his tent remember 4,000 people died before that's still a lot of people but now that they double down in their sin and they got this arrogant mentality with God it says and there was a very great slaughter for the fellow of Israel 30,000 foot men and the ark of God was taken and the two sons of God Eli, Hophne and Phineas were slain in the late in the end of the chapter we would hear the phrase the glory of God was departed from Israel don't get, look you say but didn't they have faith didn't they have optimism didn't God promise to fight their battles they had a false mentality they had the mentality that a lot of us can get in different areas a lot of people can get that says you know just because God promised me something he just owes me that and he'll get it no matter what it's not the right mentality to have with God don't let so what is tempting God tempting God is when you let yourself get an entitlement mentality with God look God has promised you to give his angels charge over you but if you throw yourself off that temple you're sticking it to God you're saying you owe me this God you owe me this protection it's not right it's tempting God don't let your optimism tempt God so we talked about pessimism we talked about optimism the dangers of both turn to Isaiah chapter 50 let's wrap it up I'm sorry turn to the 2nd Timothy 4 2nd Timothy 4 let's wrap it up here so what's the proper balance we understand there's some serious dangers of pessimism we understand there's some serious dangers pessimism can let us can let us have a lack of faith it can stem from stopping it can let us stop us from serving God optimism can cause us to ignore the judgment of God it can even cause us to tempt God let's look at the right balance here's what the right balance is the right balance of optimism pessimism for a Christian is this essentially you were to shorten it up we should be pessimistic enough to be rooted in reality but optimistic enough to know that once we've lost control there's no more we can do God take care of the rest we take our hands off the wheel 2nd Timothy 4 this is kind of the last many people think the last words of Paul kind of his him kind of wrapping up and summarizing his life and we're not going to read the whole chapter but up to this point up to verse 16 Paul's just been it's pretty pessimistic he's been talking about all the people that stabbed him in the back that left him that hurt him that caused him harm in some way or another that left him that abandoned him verse 16 at my first answer no man stood with me this is pretty pessimistic Paul but all men forsook me I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge that's a great mentality to have with our enemies by the way verse 17 notwithstanding the Lord stood with me here's some optimism and strengthened me by me the preaching might be fully known and that all the Gentiles might hear and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion say what are you talking about Paul you've lived a life of betrayal of persecution there's a good chance that he is about to be executed and he knows that what are you talking about Paul how can you say verse 18 and the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work and will preserve me into his heavenly kingdom to whom be glory forever and ever amen look it's about because look here's the reality the Christian life is hard if you're gonna do it right it's hard Paul says it was difficult you know I've come across a lot of trouble a lot of people hurt me but in the end God was on my side so I still win that's the mentality because you know what Paul realizes I believe Paul's a very logical person I believe that's why he was so effective as a soul winner is he was able to go to people that didn't even had even heard of the God he was preaching and they haven't even heard of Jesus and he was able to get down with them and understand their background and where they came from and be logical with them and convince them and exhort them and convince the gainsayers he was a very logical person he was pessimistic enough to realize where he had to be logical but at the end of the day he was able to identify where he no longer had control where he couldn't change certain things he couldn't change other people he couldn't change the persecution that happened to him so he was optimistic enough to say you know what in those times God's got me taken care of I've read the last chapter I know who wins mentality even if I die on this earth no matter what happens to me here I still win kill me do whatever you want to me as long as Jesus Christ died and I'm going to heaven when you kill me I've won that's the mentality we need to have in the end God was on my side so just to recap don't let pessimism grow out of a lack of faith don't let it stop you from serving God both in yourself and others don't let optimism make you ignore the judgment of God if we all sin we all make mistakes we need to correct that as early as possible don't let optimism play in our favor and push our faults out of the way don't let optimism get to the point where you tempt God where you think you are owed things God promises you so inclusion this evening let's think about this let's think about the words of Paul here I think this is really just the greatest example of this enough pessimism to be grounded in reality but enough optimism to trust the Lord with the rest let's borrow our heads and have a word of prayer


and it was making a static noise and somebody sent an email to Peggy saying that. And so I had to stop flipping pages and then I muted myself. So all right, thank you everybody for being here. This is Senate government operations April 9th. And what we're going to be doing today is looking at the where our committee has kind of been tasked with funneling through issues of concern that might not have a particular place to live that it's not obvious where they should live and to make it easier for advocates and people in communities that are more vulnerable and more at risk. We're going to be kind of hopefully funneling some of those issues to other committees. So one of the things we heard the other day was an issue is around voting protocol and we know that the Secretary of State's office has started to think about those voting options because they can't wait until August or November to do those. So we thought we would start with the conversation around how different communities are affected by voting, remote voting and give the Secretary of State suggestions about how to best implement the voting so that we make sure that people have access to the ballots and in the best way possible. So although there are many, many, many, many issues that we need to deal with, we're going to start with this and hopefully keep our conversation today kind of around voting protocol so that we can give the Secretary of State's office some real information about how that might work. And so I think that what I'm going to do is just not think of this as kind of a testimony necessarily, but of a conversation that we can have with the different people that are here because it isn't really testimony. It's a conversation that will help the Secretary of State's office. And we have Will Sending with us, the Director of Elections and Chris Winters, the Assistant Secretary of State. And we have Betsy and Rask who is our drafter who will I'm sure be taking some notes and we'll be making sure that the Secretary of State's office hears about them. So with that, what I'd like to do is I'm going to look at the participants list even though it cuts off most people to see who is here. Do we have Susanna, Mark, Denise Wheeler? Is Marita here, Canado? No. Okay. So let's just start. Do you want to, Will, do you want to talk a little bit about kind of some of the options that, and what I would say is that if you're on the screen, my, I only see nine people. So if I raise your hand if you want to speak, but if I, and I'll try, I'll try and nod.  And then I'll put you on the queue. Okay. Welcome, Senator Clarkson. I apologize, Chair White. I had a meeting that went to one and I had to get a yogurt. So I will be having my yogurt in the background. I apologize. Not an avocado toast? No, I'm missing avocado toast. Anyway, it's lovely to see you. Thank you. So Will, if you would like to just tell us a little bit about what your thinking has been so far and then we'll get people to chime in with suggestions and comments and how we might approach this so that everybody is addressed. Sure, I'm happy to, Senator White. Can everybody hear me? Yeah, hi Will. Hi, good to see all of you. And I'll keep it brief, Senator White. And I guess, and I wasn't entirely sure what to anticipate today. So I don't have notes in front of me, but I obviously think all I'm doing is thinking about this 24 hours a day for the last three weeks. So I think the biggest thing that would help this discussion and that people are talking about, one potential option is mailing a ballot to every registered voter in the state. Then I'm having, like I said, all kinds of conversations with different people about that process. But that's sort of one of the fundamental, when you hear people say vote by mail, the real distinction, what that really entails is that you proactively mail a ballot to everybody on the voter checklist. People don't request just each election that comes up, you send a ballot to every voter. We have sort of just short of that. We have sort of as much as you can do just short of that in Vermont, which is to say we have the 45 day early voting period to say you have many ways to request online, by phone, by mail or in person, that you can make a request, you can make one request anytime in the calendar year for all elections throughout the year. So people can go in now and say, I'm requesting August and November at this time. So sort of the two, the broadest way I can describe the two big options in terms of the early vote process right now is either just doing a big push under our current framework for people to submit requests that would probably involve a statewide mailing where we said put in your absentee ballot, provide maybe a postcard or our paper form to do that by that method and also a reference to the website, everything you'd imagine, to try and generate, to try and really encourage people and press people to put their requests in and vote early by mail from home. The ultimate goal of that of course would be to reduce pressure on polling places on election day, if we're still in a situation where we're trying to stay away from each other. To take that one step further, you would go to the vote by mail system and mail a ballot to every registered voter. That's a huge administrative undertaking for our office to make that change. And there are all kinds of nuances and different ways that could occur. I'll just put a few of them out there so that people can think about it. It's about how we deliver the ballots to the voters and about how that we process them coming back. And basically on both sides of that coin, you could think about the clerks being the ones sending the ballots to every registered voter on their checklist. Again, just sort of an expansion of what we do now. And then also receiving them back and doing the processing town by town through tabulators or hand counts at the town. Or whether either end of that might be done by the Secretary of State's office this year, given the circumstances, where we do a mass state mailing to all the voters of the appropriate ballot. That is a huge data lift. It's not a bulk mailing like other bulk mailings where you're just sending the same thing to everybody on a big mailing list. Each voter or there are 275 different ballot styles and you gotta get the right ballot to the right voters. Part of the inherent success of our system right now is that the clerks do that to their voter list and know their voters well and could do that really well. So there are benefits and drawbacks to having us do that versus the clerks do that. And then you think about on the receiving end, whether we might do central receipt of absentee ballots and processing. That raises a lot of eyebrows and concerns from people about how that process would work of course. But the benefit there is not having the clerks have to be processing a flood, a major increase in absentee ballots this year at a time when they might have reduced hours, office closings and poll workers who frankly are interested in doing that. Those are the kind of things we're talking about right now, Senator White. In under any circumstance, there will be polling places on election day for people to vote in person. We would never be suggesting that there not be an in-person option on election day. There might be less in-person options during the early voting period at the clerk's office. Again, just because of the nature of the closings right now and the public gathering limits. But we would have polling places. If we were mailing a ballot to every registered voter, the idea of that is that you're gonna get a lot more voters returning them by mail than you would otherwise. We're at 30% right now under our current system. That's without a lot of push and outreach. So again, if we didn't mail a ballot to everybody, but went with a lot of push, I think we could get that over 50, 60, 70, especially with people's fears about the virus this year. Vote by mail, sending everybody a ballot. Would in theory try to get us to that same kind of percentage, maybe 75, 80 returning those by mail. But like I said, in either case, you'd have polling places but maybe if you were mailing a ballot to every voter, just we would consider possibly reducing the number of those polling places. Could you do, spread them out among where all your registered voters are in an appropriate way so that everybody has access to one but we don't necessarily operate them in every town. I'm mostly thinking out loud to try and facilitate the discussion from the people who are here in terms of the concerns they might have. One of the reasons that we would continue to have a polling place option is to be able to have our accessible voting system available to people on those days, on election day, and as many days as possible in the clerk's office ahead of time. And then I just also wanna note that we're really uniquely and well positioned in that regard, even during the early voting period because we have the ability for somebody to use the online ballot marking interface that's our accessible voting system, essentially in their home for the 30 days before the election too. They still mail a ballot back. It's a ballot marking device.  I think that's a broad framework and I see some hands up. If that's good for you for now, I'll take any questions. Yes, please. I didn't see any hands up. Oh, there, Mark.  Thank you, Madam Chair. Hi, Will, how are you? I'm good, how are you? I'm well, thank you. And thank you for showing up today. We really appreciate it. I'm wondering if you could just kind of help me in my mind to understand the difference between what's gonna happen. I guess maybe I answered my question. We've already had our primaries, right? Or is there, there are primaries coming up, right? They're- Well, I guess- What would occur in, you know, in, maybe the primaries are in August. So the difference between what would occur locally in each instance, is that a question or do I need to unpack it a little bit more? No, I could tell you- So we had our presidential primary in March and that's what a lot of these other states around the country are still facing the challenge of not having held their presidential primaries yet. But we were a state that splits the two and we still have our statewide primary in August for all of our state offices and rep. And the answer to your question is we don't know yet how it's going to be different if at all. But that's what I was trying to describe is that the most likely and significant difference would be mailing a ballot to every registered voter rather than needing to request one. And, you know, Senator White, I wanted to say actually off the top, I appreciate the way you framed the discussion today and I just wanna make it clear to everybody that anybody on this call and anybody else who has these same or related concerns should contact me and should get in touch. And I'm happy to have these conversations over the phone. I am having them as we speak. Mark, did that answer your question? It did. Can I follow on? Yes, please. Thank you Madam Chair. So I'm trying to understand, I just posted up act 92, which is you're probably not familiar with as far as 681 or H681, whichever it was. And so I'm trying to understand what are the specific implications of this law change. You know, I'll also post up some other language some other language that we were trying to get in in an amendment process, not realizing that that crossover of that bill right there was so critical. We didn't, we couldn't afford any amendments in that bill. So specifically in act 92, what's changed? What was act 92 was that the emergency voting bill that we passed? Okay. Will, do you wanna address that? Well, what the provisions that were in that that might change the way we vote. Were you asking me Senator White? I'm happy to, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think you're really the topic expert here. So yeah. Mark, for your purposes and for the purposes of the August primary and the November general election the most important thing is section three and what is nice about section three and what should give you some relief, I think in terms of having missed this bill moving through is that what these folks did, I think in their wisdom was they deferred to and entrusted our office and allowed us throughout the course of the year to implement appropriate measures as we see fit as this whole situation progresses in agreement with the governor. And we've already established a really good working relationship with the governor's team on this front. And so it's a work in progress. And what that bill does is provide us with the authority to be nimble and flexible and to do what we think is required. And we're really working on that over the next two or three weeks very hard. We need to make some decisions pretty early like by the end of this month in order to put these processes in place in August and November. And so the best way to give input right now is to speak to me in our office directly as we're devising procedures for the fall. And I think that's why we wanted to have this conversation is because we know that you're gonna have to act pretty quickly and we wanted to make sure that everybody got a chance to weigh in on what the issues were. The other thing in that mark was that we did away with the need for people who wanna run for office to collect signatures on their petitions because of the, we didn't want people going around with a clipboard and a pen and talking to a hundred different people touching the clipboard. I understand the reason why I was asking you that is is that just as what I just posted up was, I think it's close to what we proposed as we're going to propose as an amendment. But the first thing that came to mind here, because I am here on Riverside Avenue in Burlington. So it doesn't get much more diverse in any place in the state where I'm sitting. And I know that our communities of color here, some of this I'm getting from them and some of it I'm making some assumption is they just wanna know what's going on. They just wanna know what's happening. And I think quite frequently, we just don't know what we don't know. And I don't know if any, I mean, half the people on the call didn't know what Act 92 was. So there's a, we wanna just make sure that there's not a disconnect, particularly in these communities of color and as it pertains to new Americans. So if you're gonna move to cheese, the question is, how are you gonna tell us? So that's rhetorical, but I guess what I'm getting at here is that it's critically important. When you start talking about stuff like, well, let me just frame this properly, Madam Chair, if I could just please. I can't. We know for sure that seeing what happened in Wisconsin is unacceptable. That people would think that they don't have an option but to go to the polls in a situation to where their lives are threatened. That's unacceptable. So how do we mitigate that? And these are not questions at you, Will. These are just rhetorical. These are thoughts, please. So despair with me. So these are some of the things we're kicking around. And then the other thing is, is if you move the cheese on the process, the process is how you always get us, is in terms of the fact, what do you mean? You mean you can actually run for office and not be required to collect signatures on a ballot? Well, that's not, we should've known that. So there are some things that are fundamental and underpinning to how we do business as a society that is just critically important. And I'm not pointing any fingers or anything like that. I'm just saying, next step, now we gotta figure out how do we get those things communicated out to these folks. So that's kind of where I'm mostly at on at least voting. So if I can jump in here, well, of course I can, I'm the chair. Anyway, that is precisely, those kinds of questions are precisely why we wanted to have people who have connections with vulnerable communities, whether it's the elderly communities of color, very low income, the disability community, deaf community. That's why we wanted to have you all be helping to inform the Secretary of State. That's what today is about, is what are the suggestions for how they can do that? Because while we all think that Will is probably brilliant about this, we know that he doesn't have all the answers. So that's what we're asking you all, what are some of those ways that we should be contacting people? To that end, I would say certainly in Jim and I also, Secretary and I also exchanged notes on this during that process, if you recall, Madam Chair. And he's feeling pretty comfortable about what has come across. And I think the biggest word in his communication was capital I, capital if we have to implement something and moving forward, so on and so forth, filling the blanks. And so it's a little bit of a difficult situation because we're dealing with something that could happen, but it may not. But at the same time, what I call flash to bang or is this whole, from here to here, if you think about it, and I know you know this Will, all of the things that have to happen between now and an election are immense. And there's a lot of stuff that needs to happen if we're gonna do it this way or if we're gonna do it that way. So I would imagine that they're gonna have to be certain decisions, particularly for August, that are gonna be made relatively soon. Not my business, but certainly I'm here to look at the outcomes, the recommendations because I'm not just here to be the consummate critic is that what we were thinking was is as I put up there that voters would be notified of all of the changes because I think it would be good for voters just to know what the changes were in the first place, as opposed to just telling the voters what's gonna happen, but just letting them know what changes have been made to the law that they would be provided to see. Let me just read this. It says, all the changes related changes and updates to elections, COVID-19 related changes and updates to elections and public meeting law, well, scratch public meeting laws, it's not your, that's not your wheelhouse, through United States Postal Service. Translation shall be provided by the office of the secretary, new American communities in consultation with the ALV and other community stakeholders. So it's thinking, what I was thinking was is that, get the word out and then also get some, get some translations happening. Like we did successfully in this last election with I think it was maybe six or seven languages that we did in translation this last session. Now, what the secretary indicated was, is that it's gonna come at a pretty hefty price tag. And I think that's the cost of democracy. I think that there's, if we're talking about the cost necessarily precluding us from communicating, then these are some very serious conversations we've got to make sure everybody's at the table because it's certainly worth the money to make sure that everybody is having equal access to justice. So I'm wondering, I'm sorry, I'm wondering if there was any money coming down, I heard rumors that there was money coming down from the federal government to assist you in this area. Can I go, can I jump here to, we didn't need to get some more people involved. Anthony, you had a question or a comment? Just two quick comments. One is this turns getting the word out to people so that they know this is gonna be happening. They know they're gonna be in a ballad. It seems like that would be an ideal time to really involve the boards of civil authority and other folks like justice of peace, people who would normally get elected to these positions but only get active maybe one day a year or so every other year. Which they, in a place like Burlington or some of the larger communities, they could break it down into neighborhoods. Like in other words, they could decide how best to get the word out. It could mean going door to door in some neighborhoods, sort of deputizing people to go out and talk about it, whatever it might be. But it's just that there are people there, as we all know in those local communities who have put their names on the ballot and got elected JPs or run the Board of Civil Authority. And this would be a good time to try to use their energy and get them involved. I also just wonder though, whether have you talked to town clerks about this at all? Yeah, I'm just wondering what the reaction might be from town clerks. I mean, because ideally it makes sense to me, but I shouldn't say it makes sense to me because it's too soon to have it make sense. But it seems like having it done on a local level makes more sense. In other words, no one like them because of the local ballots that are involved in the local, let's say of racism and whatnot. It seems like it makes more sense to bring it down to the local level. On the other hand, it's a lot of work for the clerks as you mentioned. I'm just wondering if you've had any talks with the clerks yet, what the reaction's been offending. Maybe it's too early to say, but on the other hand, we have to do these things quickly. Can I throw something in before? Will answers here. I think that one of the things that Mark brought up is about that the secretary keeps saying a lot, capital I, capital if. I think we need to go, we need to make plans as if it's going to happen because we can't wait until the ifs happens. We need to have those plans in place. So just saying that Will, would you, do you want to respond to Anthony's? Sure. Yes is the answer. I talk to clerks all the time. I talk to clerks five or six times a day. We haven't yet had a coordinated say, working group or meeting to get input on this particular subject, but I've gotten a lot of input from clerks in my individual communications with them so far. And we intend to sit down with a group also, Senator Polina. So that's a great suggestion. And leveraging the BCA members on the ground, I think also is a good suggestion. And that's sort of to circle back to what Mark was talking about. Of course, voter education is like absolutely critical, no matter what we do. If we do nothing, we need to educate voters that it's status quo. And Mark, I'm glad you referenced, when you said we did the translations in Burlington and Winooski, that was an eight month project that I organized and pulled off in those two communities, looking to move the ball forward in Vermont on how we communicate with voters who are new Americans and non-English speaking. So any outreach that comes from our office this year, we'll certainly have that in mind. That wasn't a one-off and I'm just gonna stop communicating with those communities right now. Put a lot of effort into it for a reason. And it's because that's important to me. And the last thing I'd wanna do would be to leave them out of the loop right now. It is a cost, I'm glad you mentioned that. I don't think it's prohibitive. And what's really nice about having done that project for the last eight months is that I've established a set of contacts that I didn't have before and can really much more quickly put into place the translations and the communication into those communities. I also learned a lot about, you know, a press release or a tweet or a Facebook post from our office that reaches and does a good job at outreach might not reach into those communities and that there are other unique ways that you have to reach out into those communities that I've learned and that I again intend to leverage. Senator Bray. I have a question, it's probably a will question, but Senator White, you just alluded to it and that is the timing on decisions, you know. I think about when an airplane takes off, it only has a certain amount of runway to use before it says we're committed to going up or we are staying on the ground. And so I don't know where that line is on the calendar right now for elections, but I'm guessing we're going faster and faster down that runway and we must be approaching a line. I'm just wondering to know when that date is so that people can start to replace ifs with whens. I'm already not sleeping enough to have the airplane. No, thank you, Senator Bray. You're entirely right. And I think, like I said at the beginning, we need to make the fundamental decisions about August and November within this month, if not within the next few weeks. And we're communicating with the governor, we're communicating with clerks. I think you all know from just having worked with me for the last however many years, like I said, it's a lot of moving parts and a lot of pieces. This is a serious challenge we face if we're gonna upend our process or implement new processes between now and August. And so I'm working every day and you're right, we're getting toward the end of the runway for the decision and really nobody will feel better too when we've just made a decision and we're moving forward and implementing it. But at the same time, I'm trying to be careful and I'm trying not to jump to conclusions. We're getting suggestions and pressure from all sides to do one thing for the other and really trying to figure out what solution makes the most sense for Mont. Yes, and you know, I don't think it's gonna be an issue here but there have been some places, other jurisdictions outside the state where a vote by mail is being questioned in terms of the integrity of the vote. I've always felt like our vote here has very, very high integrity, including our mail process. Do you have any concerns about being, if we were to go to a full mailed ballot statewide, regardless of how it's actually received return counted that we would have integrity issues or what's your level of confidence on our ability to implement that way? Two different questions, but I would have full confidence and integrity. We can do this in a way that there's no question about that like normal. We're gonna be feeding these ballots through our standards. We're gonna be able to audit that process and there's all the same protections around those as usual. What I worry about and where I thought you might be... You went away. Will, we can't hear you. I'll have to do that mailing well. Chris, tell them it takes about 10 seconds. We just missed a whole bunch of what you said. Usually it takes about 10 seconds. Am I back? Yeah. Okay. There are those little 10 second breaks every once in a while. And now of course I lost my train of thought. You were talking about the confidence you had in the integrity of our voting process. Confident in the integrity for sure. What concerns me is the accuracy of the mailing and actually how effective we can be in mailing a ballot to every registered voter. The populations that don't have permanent fixed addresses for mailing to or time, you worry about in these circumstances. Being college students, lower income voters, people who move a reason, homeless voters. That's why I said off the top that polling places have to always be available for in-person voting. You could never rely entirely on a mail system. But that's where more of my concern and more of the work on my end will be. We'll be ensuring that we're doing the best we can to make that mailing as effective as possible. I have no concerns about the integrity of the count. Can we hear from, I know Susanna's with us. May I just ask a question of Will? Yes, and then I'd like to hear from other people who are with us. Do that first. It was just on the accuracy of the mailing and as we look at whether the secretary of state does the mailing or the clerks do a more local mailing. We can chat about that later, but I just have a question about if the accuracy has a concern in each one of those separate opportunities. But options, Robin. Well, as long as the question has been asked, Will, why don't you respond? Yes, but I do think less so if we had the clerks doing it. Because that part of it's knowing the voters and getting the ballots, making sure the right ballots are getting to the right people. But some of it really is just how, in what kind of shape their voter checklist is. And that's why what we'll go along with any of this is a big encouragement for voters to go in and update their records and provide accurate mailing addresses within their voter record. Yeah, I like that solution. And you at the secretary of state's office would not know how to get a ballot to the person who lists the ballpark as his permanent address, but our town clerk will know that. So can we hear, we have Susanna with us and Denise, who's on a callous select board. Do we have Gray and Karen Lafayette, have they joined us by any chance? No. Okay, so Susanna, do you have any comments that you'd like to, at this point, any words of wisdom for us or not make them? Yes, thank you, chair. I just wanted to raise up the point about the importance of broad, broad outreach when we talk about mail voting. I do support vote by mail and no excuse absentee ballots, particularly right now during COVID because it's really gonna have an impact on people's ability to get to the polls, which is already extremely strained for communities of color. In this country, we see voting rights under our best days as a nation, voting rights in different states are already under assault. So when you add a pandemic into it, it really does create an added layer of chaos. I also just wanna make sure that we're all aware, and this might have been mentioned, I might have missed it because of tech pickups, but we rely so heavily on the postal service as a constant and reliable entity, but the institution has long been understaffed and we should have backup plans to prepare for the possibility that their operations might be delayed or halted altogether if things get worse. So having things like ballot drop boxes, I think would be good as backup plan to make sure that we don't put all our eggs in the postal service basket and somehow that basket is full on the bottom of it. Another thing is, it was mentioned earlier to allow towns and neighborhoods to determine best ways to get the word out to their folks. And I think presumptively that's a great idea. However, given that different towns have different levels of capacity in staffing and funding, et cetera, it was really, I think to be prudent to develop a minimum standard for communications to make sure that towns can go above and beyond, but to make sure that they are hitting certain minimum points. And that's going to include tweeting and Facebooking and posting things prominently in the grocery store and whatever other measures they can implement. And last, I know that the challenges of in-person voting are much greater in the era of social distancing, but I would again encourage that when we consider having in-person polling sites, that we consider how many days we would like to see early in-person voting implemented and making sure that we're including at least one Saturday or Sunday in those days. Thank you. When you, Susanna mentioned using every platform, every social media to get the word out, we also have to be very careful that there are those people who put out false information on social media. And we saw that in the last election where people were putting out, not in Vermont necessarily, but where people were putting out notices that polls had been closed or that they'd moved or that they were someplace else. And I think we need to be very, very on top of that. And I'm not sure how we stay on top of that so that we make, I guess Chris Winters has an answer. Okay. As always. Okay, Chris. Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't have an answer, but I have a bit of a sound to make on it. Even before all of this global pandemic coronavirus stuff was hitting us, we were really focused on election misinformation and disinformation through the cybersecurity world. It's something that's been a big deal for elections for several years now. We're all familiar with the Russian troll farms and things like that. So we developed a direct communication channels with Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. So if there is any election misinformation or disinformation, we have a direct line to them to ask them to pull that down immediately. It's worked a couple of times for us so far already. It's been a really good relationship that we've built to combat that because that is one of the greatest threats to our election is this misinformation and disinformation and any excuse for a crisis or a pandemic, things like that will be another opportunity for other countries to kind of sow division and chaos and try to undermine our democracy. So we're very much paying attention to that. We're watching social media constantly to see if there's election information that gets flagged for us to pull down. So it's something that really is on the top of our minds. If I may, another suggestion for that, particularly with social media would be using retweets and reposts from reputable sources. So for example, one thing that the state is doing with its COVID messaging is centralizing a lot of the messaging with VVH. And so other agencies aren't necessary. I mean, they are creating their own content but a lot of it is just redirecting folks to the VVH for accurate and up-to-date content. And so I think it would be great to encourage towns to do the same, those that use social media platforms, perhaps retweeting something that comes from the Secretary of State's account rather than creating new posts would help to centralize things and reduce the number of people who are using side accounts or personal accounts or campaign accounts to give information. And then something as simple as once every couple of days putting out a tweet saying, hey, remember only to believe the election info that we're telling you, you'll only see official, whenever there's a breach at our banks, they tell us, our bank will never ask you for a lot of information or will never ask you to do that kind of thing as well from the town, saying, hey, if you're hearing information about elections, you should be reading it from us, don't trust other sources. So those are some other techniques, I think that they can blow that thread. Oh, go ahead. Not likely. There's a whole campaign around it that the National Association of Secretaries of State has put together on Trusted Info 2020, all around elections, exactly what you were saying, Susanna, which is trust only, go to trusted sources for your election information. So in the case of elections, it's the Secretary of State's office, you have any questions, go to the source that knows about it and that's the Secretary of State's office. In the case of the global pandemic, it should be your Department of Health, your CDC, trusted sources such as that. So we've been working on that for the last couple of years when it comes to elections and it's a really good idea to have us reach out maybe to the town clerks and other election officials, have them promote Secretary of State's office information as the trusted source. So Susanna, may I ask you a question about, you suggested that we should have some backup plans around the use of the postal service and like for example, drop boxes for putting the ballots in. What about the other end? How do we have a backup plan for getting the ballots out if the postal service? We have to think about that too. Yeah, and perhaps I'm speaking a bit out of turn yet because these are ideas coming out of my brain here. So we don't attribute them to the admin just yet, but I mean, I would suggest that if we can't, if the USPS for whatever reason or some other courier service isn't able to do the mass mailing, then I would recommend that we designate certain either officials or entities. Again, state of Vermont entities trust that it would be good to have some kind of a backup worked out. Well, thank you. Yes, Allison. So just to go back to what Anthony had said, we have a trusted and elected local distribution system right at our hands with the Board of Civil Authority. I mean, there are, we have those mechanisms that we could empower to use in that capacity. Yes, Anthony, is this a follow up on that? And then I just a very quick thought would be to engage the National Guard in helping the local folks get things out of there. Denise, are you there? Yes, I'm here. I was just actually on this call for a different reason, but since I'm chair of the select board, I can tell you that I think a mailing from towns to our local folks might be looked at as a better opportunity to communicate with folks. They're gonna maybe pay attention more if it comes from the local sources. And I just wanna make a point that not everybody has access to social media or uses it. Tweets, Facebook, email, there's a number of people in town that I know don't have social media and don't even have a computer. And then my other question is who, if we mail out all these ballot, who's gonna pay for this? If the towns pay for it, can we get refunded or get a reimbursement through all this federal money that's coming our way? And we need to make sure all towns have a secure location to drop off ballots. We've had a problem in town recently was stolen and unreceived mail. So we purchased a lockbox just as a result of the COVID stuff to have it be a place where people can drop things off and it's locked and nobody can get into it but the town clerk. Thank you. Will, do you wanna address the money issue that Denise asked about? Sure, and a couple of other things that have been mentioned. While I have the chance, Senator White, I'm gonna have to go at two o'clock. I have a call that I have to get on then, it's 10 minutes. Thank you. A basic answer on the funding is yes, we've gotten significant federal funding that can be used to cover any increase in costs related to COVID-19 response. So any, if towns can figure out how much additional postage they were faced with, we're gonna pay for that as well as paying for additional poll worker hours. Getting back to Suzanne's comment about the Postal Service. She's the only person who I've heard bring that up other than people in my close election director's circle at this point. And the possibility of the Postal Service going under in June would be cataclysmic to the election period. We can think about whatever process is a BCA members bringing ballots to people here in our small towns. It will just upset the entire thing. My point in that regard is that what people need to do right now is advocate very strongly to the federal delegation that they put money into the Postal Service. It was in both versions of the COVID-3 bill until it was at the very end in the Senate and discussions with the White House, frankly, and the funding for the Postal Service came out of it. It needs to be included in the fourth round. That's my thought there. The thought of not having the Postal Service in late June and what Senator White was talking about is that is the exact time when we're mailing out the ballots. Forget about getting them back from people and how we're getting them out in the people's hands at that point. So I just think it's really not an option for elections or frankly for the rest of society, for the Postal Service to go under in late June, but it's a possibility. So it's worth raising it and thinking about it. So I'm doing my part for the Postal Service because I don't do things online and I don't use social media. So I mail all my bills by those little stamps in the corner of the envelope. I'm trying to do my part. Me too. I should also add that I've been in good close touch with them recently with the regional representative who does Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. She's really good. And so the Postal Service is on board as a partner at this point and that hasn't always been the case but they've really been stepping up their efforts in the elections realm. And they're actually well aware of the challenge we all face and that more than ever the Postal Service is needed to process ballots back and forth. And I think it's a very high priority for them right now which is good. I think Denise had sent out a little chat note. I don't know if it went to everybody about having people if we're still social distancing, having people checking and opening the ballots together and we'll have to figure out some way of doing that so that we can make, what? Chat notes, I'm just seeing they exist. Yeah, okay. So Anthony, did you have a comment? No, I'm overwhelmed. Senator White, when you start to think about it the way I've been describing it to some people the elections process from start to finish requires close human interaction in the normal processes. Sending ballots, getting them back, opening them up putting them in the tabulator or hand counting them getting together to produce the results. It's all based on close human interaction. And we have the whole issue of people who we have a number of people who live in assisted living facilities and nursing homes and in our prisons and many other places who all are eligible to vote. And many of them need help filling out the ballots because of sight or, so it's complicated for particular populations more so than just for the general of us. Yes, I think Mark has it. Just quickly, I would just say that I just want to piggyback on what Senator Polina was saying and also Senator Clarkson about the local, I guess, capabilities that we have. And I think that it's probably not an or, but it sounds like that will at this statewide level perhaps you're going down the right path with the coordination, perhaps with the coordination of not just the civil authority, but also of the clerks. And it's good to hear and I asked the question earlier probably they can get to you, but I was asking if you have funding coming in federally, it sounds like you do have the ability to at least offset some of those expenses at the local level. So that's good. So it sounds like we're going down the right path. And the last thing on that is is that let's not forget about UPS and FedEx as being private deliverers that can maybe back up the USPS on anything that we're doing. So I mean, Tatiana just had a great point that just made my brain smoke when you said it about USPS going down, but certainly can happen. And finally, I'll just say Will and Chris, I really appreciate you guys stopping in this afternoon.  Yeah, no, I just have a question to Will Sunning, which is I hope that the Secretary of State is landing with full force with our federal delegation on this, on the post office service and the importance of keeping it going and that whole association you have of Secretary of State. Both are true. Yeah. Well, I think that our committee has just is about to send out a letter. Thank you, Chris Bray and Anthony for doing some fine tuning on a letter that we're going to send to our federal delegation about making sure that we have money in there in COVID for that they're thinking about now that goes directly to our EMS system because they are about to collapse and we can't see that happening. So we as the committee that deals with elections here, we can do the same thing around trying to encourage them to make sure that they have money for the postal system in COVID for particularly because of the disruption that it might cause with elections. That would be a great addition. I think so too. I'll write that letter and send it around for review. Good. Anything else that we have not been joined by Greg or Karen? Yes, not. No. I think there, so I think that this is, it probably is getting close to two when Will has to be leaving us. We are also going to be talking about at two, I think Jason is going to be joining us to talk about the impact of the census and where we are with that and how we're going to deal with making sure that we get a complete census. So census, I keep either saying sentence or consensus. You know what I mean. So I think that the election is going to take a lot of thought from a lot of people and Will has expressed his interest in hearing from people. So as people think of different ways of serving different communities, whether they're people who are living in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, communities of color, the elderly, the rural, the very rural elderly that don't have access to social media, the disabled, we need to think about all of those. We need to think about all of those. And Chris, Senator Bray? Yeah, just before we lose Will and maybe Chris as well, I'm not sure. Though we ask all sorts of questions, like there, you know, can you do this? Can you do that? Can you do this? Can you do that? We appreciate that how hard you're working behind the scenes to figure out the thousand details that we're not even thinking about yet. So thanks. Thank you. Brian? Oh, did you have a question?  I was doing thumbs up for both Will and Chris. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Thank you. And I know Will has to jump off it too, but I can stay if you need me. Okay. Well, I don't know if you're involved in the census or not, but. Well, Denise just clapped. Oh. Thank you. And Mark just sent a thank you. So, so let's. Thanks, everyone. And so let's. I think maybe continue this conversation another time next week with people to see if there are other other thoughts that have come up and other communities that might need to be represented that weren't here today that might have some thoughts. I know that AARP was very concerned about voting. It was one of the things they brought up. So can we do that? Sure. Okay. So is Jason with us? No. Gail, was he going to join us? I didn't hear back from him, Senator White. Oh, okay. If you don't mind, I'd like to, if you end up having this discussion on census, I'd just like to hang around for that one as well. We'd love to have you hang around whenever you want. I'll see if I can contact them via email. Okay. Are you, Susanna, have you been working on the census complete, complete census committee at all? I haven't been working directly with the committee because just when things were gearing up, that's when government was shutting down, not shutting down, but slowing down. So I haven't had a lot of direct involvement, but I have been getting regular updates from Chair Broughton about it. Okay. So if we can't contact him, can we just pick your brain a little bit? No, yeah. I mean, I can speak intelligently to the general issues, but in terms of our operational updates, I'm afraid I won't be much used, but yeah, happy to speak to whatever census related issues you might have in mind. Do, yes, Anthony? Well, I actually thought that the census had been stopped in some places or everywhere. I mean, is it actually happening? It is all happening. April 1st was the official kickoff. They have suspended ground operations for census takers. Oh, maybe that's what I was thinking. Yeah. So what's happening now is they're encouraging folks to respond by telephone, by mail or online. This is the first year that you'll be committed to respond online. And so the shift has, the focus has shifted to encouraging folks to do non-in-person responses. What's kind of interesting, because it's similar to the conversation we're having about voting, changing the way we vote, because when I hear you say that the person, the person stuff has stopped and now they're relying on phone calls and internet or online census, billing out census forms. I just wonder whether people are actually doing that. Yes, Senator, you're absolutely correct. And I would say that the implications of both are really similar because with census, in the state of Vermont, for every person who is not counted, that's about $4,000 of federal funds per person per year for 10 years that we don't receive. And so not only that, but so many other things and programs and activities and decisions get made based on census figures. So it's so important that people be represented in the census. Similarly, if we don't get the voting exercise right, then that's also going to be a certain number of years that people's interests aren't represented at the town and the state level as well. So I think the implications for both are pretty similar, right? We've got to pull out all the stops today to make sure that for the next X number of years, you're counted and represented. There is a map or some statistics that have been put out at the state level and it turns out that Wyndham County is very, very low. We have the lowest percentage so far. So when the Wyndham County delegation met, we meet every Saturday. And when we met last Saturday, we are trying to figure out ways of getting the word out. Brattleboro is okay, but the rest of Wyndham County is very low. Allison? So one way, Susanna, I don't know if we can coordinate this from a state level, but absolutely every listserv and front-port forum should have this sent out just on a weekly basis. All right. And that's something that we can do, but if you could coordinate that at a state level, every listserv and front-port forum with the dial-in number and the website, I think that's a key place people are going these days. Well, that's an excellent point, Senator. And I do know that because of the access, so the chair of the Complete Count Committee is the state librarian. And so what we really have to our advantage in that is that he has the full force of the libraries to disseminate that information at the local level. So to my knowledge, they are blasting a whole lot of information on that in all the libraries. Which is great, but they're all closed. So, but many have both in their websites. So Denise just sent a note about another thought about voting, and I think this applies to the census also, is that a lot of people who don't use social media and who don't have access to internet or use the computers do listen to local radio and watch their local television stations and their peg access stations. So we need PSAs on them all the time about both of these issues. Good point. Yeah, radio particularly. All right. I had never heard that figure that Susanna just cited $4,000 per person counted. I think that would go a long way to gaining people's attention. I think about here's a way you can help your state for the next decade. Make sure you and your friends are counted. Absolutely. And then I mean, I'd be remiss. That's an excellent point, Senator. And I'd be remiss not to say in conjunction with that. One thing that we see nationally, particularly with people of color, is that we're rude and courted when there's economic or electoral implications. And we end up feeling largely ignored for the rest of the cycle when that happens. And so in addition to what you're saying, making sure that people are aware of the fiscal implications of being counted or not counted, also that people recognize that it's not just that they represent a dollar figure to us, but also that we just want to do for them and do more for them. So I think those things go hand in hand. Yeah, thanks for that. I think there are, we need to, and I'm sure the complete census committee is looking at this, but we need to figure out ways of making sure we get to the communities that may be nervous about or reluctant to be part of it. And I know that there are a lot, like the undocumented workers, that's gonna be, we're going to have to be very, very careful about the way we approach that so that they don't feel that we're somehow tracking them. And there are probably a lot of other communities that have that same fear. Well, is Marie, is Marie on our call? I think not, I think that probably because the main topic of the beginning was on voting voting that the people she primarily represents aren't allowed to vote. So I don't know that she joined us for the second half, has she? No, I don't see it. Well, somebody's calling you now. Hello, this is Jason. Okay, okay. Hi, Jason. Hello, this is your state librarian. How is everyone doing today? We are just fine. Thank you for joining us. So we do have Susanna Davis here who has been giving us some information, but we are concerned about the census in general and then about how we make sure we reach those communities that are probably somewhat reluctant to respond to the census question there. And I represent Wyndham County and I know that Wyndham County is very low and the Wyndham County delegation is trying to figure out how to address that.


Today, Code Pink interrupted Elliott Abrams, Trump's special representative for Venezuela. At an event he was hosting in DC. Abrams is in charge of Trump's hybrid war on Venezuela, which has recently been escalated, with Trump himself threatening a naval blockade and the State Department saying that they were going to apply a maximum pressure march in the context of the Monroe Doctrine 2.0. Abrams had no answer to us when we asked how he felt about the 100,000 Venezuelans that his sanctions have killed.