Good morning. This is the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs. It's Groundhog Day, there's a February 7th Happy Groundhog Day on the 20th. We are here this morning to hear the first pass of a variety of different elections-related policy language that I've been working on with some of the Secretary of State's office suggestions from some other stakeholders and we're here first with Legislative Council and Tim's going to walk us through the language, so thanks for being here. Good morning everybody, my name is Tim Delacruz from the Record, Legislative Council and I will be providing a line-by-line walkthrough of today's committee bill, which will identify as 23-0705. So, just starting from the top and actually feel free to ask me to slow down, ask me to put up whatever. So, we'll start with a statement of purpose, so the bill is introduced for seven parts essentially to this bill, with more sections than that. This bill proposes to prohibit losing primary candidates from running in general elections, update the independent candidate filing deadline, permit political parties to accept unlimited contributions from candidates, require the reporting of town and county committee members after the buy-in of reorganization of the state committee of the party, prohibit candidates from receiving cross nominations for multiple political parties, permit candidates to file demographic information and to require registration for right-end candidates. We'll move on to actual sections.  Section 1 modifies Title 17 is Section 2381 Subsection C and just for orienting purposes and statutes, this is in a sub-chapter of the nominations chapter, sub-chapter, nomination by party committee. The modified language adds is Subsection C. In no event may a candidate who loses a major party be nominated to appear on the general election ballot pursuant to the sub-chapter by a committee of any party other than the party of which the candidate appeared on the primary ballot. This is phrased so that one, if a candidate loses a primary, they cannot run again in the general election. Two, if a candidate wins a primary, their own party would not be precluded from nominating that candidate. Any questions on that? Sure, not a problem. Would you like me to read the language and then my annotation? I would like your term, termination, your termination. Your interpretation. I'm happy to read just that. So this phrasing for a matter of kind of syntax has the purpose of one, if a candidate loses a primary, they cannot run again in the general election. And also we phrased it in this way so that if a candidate wins a primary, their party would not be precluded from nominating that candidate. So they win, the party goes in and nominates them as per regular operations. So Tim, I'm going to, just because this is really about clarifying what this means on the page, I'm going to give you an example. So if you run in a major party primary, so a candidate runs in the Republican primary, loses, they can't file as an independent and appear on the general election ballot. Unless, so this is the exception, if the Republican party fill a vacancy that arises, so let's say the winner of the primary, the candidate Y, drops out, passes away, any of the ways that there could be a vacancy after the primary. The party could nominate the second place person, but that's really the only way that a person who loses a major party primary could get long about my interpretation. Absolutely correct. So this is all prior to the general election, has nothing to do with after the general election. That was my misunderstanding. Thank you. Representative Chase. I thought I heard if a candidate wins the primary, then the party could nominate them. Yes. So candidate A wins, then their party goes on too. And the, yes, sorry, I might be misunderstanding. I feel like if someone won the primary, then they wouldn't need to be nominated to be on the ballot anyway. Right. Right. Am I missing some nuance of statute here? Tim, this doesn't change anything about if a candidate wins the major party primary, they're going on the general election. Correct. This doesn't change anything about that. It just means the party could nominate them also. Well, the party automatically does it. Yes, it automatically happens. So if you win the major party primary, you are that candidate. Yes. We're going to have the elections division director come in and talk about the mechanics of how that actually works. So I might put a pin in that for when we have a director setting up. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. He's the people at home. He's setting expectations. And also flagging for Will that he is going to have to provide a little more color on the mechanics of that. Any other clarifying questions? I want to try it while Tim's doing the walkthrough. He's clarifying questions that we talk about, context and the why as we get into it. Moving on to section two. This modifies title 17 BSA section 2401. And for context, this is under title 17 elections chapter or nine nominations in sub chapter three for independent candidates. And this adds a new section B after being in subsection A. The new language, would you like me to read A and then B or just kind of go into the new language here? I think you can just go into the new language. Starting in line nine there. Subsection B, a candidate who loses a major party primary for any office may not appear on the general election ballot as an independent candidate for the same office for which the candidate lost in the primary election. The new language prevents a losing candidate from running as independent in the general election in addition to preventing them from running for another party as proposed above. Representative. Thank you. I just have a clarifying question about a committee bill because I haven't done any of them in my experience here. Where did all this language come from and how did it get here before we're here listening about it? Yeah, so I have been presenting this. I've worked on it with a number of folks and I'm presenting it as a candidate for the committee to take up. This sounds like another bill that we have on our wall. I actually saw that there are a couple of bills that have recently come to us where these are not unique ideas. Some of these are ideas that have been floated for decades and we're actually going to have some of the sponsors of those bills hopefully come in either today or the next time and take some testimony on some of these issues next week because of that exact thing. So I think I like the fact that actually it's reinforcing some of the things I've been working on that we have some of those bills introduced but you are not wrong in that observation. Representative Hoover. A foundational question. Since the parties are sort of separate entities from, I mean they're running their own game here, have their own rules to some degree. And because of that action we're telling an individual citizen that they cannot run for subsequent elections to something. I assume this passes constitutionally. It does. I think there are other states where they have sore loser laws in the books. They have been challenged in federal courts and have been upheld. What about state constitutions? What more? Sure. I can certainly provide you with legal analysis maybe at a later point. I'm not sure if there has been an iteration of this in the past which presented opportunity for the courts to weigh in on this. It may be an issue of first impression. This hasn't come into existence yet so it hasn't really been litigated. That being said I look to when we perform legal analysis of certain ideas that come up. We look to analogs in different states to see how the issues that occurred there were kind of analyzed by the courts. Certain fundamental issues around rest of the association, typically with political parties, as far as my mind goes, are maybe due process rights in the 14th or their parallels in state constitutions. How the courts kind of weigh in on those. But from our office's initial analysis this past semester, if you'd like we can look into it more. Would it be fair to say that section one says if you lose a major party primary you can't be nominated by another party. Section two is about if you lose a major party primary you can't be running as an independent. Correct. Any other clarifying questions on sections one or two? Okay. Move on to the next part of the bill which concerns independent candidate filing deadlines. Section three amends title 17 VSA, section 24 of two, subsection D in particular. And this also is in context of elections and nominations than independent candidates. The D1 and then we'll kind of skip into subdivision of it. Starting on line 14 D1, a statement of nomination and a complete and signed consent form shall be filed. In the case of any other independent candidate, not earlier than the fourth Monday in April and not later than 5 p.m. on the fourth Tuesday after the first Monday in May preceding the preliminary election. Prescribed by section 2351 of this chapter and not later than 5 p.m. of the 62nd day prior to the day of the special election. These modifications including the seemingly perhaps on the 62nd day prior language bring the independent candidates in line with primary election deadlines. Specifically those found elsewhere in 17 VSA 2356. So just to make this perfectly clear, instead of having a whole summer to think about it, an independent candidate now has to file basically at the same time as a major party. Any other questions about section three? Representative Waters, that is. Thank you. So the section where you say you can't run for an independent candidate for the same office where she lost the primary election. Isn't that saying the same thing as that line 17 where it says you have to file on that same day? Isn't that two ways of achieving the same goal? The filing did. Well, no, if somebody never ran and lost a major primary, they could still run as an independent, but they never lost a primary. That is, if I'm understanding the point. I think so. I think what I'm hearing is that somebody could submit with the signatures as either an independent or as a party candidate. And then if they lose the primary, they could say, oh, well, I'm going to throw that one out and go with the independent. So this is saying that they would have to have that in at the same time anyway. So you have to choose one or the other. Yeah, so we'll talk a little bit about the way it works today. We did a little bit of that taking setting before, but we've been doing a lot of things since we started running through the elections timeline. But I think it will come in a pretty sharp focus. The idea here is that the two things work together. So if any candidate who wants to appear on a ballot has to file at the same time, you have to choose at that time. Am I running in a major primary or am I filing as an independent? And then you can choose to run as a major party candidate and you lose. You can't then afterward file as an independent or be nominated by another major party if all three of these sections became one. Just to put a finer point on what I said before, it's the independent candidate part that bothers me a little bit here from up. If you decide to take part in a party process, effectively you're obliged to follow the party process rules to some degree. So if you're coming in as an independent, we're basically saying that's not what we're saying. That's not an option once you've gone through door A, you can't come back out and go through door B. So that's what the words on the page say. I want to save debate about it for now until later because I want to make sure that folks understand what's being presented. And we'll make sure there's ample time for us to discuss all of this and not on one but probably multiple days if we're going to move this line forward. So thanks everybody for their patience during the first walkthrough of a bunch of pieces. So go ahead. I'll move on now to page three and the next part which concerns campaign finance limits for statewide candidates. Section four amends 17 PSA, 2341 subsection A. And this, skip down to the new language, a political party may accept unlimited contributions from a candidate. Before they were limited, as you can see above, to $60,000. And there's not too much to expand on this one, I think. So we're going to hear more about this, but I will just say for context that there's a bit of a lack of transparency right now because if you are a federal candidate, you can contribute to your political party, you have Gordy to campaigns, and all of those dollars are tracked, you know who those campaign contributions came from, and there are really hard limits on statewide candidates doing the exact same thing. So this aligns statewide candidates, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Governor, et cetera, with the federal candidates for Congress and U.S. Senators. My understanding is that fair. State groups in? I would have to defer to Director Sading on that. Okay. We'll hear more about that. So put it in that. Any questions about the works on the page? Okay. Moving down to the next part, by and no, by any committee reorganization reporting, Section 5 amends Title 17, VSA, Section 2313, which is under elections, political parties, and the final certificate of organization. This adds a new subsection, reordering what was previously F, pushing that down to G, and so you need language for subsection F, which reads starting on Line 18. At the same time of filing the certificate of organization, the chair and secretary shall file with the Secretary of State a single machine readable electronic document containing the list of names and addresses of the town and county committee members from those towns and counties that have organized pursuant to this chapter. So what's a machine readable electronic document? That language is borrowed from some of the campaign finance reporting language, something that facilitates the Secretary of State's office essentially to, if not interdigitate, then just take a form that's scannable and accelerate the intake of information. So we have 24. Yeah. So a spreadsheet. That's true. So the idea here is that when the parties reorganize every two years, so that's the context of where this would fit in. It's in statutes that govern major party reorganization. You might read in that area. Yes. The first in the subchapter is 2301, which is the organization of the major political parties, which requires a major political party to organize by handling. And then there are various other requirements in handling that organization. And this is just a new element introducing the, when it is reorganized, information regarding essentially who's in charge at the local and county level is communicated to the Secretary of State's office. And I think it would be useful for the committee to hear just about how the reorganization process is sort of the relationship that Secretary of State's office has to the major parties in terms of the biennial reorganizations. For the uninitiated, every major party reorganizes at the town, county, and state level every two years, chooses its officers. But it starts with caucuses at the local level. And this is about having a very succinct, easy-for-the-secretary state's office way to report who all of the officers and members of the committees are at the local, county, and state level after the reorganization every two years. Any questions about such a sign? We'll have much more conversation about all of these. Okay, great. Thanks very much. Moving on to page four, the next section, or next part, is cross nominations. Section six, amends Title 17, VSA, section 2472, subsection B, subdivision five, adding, sorry, that's subdivision five. And this is under conductive elections and balancing context. A candidate may now, sorry, a candidate may only list in a single party next to the candidate's name on the general election ballot as selected by the candidate pursuant to section 2474. And I'd also like to note that later on in the bill, we add a subsection six. That's regarding right hands. I just want to kind of put it in that one. So if this looks familiar later on, that's what that is. Any questions about this cross nomination or what's also somewhat, sometimes referred to fusion voting as well? Or is that a handle? I guess right now in terms of a candidate who didn't voluntarily solicit two nominations, one from each of the major parties, but got enough votes in the primary. Where does that leave that person? The general population voted for them on a different ballot. They actually wrote in their names. This language would limit the person to essentially picking one. And it would be up to the candidate to pick, not the number of votes that they received from each. Yes, it would be up to the candidate. And we asked now where this came from, this idea? This is an idea that I have supported for a long time and that I included in this bill for discussion by the committee. Representative Byron. So clarifying off of the question, Representative Hango just closed. So that designation on the general election ballot for said candidate would be how they filed, correct? For the primary. Like when they filed their paperwork, they filed with the Democrat or the Republican, they would move down to the general there. If they got the desis, what were previous to this would be the necessary ratings to have the hybrid. That wouldn't happen. I think I'm going to ask this question really. I apologize. I'm not quite following, but as far as the... So, the basics of it again. How you file for the primary is how your need would exist on the general election. If there was no candidate on the other party and you got the right ends, you would not wind up having like a deep... You wouldn't be listed as a Republican and a Democrat. If you were to wind up winning, I think no matter if it was my election or caucus were right and being nominated, it would still just be... The candidate would just choose which one. And I may defer to... Everything you talked to was... That I'll say is great questions. Tim's probably not the most equipped person to answer them. I think there's no such person who can help us understand this better. And, yeah, the next section. I will throttle back on that. I think I really want the committee to deeply understand each one of these sections, but we're just on the first walkthrough of a bill that I plan on taking time on over the next few weeks while we're doing other things. I want everybody to just know, for example, the time I've learned and understand and we're going to hear from lots of folks. Representative Huber. I assume this offense constraints exist only until after the election and then if I get elected as a Democrat and they're equally successful in getting me to caucus for the Republicans when I sit here, this does not bore anything in that regard. No, this pertains only to elections, if you were to change party allegiances. Tim, as I understand it, there's nothing in our law that says the major party that you have printed as being nominated is that part of the ballot requires even caucus with that party when you are elected to the General Assembly, for instance. There's no kind of chamber of law about that. Not that I'm aware of. If I could certainly look into it more, I don't feel completely confident I'm at the top of my head. Was your question if it's the law that you have to attend caucuses? I can tell you that's not law. I'm sure that's... Just to be perfectly clear, there's no proposal on the table to enforce Representative Hooper's attendance at any of the eight caucus events. I thought there was a move for caucus yesterday. I'm sorry, but after yesterday, I feel like we got punchy and I like it. I wanted us to have some fun here and ask about some other things. Please continue. Next section, section 7, on line 10, amendments, title 17, PSA, section 24, 74. This is choice of parties. Subsection A1 removes May. I'll just read it through, sorry. A person nominated by the General Assembly or sorry, a person nominated by any means for the same office by more than one political party shall elect, not later than 5 p.m. on the 10th day following the primary election, the party in which the nominee will be a candidate. The nominee shall notify in writing the Secretary of State of such choice by that deadline and only the party that the nominee so elect shall be printed on the nominee's name on the ballot, excuse me. So we can see we change May to shall on line 13. We also remove some language breaking across lines 5 and 16. I believe for some practical reasons that I'll defer to the Secretary of State's office and speak to later effect need be explored. Moving on to Subdivision 2. If the nominee does not notify the Secretary of State or the town clerk of the nominee's choice of party, the Secretary shall print on the ballot next to the nominee's name, the name of the major political party for which the nominee had the nominee's name printed on the ballot in the primary. So kind of jumping back up to the bottom of page 4 there. There is some gender neutral language introduced then moving down we remove various subsections really kind of condensing it to just the first being the only directive left which is the major political party for which the nominee had the nominee's name printed on the ballot in the primary. Further? So it changes the quick question this is just a logistical question this stripping out is that a word? Language is a previous version of this draft. It's not current law. It is current law. Proposed to be removed. So Tim the two things happening here are basically that if a person is nominated by two major parties they first can choose which party they want printed on the ballot we do all the other things that we talked about about this topic in the bill so the first one is they can choose which one of those two nominations to accept either the one that was printed so they filed as a candidate for the Democratic Party they won red ends on the Republican ballot they have a choice so if they won both primaries one as a writing one as a filing they have a choice but if they don't choose they defaults to the one they file on Yes and it's when trying to turn like a simple idea into law can sometimes be you know I don't know Alright Tim thank you any other clarifying questions on that section or send water to others can you say this but I'm very sorry but so when you in line 16 you removed Town Clerk so should it not be removed in lines 19 and 20 where it says the Secretary of State or the Town Clerk of the nominees choice of party Is that the bottom of page 4 Yeah since you removed the Town Clerk earlier That may be the case It seems like this is your right I've seen some nods I agree So if we have this language in future drafts Yes I think we should put a notice for all witnesses that we have a copy editor Yeah It will be very helpful Don you're shaping up That's a compliment No Any other questions or edits for the section Moving on to the next part candidate demographic information Section 8 modifies Title 17 PSA Section 2359 which pertains to notification to the Secretary of State with some primary elections and I will be speaking on line 7 Within three days after the last day for filing petitions all Town and County clerks who have a petition shell filed with the Secretary of State will list containing the name, gender, age, race or ethnicity, mailing address and email addresses address of all candidates to the extent this information is provided by candidates the office for which the candidates have filed and whether each candidate has submitted a sufficient number of valid signatures to comply with the requirements of Section 2355 we shall also notify the Secretary of State of any petitions found not to conform with the requirements of this chapter and return to a candidate under Section 2358 of this title and shall notify the Secretary of State of the status of each of such petitions no later than two days after the last day of filing supplementary petitions and in some this require sorry this is voluntary proffering with demographic and some other contact information by candidates that would then be relayed to the Secretary of State this is for primary elections we're off time cheese for publishing or for the Secretary of State use? Secretary of State's use I would defer to the next witness as to what they how they treat what they do and we may want to take into putting very specific language around how this would be aggregated but there's nothing in here that would require a candidate to report this demographic data that's correct so this is the kind of we'll take some testimony I know Representative has been working on this issue and I asked if it was okay if I kind of got ahead of her and incorporated this into our first pass but there's probably a bill that works on this because the idea is a lot of times we'll get questions of like how many women are running for office or how many people how diverse was the number of candidates this year and that data doesn't really exist and it would be much better for folks who are trying to get a sense of members of this body for instance to have that self reported by the members to sort of infer any guesses so that's kind of the idea but we're going to hear some testimony about the origins of the collection of the demographic data but there are a few different organizations that were interested in this and I included it but it's not my this one isn't one that came from me Representative Hango yeah thanks I'll make a comment don't reach out to those people the next section I think more directly speaks to your question to do with the modification of what's required to be put into consent to candidate form section 9 modifies Title 17 VSA section 2361 subsection B reading in line line 20 subsection B1 the consent shall file for the candidates name as the candidate wishes to have it presented about the candidates gender race, ethnicity, town of residence correct mailing address email address affirmative statement which reads the candidate who is not providing such information may still appear on the ballot if all other requirements are met is this just making it explicit that you don't have to provide the demographic data? yes that's that still valid so section 9 pertains to what the candidate writes down on the form and then the previous section 8 pertains to the communicating the permission to the sector except for the states office so the two can work together note that I am very interested to hear what the clerks have to say and Carol Doz is in our waiting room and I appreciate her being here listening to the walkthrough section 10 this pertains to 10 meetings, sorry this is under local elections 10 meetings in local elections in general section 10 amends title 17 BSA section 2665 the notification to secretary of state speaking on line 7 it reads the town clerk shall file with the secretary of state a list containing the name gender, age, race, ethnicity, street addresses and email addresses to the extent the information is provided to the candidate and the end date the term of office of each select board member city council village trustee and mayor elected the town clerk shall not be required to ask the candidate for demographic that information if it is not consent form so what is that about does the town clerk provide consent form or is it universal consent form and they just didn't provide the town clerk I believe the consent form is uniform across various types of elections and that depending on the brace the nature of the office they can be delivered to the clerk in some instances or directly to the secretary of state perhaps and so this is following the same reasoning as the previous two sections of communicating the proper information to the secretary of state's office but this section comes from the town clerk so section 10 similar to the idea of the previous two sections we're collecting the demographic data for these local offices but the town clerks are not required to ask the candidates it's just on form if they collect it on form they send that along with all of the other data that they're sending to secretary of state that's correct so it just it just be clear so it's resonate throughout that it's all strictly voluntary every step of the way is what we're saying so the form has a box for ethnicity gender, age, data you can choose you leave it blank it's up to you, it doesn't have any impact on your name appearing on a ballot just means that box is blank, you choose not to and I know this may not be the time but just to interject if you don't have all the data from all the candidates your data is going to be skewed if you're trying to compile that on ethnicity yeah I think we'll have folks come in and talk about this I think the idea is that most people if it's on there they'll default filling it out and won't have any issue with it being aggregated and that folks who have any concern about will leave a blank and so that there probably will be a we would assume there would be a high return rate but we'll talk about how that works and at what point is it not useful to have it if you only get half of the people reporting about the correct question that we should take into anybody else questions on what's on the page for section 10 alright let's continue next part regards a right in candidate registration section 11 will modify title 17 PSA section 2370 and this is in particular to primary elections in writing candidates starting at line 18 a new subsection is inserted above the previously existing language and it reads as follows in order to have votes recorded for writing candidates under section 2587 of this title not later than 5 p.m. on the second Friday preceding the primary election for a state or federal office she'll file with the secretary of state for consenting to candidacy for office I set forth in subsection 2361 B of this title secretary of state shall notify the town clerks of any findings made in accordance with the subsection no later than the Friday before the election I can pause there and continue this is an entirely new section so right now the folks are written in they do there's no obligation to file anything about a writing campaign in current law I'm trying to get a sense for the context of what this is changing right now and again I would probably defer to director sending it will be following me after the analysis of this right now I believe writing candidates they just can be written in without really any sort of prior to election notice to clerks of the secretary of state they will be other people often write them in as far as I don't think I am in a position to speak to policy advantages of detriments accompanying this change but this would essentially require registration of those really for if you want to have your votes as a writing candidate count it then you would have to know essentially yes that's an important thing to make really clear is the words in order to have what's recorded so that means you can have somebody have a writing campaign and if they had not filed then those votes just wouldn't even count the way this is drafted to yes I do interesting I assume you helped draft H149 with from the culture stir delegation right can't speak to that I think this is we'll be here at 1045 they'll come through and I was like this is perfect we have there's a it sounds very similar and that was a request from our town clerk to preclude the votes for Mickey Mouse and other candidates that didn't file this part of the reason I'm asking questions if I've never seen this before is because I've never really seen this before I know that this has been talked about a lot amongst clerks and we're going to hear from them and from the sponsor of H149 this morning so yes this is one of those things that I think could make it a lot easier to know who's really a writing candidate and who is just somebody who didn't like any of the candidates on the ballot and writing in Donald Duck on their own name etc and there is additional new language in the subsection as well in this section as well on line 4 starting on page 8 we see the addition under subsection B of number 1 to start with B line 4 a writing candidate shall not qualify as a primary winner unless the candidate has complied with subsection A of this section and just to kind of round out continuing to the next section section 12 which modifies title 17 VSA we heard from Representative Shy on bill number which I cannot remember H97 on line 7 the requirement to receive at least one half the number of votes as the number of signatures required that is a section I want to flag that we might want to take a look at the committee might want to look at bringing H97's language of raising that to the total number of signatures required on as opposed to one half as a potential future discussion on the next section 12 a man's title 17 VSA section 2472 B6 and as I noted previously above in the section regarding cross nominations we had added subsection 5 so this section is being amended to two different places in the bill for clarity subsection 6 reads as follows starting on line 17 in order to have votes counted for a writing candidate under section 2587 of this title no later than 5pm on the second Friday proceeding with general election for writing candidate for any state or federal office shall file with the secretary of state a form consenting to candidacy for offices set forth in subsection 2361 B of this title the secretary of state shall notify the town clerk of any filings made in accordance with the subsection to litter the Friday before the election just to clarify so currently there is no filing for a writing candidate so this is requiring a filing and it has to be the second Friday before the primary this section we have proceeding the second Friday proceeding with general election the previous section 11 that was section 11 and then section 12 says the same thing for the general election so these are totally new in the statute these requirements yes section 13 amends title 17 BSA section 2587 subsection E in particular and in this regard state elections E1 as follows except as provided in the subsection in case of write-in votes the act of writing in the name of candidate or pasting a label containing a candidate's name upon the ballot with under other indications of the voters intent shall constitute a vote for that candidate even though the voter should not fill in the square oval of the name new language being added under subsection 2A a vote for a writing candidate shall be counted as a generic write-in vote unless the writing candidate filed a consent of candidate form with the Secretary of State in accordance with section 2370 of this title for the primary election as subsection 2472B of this title for the general election the consent form shall be the name of the candidate, the name of the office for which the candidate consents to be a candidate the candidate's town of residence and the candidate's correct mailing address the clerk shall record the name and vote totals of the writing candidate who has filed in accordance with section 2370 of this total in the primary election in accordance with subsection 2472B of this title for the general election and before we go I'd just like to quickly note that I may have introduced some ambiguity into the idea of whether votes are counted or not, I would certainly defer to Director Sending to talk about the mechanics of it's counted. I want to know this is recorded versus counted it's interesting to represent Hangover Clerk in my question I think that's what I was asking first quickly what is a generic write-in vote just anybody writes in a name whether the person has filed a consent form or not although that term was not specifically defined in the statute I believe it's a term used by clerks and I'll defer to Director Sending to provide you a more rich answer to that so when we take the language in section 13 what we're talking about here is mechanically creating this new thing of a writing that doesn't exist currently it would require them to file a similar consent of a candidate as you form that the next section which I had to get to say it's that the Secretary of State shall prepare and furnish forms for candidate consent purposes so Secretary of State's office will provide the form and then like a candidate who had previously registered in order to succeed as a writing candidate you would have to follow similar procedures then at the top of page 10 new subdivision 3 here reads line 1 the election officials counting ballots and telling results shall only list the names and votes received of those writing candidates to candidacy for the office pursuant to section 2370 of this title section 14 modifies title 17 VSA section 2682 A and this is in a sub-chapter of local elections using the Australian ballot system and this is for writing candidates in this section subsection is added as well as B in front of existing prior to existing statutory language that exists already starting in line 8 A reads in order to have votes recorded for a writing candidate under section 2587 of this title not later than the closing of polls on the day of the election a writing candidate for any office shall file with a presiding officer a written request to have the candidates of those recorded B1 a writing candidate shall not qualify as winner unless the candidate has complied with subsection A of this section in the case of somebody that I get a group together and we decide we're going to nominate them elect Mike or something Mike doesn't know about it Mike gets a majority of the votes of the citizens this basically says that their will shall be excluded if Mike doesn't rush in and file a form to say I didn't know about it but I still won't know about it but I'm filing a form just in case the person nominated in that I would have to consent to accept in the office as so far as the will that's being ignored is that of the voters who wrote in I guess I've been saying ignored but really their wish wouldn't be to be fulfilled unless that candidate said yes I'm willing to run for that office it would require that group to get that candidate to consent and file no later than the second Friday I understand what it is based on this thing on one hand you have the will on the other hand you have the administrative because it is now if that situation evolves how do you assume the representative from down south would say I refuse or I resign or something I will definitely welcome a debate about whether it makes sense to allow people who are unaware that they are a candidate for office to be written and elected but in terms of actually putting it to an office that they weren't aware of that they were even in contact before we should have that conversation because that is the law of the day the representative is not wrong that's the law of the day many people that I think would make a good dog catcher what do you mean I'm a listener representative how in section 14 small letter A how does that differ where it says not later than the closing of the polls on the day of the election how does that differ from the second Friday before I believe it's the level of elections this pertains to local elections I can't really speak to the policy reasoning for opting for this however I think it is distinguished from the other offices so 2587 is the local election let's see here section 14 I don't see any indication that that's just in a local election sorry in the way we format these we leave a lot of the title chapters of chapters I apologize for the statutory context if if we see another draft if we can get some resources a little bit of batting forth about that with drafting operations that would help I think just to clarify but am I reading this correctly that for primaries the hardest primaries in general elections both candidates who want to have their writer votes counted have to file a consent two Fridays prior but for a local election they just have to file before the close of the polls just to clarify what is that 17 BSA 2682A is referring to local elections using the Australian ballot system yes so a person who is a candidate in an office that is having a meeting where the business is being conducted an animal meeting from the floor wouldn't have to file because there's no Australian ballot right I haven't thought about that I would say we'll want to make sure that we have precluded that possibility inadvertently we proceed with this and any other questions for that section okay section 15 amends title 17 BSA 2702 and this is in the chapter 5077 presidential elections subject to presidential primaries in particular this section has to do with the nominated petition new subsection F is added starting in July 19 in order to have votes counted for a writing candidate under section 2587 of this title now littered at 5pm on the second Friday preceding the primary election for writing candidate for nomination by any major political party shall file with the secretary of state in the forum consenting to candidacy for office except for the subsection 2361B of this title the secretary of state shall notify the town clerks of any filing with the subsection no later than the Friday before the election and again this pertains to presidential primaries so we did exclusively primary elections general, local and previous sections section 15 is just about the presidential primaries yes I think well the clerks I believe have to report every single one that's written in so the Donald Duck there's a very long list especially the presidential primaries of names yes, especially presidential primaries so this would solve that problem maybe find it acceptable the effective date is July there's 223 thank you very much for that walkthrough maybe what we'll do is bring elections division director up next and take a break and continue and I know I would like to hear from Carol Dawes as well so we'll do one now and then we'll take a break in 225 minutes and I think we may not quite get through all of your testimony if that works for you thank you pleasure thanks Tim you want me to proceed you want me to answer questions since I've got limited time I want to be as useful to you as possible I think it might make sense to have you share if you have general pieces that the secretary state's office is supporting and then we can talk about those sections that you wanted to to highlight does that that works also I was obviously listening and taking some notes as we went along if I could be helpful clarifying some aspects of the bill throughout I'll try to do that also will sending director of elections for the record from the secretary state's office in general what I would say Mr. Chair is we support everything in the bill we did not propose or put forth actually much of what is in this bill to be honest but have given our reaction and being able to administer the changes that are included in the bill really particularly we supported and for the most part although it's helpful to our processes as well but we really strongly supported the writing provisions on behalf of and in concert works as you noted it's something that's been proposed multiple years over the course of multiple years recently and has never been passed and most of the language that you see in that writing section although it's expanded it comes from a previous version of proposal to address that issue and also I took a quick look when you as mentioned the number H-149 and mirrors that to some extent with some changes and some additions to make sure all the bases are covered so I can get to that when we get to that but we definitely support that provision like I said especially in reflecting our support of the clerks in not having to deal with that issue going forward and I'll explain that in more detail all of the provisions related to nominations, dual nominations party nominations independent candidates we are agnostic on as a policy matter and is entirely up to you all as a policy matter I'm here to say we can implement them as they're written and try to make sense of them for you as well same I would say goes for the collection of demographic data did not come from us as a policy proposal but happy to facilitate the collection of that data and the presentation of it to the public as the committees legislatures need to fit with that can I walk through a couple of the specifics to try and help with some clarity if you could just name the section I'll try to help direct people to where you are I'll start at the top right at the beginning because I want to make sure you're totally clear on what this provision is doing I think you got down to it pretty closely by the end of the last comments made this only affects a candidate who loses in a major party and says that they cannot then be nominated by another party other than the one that they appeared on the ballot for in the primary and lost so file your petition with the Democratic primary you'll lose that primary to somebody else you can't then be nominated to that same office by the party committee of another party either the Republicans or the progressives if you were to win that Democratic primary you could still be nominated by another party's committee and that's where there's interplay between provisions of this bill you would be able to list both of those parties on the general election ballot and choose which order they appear to as you can currently unless you implement the following sections that don't allow those dual nominations still be in a case where you win a primary in one party and you get nominated by another party's committee and list both of those unless you go forward with the lack of dual nominations. What it prevents again is just a loser in the party primary from them being nominated for that same office by another party's committee. Does Congress only pertain to section 1? Similarly this is a change too so the second section as the chair pointed out then essentially does the same thing in with regard to independent candidates so again current status right regardless and then we hit the filing deadline move which is just a filing deadline move and doesn't affect any of the substance these other provisions currently you can file a petition to run as an independent candidate and you can also appear on a major party primary ballot if you win the major party primary ballot you have to choose it's current law right now you guys know this that you can't appear as a party and an independent on the general election ballot the most common example of this of course is Senator Senator Sanders who multiple election cycles in a row runs in the democratic primary wins that primary also files a petition to run as an independent in the general election and he essentially declines the nomination of the general of the democratic party that he wins via the primary being a candidate in that ballot and then runs as an independent candidate instead this provision wouldn't preclude him or anyone else from still doing that you can still file both you file your primary petition file your independent candidate petition now with the filing deadline you'd have to do that at the same time now you can file for the primary and kind of see how that primary is going through the summer and decide whether you want to file an independent petition any time up to three days before the primary this says you basically got to put both of those in at the same time but be covered in both of those bases if you win again you have to choose between the two what this says is that if you lose the major party primary you couldn't then take up your independent petition so essentially in our office you lose that major party primary that petition is just no longer filed right you filed it back when you filed the primary petition but since you lost this provision tells me I'm not putting you on the ballot so Bernie were to lose the Democratic primary in a Senate round like he does he then couldn't follow up and run as an independent so he has to a candidate like that has to win the major party nomination in order to then decline that and appear as an independent before we move on represent a water sentence just getting a little confused because there are so many different sessions this is a lot does that apply only to state and federal elections or does that also apply to local elections state and federal there are no but that's because there are no party primaries for local elections correct the affiliations no local elections are the exception just in the piece on this particular piece and I know this may have been 8 years ago I'm sure Director Senators can remember better than I haven't talked about for a long time and I know that we didn't pass it a number of years ago I guess I just would like to certainly hear from maybe a dependent candidate certainly I have really noted and we absolutely I know too far down the hole that it's interesting because the soar-looner name tag in the past has been used to talk about the independent candidate filing deadline and what you may be thinking of there once was a day when the independent filing deadline was actually after the primary so you could straight up wait not do anything say if you won or lost the primary and then file as an independent that you still under current law if you guys did nothing that's still not on the table you have to file that independent candidate petition first but you could still you could still activate it excuse me if you lose that primary even having had to file it earlier this precludes that option so head to head to clarifying questions these provisions that are in this draft language before us they would allow somebody as you said to file a major party petition and an independent petition but if they lose a major party they can't write something just the filing of it might be under current law a major party candidate files in May how late can someone wait that's considering to file as an independent under current law it's the Thursday before the primary Thursday before the primary so we're into late July early August representative so in this case if this were to pass why would anybody file for a major party and an independent at the same time in May knowing that if they lose the major party they can't run as an independent anyway am I missing something here it's the director sending me he more coffee this morning gave was Senator Sanders so he prefers to be on the ballot as an independent caucuses with the Democrats he wants the Democratic nomination he sought that for several election cycles but in this instance if he wants to have being independent on the ballot he would have to file a vote and the major party nomination then decline it and use the independent but if he lost the major party nomination he wouldn't be able to be on the ballot at all so if he wants to be an independent on the ballot and also sort of get the nod of a major party that candidate has to file a vote it is an unusual thing I don't know if too many folks were doing that but around the country there are some examples Senator for me and Senator for Brian but that's really the only really like person specific candidate specific it's actually I would say that the functional thing about this and is more about any candidate having to choose which path they're taking as opposed to filing to try to hedge this is about for me then the reason I'm supporting this language up for discussion it's about the integrity of what it means to run with a major party if you're truly running as an independent candidate the ballot access is open to you and you should do that and if you're running as a major party candidate but this thing of being able to kind of see which way the wind is blowing and then file late as an independent candidate that to me reduces the integrity of what it means to be a major party candidate I get that but if you truly want to run as an independent then if you lose the nomination for a major party and can't run as an independent yeah I guess I see where you're going but I don't know I don't like supporting people into parties I think that this does the opposite but we'll have time for debate I want to get to direct your comments and clarifying questions so I saw Representative Boyd Representative James I think what I'm hearing is that if you want to be an independent candidate you just file the independent candidate form and you don't have to do anything with the parties so this is very specific that to people who want to file the independent and another major so it is very candidate specific that we're aiming this at no I would say that this happens very frequently that there's the potential for folks to try to be multiple parties and to use the cross nominations to stay on the ballot even though they lose so we'll bring people in and talk about the number of examples Representative I am I right in thinking that this assumes the intent of the person who runs as the major party with them assumes that their intent was to spoil the election potentially not that they just changed their mind and decided to run as an independent definitely a question for the folks who are proposing them but I would have that effect we'll definitely dive into that but that's I'll say it generally yes that's the intent independent candidate filing deadline is pretty straightforward moving it from the Thursday before the primary to the same day as the deadline for you all but I mentioned it briefly when I was doing the overview the other day this would in the past I said directly at one point it was after the primary the first move after that point was to this same day so it did exist as the same deadline as you all have for your primary petitions for a certain amount of time was challenged in court Tradel is the name of the case if anybody wants to look at it I can send it around but the court upheld the deadline at that point as it is here and as it was then at the same time as you all even though the court upheld the deadline ahead and moved it to the Thursday before the primary and I believe I don't want to stress my memory too much but it was mostly a discussion of convenience and allowing for somebody to decide to run as an independent between May and late July everybody I think at that time the legislature everybody everyone who voted for it clearly still wanted it to be before the primary so that there wasn't that or loser aspect of it but they decided to give independent candidates three more months to make their decision and at this point you're saying everybody chooses what they're doing as the chair said at the end of May the next section on the campaign finance limits I am not an expert in the federal campaign finance law I have to pick my battles in terms of what area of the law I become an expert in because I have so much to cover already but I am told that as the chair said federal candidates can make unlimited contributions to our state parties and currently state-wide candidates are subject to the limit of the crossed out big A the $10,000 from a single source a single source if there's no other language in there applies to a candidate now the party can only accept up to $10,000 from candidates statewide and down I'm told that they can accept unlimited contributions for federal candidates and that the goal here is to make those the same so that our state-wide candidates can also give unlimited contributions to the state party and I would encourage you know bring in the folks we'll put a pin in this but I will just tell you that the intention of state-wide candidate for a major party only being able to contribute $10,000 to their political party creates some very perverse things with trying to get coordination between state-wide candidates and that hard limitation is interesting if you think about like just a software license to use a platform from a major party it can be in excess of $10,000 and so you know it does a statewide candidate buying the major party's preferred software vendors license constitute a single source and I mean this this cap is create some weird stuff that we're going to hear from so we'll put a pin in it for now but I just wanted to say that on its face are like unlimited contributions but there's a method behind that that actually I think promotes transparency and representation I'd like to get a little more explanation maybe later on a political party shall not accept contributions from a political party that seems like my favorite phrase in the session a self-looking ice cream cone but that seems a little weird the parties do work together sometimes on elections I think just really quickly I think that also applies to situations where it's different levels of committees so the state committee can get to a county to state party to state party party under state law a county committee is a party as well as the state committee is a party Section 5 I want to be quick with limited time so we can get to the right end stuff the quick history here so what this said the history is the easiest way to explain this as the chair said it's sort of it's the only place where our office and the law state law Title 17 the election law really touches political parties as representative Hooper pointed out it's a general matter to the way they function the way they operate is in accordance with their bylaws and is not regulated by our laws the exception to that is the organization process every two years the state law Title 17 lays out some parameters for that organization process when the town caucuses have to happen the form of the notice for those caucuses how many people the offices they have to elect same thing for the county which happens about a month later it lays out that time process that you guys go through that excuse me the state committee is the last step two iterations of the law ago our office used to receive all of the paperwork from all of the various town committee county county committees as they organize including copies of the notice that was posted and then membership lists who was the who were the officers etc our office would house all of that and get it from all of the various individual sources and then be responsible for providing it to people who asked for that information we worked with the parties a couple of years ago it was either two or four years ago to essentially streamline that for us and it's been really really successful for our office that's the way I would put it essentially instead of those town and county committees sending their paperwork to us we directed them to send it up to the state committee of their own party then when the state committee organized part of I think the idea behind us getting the paperwork to begin with was for the few places in the law where I mentioned it requires that you organize in 30 towns across a certain number of counties the implication was that we were doing that analysis and making sure that you had met those thresholds as the organization process went through so we changed it to say file with the state party they make the assessment of whether they've met the minimums that are required and then we essentially turned it into a statement when they filed a certificate of organization that says we've organized in the following counties and towns we've met the threshold and we're all good but the information about the membership on those committees was housed is currently housed by the state parties an unintended consequence I think of that is of course that that information all of the information about who were on these various committees at various levels for the parties is all about public information since it's filed with the state committee they're not obligated to share it with anybody so I believe the intent here is to again make that information public and accessible from our office and in discussions with the parties we decided that what would be easiest we don't we didn't want to go all the way back to us accepting all the paperwork from all the various county committees so instead it flows up to the state party and when they file their certificate of organization with us at the end of the process they just give us a single document as this says here with all the information for their county and town committee members so that somebody can come to our office and say can you tell me who's on the Orange County Democratic committee and we can provide that information I just wanted to give you a heads up before we get to this but I wanted to do something a little unusual and before we dive back into the writing pieces I'll have Representative Bren come up and talk about H-140 kind so we can have both his comments and ideas that might be a little different than our writing language sure whatever you'd like so the next section section six is where you get into the dual nominations this says that a person can only have one party listed by their name on the general election ballot it tells them that they have to let us know which party they would like by ten days after the primary which at this point is the same time when they just have to tell us the order that they would like if they may have gotten nominated by more than one day I just pointed out also it says if they don't notify our office of which party they would like we're going to default to the one in which they were printed on the ballot and it does go to exactly the scenario that the chair pointed out which would be that you appear on one major party's ballot by your petition but then you get enough write-in votes from another party to qualify for that office you then should and do have the option to choose which of those two you want but if you don't get around to telling our office by ten days after the primary that never happens we always hear from people about what order they want their parties in or whether they're declining a nomination or not I can't think of a time, an instance when we had to default to what this all of the stricken through language is is if dual nominations are allowed of course then we have to think about we have to have some direction in the law about what order to put those in and that's what was written here stricken out in the case that you're not allowing dual nominations we're not in that position anymore and it becomes more simple to just say we're going to use the party that you were on the primary ballot for trying to recall some of the questions that were going around during your discussion of these dual nominations really quickly number one before representative Waters Evans had pointed it out we had the move also in my notes for the reference to the town clerk we saw that just yesterday and the deal there is that we have all of the information at this point for candidates going on the general election ballot there's no point in them telling the town clerk they need to tell our office at that point so we remove the town clerk from those from that language again I'm trying to remember some of the questions that came up but as the chair pointed out we will have plenty of time one of the biggest things with this was just the idea of what's the work of operation so if we decided to go down this road and somebody was written in under another major party so they had one, two nominations what happens then your understanding I think is the same as mine that the candidate would get to choose which party's nomination they would have printed if we were only on one but that if they didn't choose then the party they filed under originally would be the default we got there it was a little convoluted but we got there then moving on if we don't have questions right now on that one section eight I can quickly touch on which is the demographic information I want to point out just so the first section that is addressed with this demographic collection is for is in the nomination chapter for the primary so it applies to all of you from state rep up through the statewide offices this is when you're filing your petitions with the rep district clerk or the senate district clerk or your office for statewide candidates and so it's just when you're filing that consent consent form along with your petitions it's collecting this additional demographic information it makes really clear that you do not have to provide it in order for you to name to appear on the ballot which was important to us to just be able to clearly answer that question for the folks and you all know that after those that paperwork gets filed with our office this is something we can discuss and talk about how what your preference is here our office then posts a list of candidates, candidate listing for the primary and we provide on that listing all the information that you all provide on your consent forms it's highly sought after information to be able to reach out to you all by citizens and interest groups alike and so as this is currently written I just envision an additional three columns on that spreadsheet indicating the answers to these questions by the candidates so you get the candidate name and the demographic information I hadn't heard discussion about whether we do or do not want to provide that information for individual candidates like that whether it's we only want it to be aggregated that's going to take a dive into the public records law because once you provide this information to my office it's public if somebody demands it and I need to have a legal reason why I can't provide it so that would be a project for lech council to look into I believe if there's concern about that. Yeah I think let's we're not moving so fast that I think there's a need to send him on a while because Jayce at this point so I would say at this point your understanding is if we do move forward with having this data be on the forums then the candidates would need to understand that that data their self-declared identifying demographic data would be made public and if they didn't want to be made public they just would need to omit that data on the forum that would be the default for the public and if there either is already or there were to be created an exemption in the public record law for it that would mean we can only provide it in an aggregated form I would want to and need to think further about whether the responsibility for aggregating that data is something our office wants to be responsible for on an ongoing basis. But to be clear your office is comfortable with the language as it's presented here because you're just collecting it and making it available. The second section nine is sure oh that's just the consent form itself where it's referred to so we want to make sure that this was referenced there also and then section ten is local elections that's right and what I want to make clear here is that as you can see the current language what's stricken through there stricken through stricken through excuse me the town clerks are currently required to provide us a listing of all the select board members and we post that on our website if you look on the local elections part of my website there's a spreadsheet right now with the names and addresses of all the select board members across the state we currently are required to collect select board members and justice of the peace candidates we have listings for both of those that seemed like the appropriate place to collect and present this demographic information for local candidates which the people interested also wanted to be able to collect and so when the clerks continue to report to us and we collected after town meeting so everybody's elected annual meetings late March early April we sent around a survey to the clerks to collect the information about their select board members and again I envision there's just three or four columns on that spreadsheet for the select board members and I did add to be your city councils village trustees and mayors are also included I wanted to look back at our list before I came out I didn't get a chance I think as a matter of practice we get those mostly from the towns that have a council and select board they send us that information even now this makes that more clear and that just says that we'll collect and present that same demographic data when discussing this with Carol she wanted to be really clear and I think it was a good idea that we have an affirmative statement that the clerk isn't required to ask the candidate for information and follow up so really specifically you know it's clear it's not required but if the clerk gets the consent form sees that those fields are empty they're not responsible for following up with the candidate and saying hey do you want to tell me your gender and age and the other pieces that are asked for here so we're comfortable with those two provisions also think about and address the aggregation versus not disclosure of the information so for right in candidates it's right this is probably this is not probably this is the biggest change in the administration of elections that's contained in the bill it's something the clerks have advocated for for many years now let Carol touch on that piece under current law 22 so and the way this is structured it's a little difficult without the whole body of the law to look at right the way these bills are there's three different sections here about the requirement to file the paperwork and as the chair pointed out it's for the primary election then the general election and local elections for them primary general local and presidential primary then the 2587 that's referred to in kind of each of these where the filing is required you'll see section 11 is in order to have them count recorded under 2587 2587 that's a general rule in the conduct of elections chapter about how you count votes so what I'd like to do if you have time to stick around is to invite represent Brennan to come up and talk about each 149 which I think has very significant overlap with this language and I'd like to get his perspective and take and see if there are best of both worlds or if we should kind of go in one direction or the other but I think just at this point I might have you all switch we'll drill a brief break and then we'll come back and dive in and I really appreciate Carol's patience while we had this expansive conversation about this and we'll have her in after the break as well but thanks Carol really really appreciate you being with us this morning Representative Brennan please tell us a little bit about age 149 and this is available as introduced just came across at the perfect time Representative Brennan cut off the press for the record Pat Brennan Representative from Colchester and I was hoping to hear a little bit more of that bill and I thought he was going to do all my work for me hopefully but what my bill does it's a result I should tell you of a conversation with my town clerk the hallway conversation where I asked her what can I do for you this year any wishes any wants and this was it so basically I won't say it's simple but it's a what it does is require a writing candidate to file a consent form to be a writing candidate excuse me so so that I guess when the town clerk does count write-ins it's quite an onerous procedure time consuming takes two people so her idea in consultation with the Ledge Council was to have the candidate in the primary in the general in local elections file a consent form in the Secretary of State in the case of the primary in general no later than 5 p.m. on the second Friday preceding that election same for the any local election you would have to file the municipal clerk so that's the crux of the whole conversation and I can tell you I'll read you a little excerpt from my town clerk first hand counting and listing a writing name with a team of at least two election officials on election night second is completing official reporting within the Vermont election management system this entails entering every name into the software with related number of votes the majority of these writing names only receive one vote and she goes on but that is the general concept of the bill so for Colchester anyway in the August election we had 324 names just in Colchester that had to be manually with two people entered into the scissors separate distinctive names separate distinctive names and then another 428 in general so she said she spent more time 428 than the whole rest of the election tabulations and this bill done through the same section of law I believe you got 2587 so Representative Bren thank you so much for coming in I did not know this bill was coming to us and some folks from the various clerks have something like this and so I had included a version of some of this I think one of the key differences as I'm reading it right in the language that we were just looking at the sections of our I don't like to use the word on this but our committee elections package that I put on the table this morning for the first time it does the 5pm deadline 2 Fridays previous to the election for the primaries the generals and the presidential primary but for the municipal elections it makes it just that you have to file your writing by the closing polls so it has that one difference I think from your language I don't necessarily think the 5 days for the local elections was a request of hers I think it's a drafting thing I'm sure she'd be open to to anything that makes it better for her I don't think it has to be 2 Fridays before the local election oh okay, yep, alright I mean it is that in the bill but I don't think she's married to that that's what we have on ours for the three other big elections but the local elections biostream about letting it be closer to the the day I'm sure it would be amenable to that it's clearly an idea that is in the clerks for my clerks universe yes, for representation not for anybody else in the room do clerks start counting before 5pm ever? so the my understanding is so we should talk to the director sending about this one back after our break about the order of operations but there's the consent form coming in 5pm is different than the close of the polls that's in our local language I think we might want to ask Will about those distinctions but this is very timely representation Brian, I appreciate you I feel lucky thank you so much for doing this so what I'd like to do now is give the committee a 10 minute break because we've been going for a while come back and hear from Carol Dawes and then wrap up with Will and that'll get us the lunch so we'll take 10 minutes we can go off on that Carol, I really very much appreciate your patience we're back for the second installment of the committee great we are live I want the ground this is part of it so yes, this is our second half of the house government operations there's committee this morning February 2nd Carol Dawes of the Vermont Municipal Courts and Treasures Association is here and I think you've been with us during our discussion of the proposed committee bill language very different elections items I'd love to hear your testimony and feedback on that we're not hearing you in the room Carol hold on one second it must be on I think it's on your end I'm un-muted, are you hearing anything? there we go, we're hearing you now I'm just going to turn you up we're the city clerk and treasurer we're the legislative committee for the clerk and treasurer's association so what's your pleasure do you want to go back to the elections bill the committee bill or should we continue on H-149? so I would say that I wanted to get H-149 on the table but it seems to have an enormous amount of overlap at least in its goals and so I'm going to focus on the committee bill language I think at this point because that's what I'm more familiar with but the spirit of 149 aligned with what we were discussing in those sections I feel there are a couple differences between the committee bill and H-149 and I will point them out as we get to there committee bill the only two sections the only two areas that really touch upon clerks is the candidate demographic information the right in information and with regards to the candidate demographic information as Mr. Sending said the clerks already report information to the secretary of state's office so filling in a couple more columns on a spreadsheet is not an additional burden to us my only concern and they addressed it in the most recent revision is I didn't want there to be a responsibility on the clerks behalf to collect or pester candidates for the information if the candidate chooses not to provide that information we'll report what we've got and that's it and the bill is now changed to reflect that with regards to the right in candidate registration as has been mentioned this is something that the association has been pushing for a number of years I was pleased that the numbers from his Colchester clerk so that my numbers are not the only ones that you're going to have as an example for the 2022 primary here in very city 12 different names on the August primary elections all of which we had to individually tally enter into the system they represented 522 votes for those 212 different people the highest vote getter was governor Scott who was written in 69 times on the democratic ballot as a candidate for governor and the vast majority of the write-ins that we see for primary are those kinds of votes where the voter doesn't understand the primary process and they feel limited in their ability to vote for the candidates they're interested in voting for so they write them in on the opposite party and we have to tally all of those of the I just ask you to clarify and I also think representative Hango has a clarifying question so when you say that it seems like the voter doesn't understand the primary process could you maybe elaborate on what your understanding of what the purpose of the primary process is I know I'm asking a really loaded question so if you want to I want to just lay that out there and you can tell me what you'd like to say okay so I would say and this is my personal opinion that the purpose of the primary is for local communities to do the work of the parties but besides that it's to obviously help decide who the candidates are going to be for the statewide and federal offices it's challenging for the voter is they're used to looking at the general election ballot where they're not beholden to a particular party where they can vote their choice for their candidates regardless of party and they like the option of being able to move around to different parties and they don't have that option on the primary because they don't understand the primaries are complicated in that people don't understand that they're helping one party make selections for candidates they get all these ballots they're told they can only vote one of them and they say but I want one from column A and one from column B how do I do that and so quite frequently people will take whatever one of the three ballots and they will write in all their choices regardless of party and they don't understand that what they're doing is they're writing those people in to be the party candidate for that particular office it's something that clerks across the state spend a lot of time trying to do voter education on but it continues to be a challenge for us and it is reflected very heavily in the writings that we have to challenge I have a question I don't know if it's a question more than just to add a different perspective than the one that you're bringing you're obviously seeing it from a political party standpoint that the parties are trying to get their candidates lined up but from an average voter who I've spoken with many from their perspective they feel like okay this I have to choose one ballot and it's for one particular political party right in the primary so if my preferred candidate doesn't happen to be on that ballot either I leave it blank or I vote for somebody that I really don't want to vote for so that's why they're writing it in on that particular ballot because they want their candidate that they like to be in the general election regardless of what party they belong to and I actually feel very strongly about that that people have that choice and by allowing write-ins they're allowed that choice if I may I don't think that what Representative Hango is saying is inconsistent with what our clerk here is saying which is that there appears to be out in the public that desire to say I want to support this person but if the purpose of the primary is to nominate the candidate for a specific party and you are putting the individual you want to win the election on the ballot for a party's primary that they have no affiliation with that is some confusion so I think we're talking about the same thing but approaching it from two different perspectives and this exact thing is something I wanted to get out on the table with this bill so I'm so glad to be having this conversation so can I just add one more thing I don't think it's a misunderstanding on people's part I think it's a deliberate choice that people are making and that is why I don't want to see the multi-party affiliation go away so I've laid that on the table okay interesting Representative Hoover and Representative Nugent and I want to make sure we're leaving time for Carol to talk about things because we're going to have time to debate these things I think I agree with a lot of stuff Representative Hangler, I've talked to a lot of people to polls who thought I am a Democratic ballot but I like Phil Scott so I'm going to write Phil Scott in and his name will then be associated with that vote when they count I'm completely totally wrong but I think that's a perception in a lot of people that you can vote outside the name of the ballots and it will actually get credited to the candidate that is a confusion that I think is common that's a good flag first interview yeah I just wanted to I guess piggyback on what Representative Hangler was saying that I think people are a lot smarter than we may give them credit for and to me it's so helpful in this era where we have so few ways to really understand individual choices and media is so national and we're losing that connection that polling is hard to get that information that's one of the few things that we can see how voters are actually feeling what they really want and it's I think just good data for everybody to see where people are at with that yeah so I think what I want to park and get back to Carol's testimony is the primary righted a true expression of what the primary is there for which is to select the nominees or are some of the ideas that are being thrown on the table today suggesting that we should that you would prefer that we have fully open primaries regardless of party and so I think there's a tension between between these ideas and so I want to park them and come back to them so that we can get to talking about the little boards on the page but I'll give one last comment and then we're going to return to Ms. Dawes' testimony just to muddy the waters even more California and Washington consider their primaries open but it's called top two tier representative Byron just put a sticky note next to me that said jungle driver so I just want to let everybody know at home that we do not have any bill proposed and we're not talking about jungle primaries today but it gets at the thing that we're talking about and the clerks and traders association might have a lot to say if we went to a top two those are totally open primaries but we're talking about the whole spectrum of options we are talking about the philosophical underpinnings that would lead one to support that policy versus some of the things we have today or have on the page so thank you very much Carol for indulging us oh I'm sorry I see your coat I'm on this now oh no that is not your fault that's mine I will say that I have a lot of conversations with voters about what it is that they're doing in the primary and what they want to do and I completely agree with the comments about voters wanting to be able to express their choices but then having them understand that with the primary system in the ballots the way they are now any name that they write onto a particular ballot is going to be considered a vote for that person in that political party and there is that's where the misunderstandings tend to happen but we would love to see some kind of a way to have the the write-ins contained by the consent of candidate forms or some way so that as I said you heard what Colchester's numbers are you heard what Berry City's numbers are and in addition to the ones where the 69 people who did write in still start on the Democratic ballot there are huge numbers of them that are people just writing in their own names or writing in their best friend's name or whatever because they want to see that name reflected on a final report and be able to say look they got a vote and it seems like it would be great to have a way to avoid that sort of the need to tally those kinds of those kinds of votes the language in section 12, no 13 starting in 14 which is specific to local elections and this is one of the big differences between H149 and the committee bill is that for local elections the submission of some kind of consent form would be needed until closing polls on election day. The reason behind that for local elections is we've as we brought this forward over the last several years we heard and it was mentioned earlier today we heard a lot of talk about the sort of grassroots process that can happen around town meeting elections as an example where there's a vacancy on the school board and a group of people have talked you know been talking with Bob Smith who says yeah I'll throw my hat in the ring and so there's a people who are working to get Bob Smith written in on the ballot on town meeting day and that's the reason why we propose the language to have the consent form right up until close because those grassroots efforts can happen on the day or the day before town meeting and so giving an opportunity to have that process play out but then have the clerks have the official names as it were by closing polls so we know what the names are that we should be telling that we should be on the lookout for. So that's the main reason why the difference in dates between the state federal elections and the local elections. Are there other questions on writing stuff? So my overarching question before we go to another one in the room is is it your position in the position of the association that you support the language as it is in the committee bill draft that we've been discussing. Great. Thank you. I have a couple questions. I don't know if this is the time or place or person to ask but I'm wondering if there is a historical context for write-ins and how that concept was introduced in the first place. Has it been going on forever? I don't know the history of write-ins. We have a ballot, a framed ballot on the wall here in the office from the late 1800s and it has a space on it for write-ins. I'm assuming that they have been around for a long time. All right. And my other question and I am not being flippant in any way. So you guys worked so, so hard and I get it and I've talked in my town about it too, about how the write-ins are a problem. But is there a problem other than the fact that it just takes time and is annoying? Like, do you know what I mean? I don't want to be rude but you know my question is I totally understand that it takes as long as it does to count the regular votes and nobody wants to be writing down a Buzz Lightyear on the candidate form or whatever. But I'm just wondering if there's any other issue of greater significance that it presents within the parameters of time and irritation. Thank you. Okay. First of all, thankfully we don't have to write Buzz Lightyear down. Okay.  I moved back to random down because they can't firm as a city councilor and there is a problem. So we don't have to write telling those. And certainly there is component of it as far as the time necessary is a very long day. But the bigger concern is you know what is the value to cataloging all these different names and votes. Particularly when it's clear that there are many of them most of them are just somebody who's wanting to I mean I think people as they're leaving the polls going hang on I wrote you down with Dave Fragerer just because they wanted to put it in there. And you know to me there is little value of cataloging those while if we established a way to clarify who's a legitimate writer candidates were and be able to codify those, count those votes we still would count the writings added. This is one of the differences between age 149 and the committee bill is that the committee bill says they still would be counted as writers. They would be, I think the term was generic but they at least would be counted as writers. They just wouldn't be listed in the bill whereas in age 149 it just says they would be counted as writers. It does in sense that they should be acknowledged as writing votes but there doesn't need to be the longer list of the different individual names. Rosa and Hango were you dying? I just wanted a definition of that term generic writings because the attorney wasn't sure of the actual definition and town clerks kind of use that term so it's just they're not listed by name they're just counted and we had 10 writings today. That's a generic write-in. Yeah, it would be an example at town meeting if I had three people turn in consent form saying I am running as a write-in candidate for school board and for city council and we then during tallying of the ballots we had 50 write-ins and 30 of them were for the named candidates we would put the ballots, put accounts for those named candidates under write-ins and then we would put all other write-in whether we use the term generic or other or unnamed or some other term that identifies that they are also write-ins but they haven't been sort of authorized by the consent of candidate forms. What another way to say that is that if we passed this language that there would be potential for candidates who had done the consent they would be counted and their vote totals of their write-ins with their name would be in the report but that all other write-ins would just be kind of lumped in as write-ins, generic generic write-ins as just the total of write-ins regardless of names and you for instance gave the example of a few hundred votes of that represented a couple hundred candidate names so that the sort of average was one or two votes per candidate named and that all of those would just be lumped in as one line and so they're listing out the two hundred names. Which seems to make more sense the H-149 that if they're not if they haven't gone through the sort of consent process to be named write-in candidate those write-in votes would just be considered blank. It does make sense to acknowledge that people did take the time to write-in rather than just leave the plank and that would be part of our tallying at the end of the day. Representative Nugent has a question. I don't I'm wondering I guess if this is common because I just being like a data nervy and how we have a lot of in some of the higher the state level elections there were quite a few people in the primary democratic and so I was curious to see like the vote tallying and when I looked at that there were a lot of write-ins for like the people who didn't win the primary but and you know wouldn't have I don't think put themselves on the ballot but I just I think that's kind of interesting and helpful to see where people are at and I thought I saw like many write-ins for the same candidates for some of those statewide elections like the Attorney General, Secretary of State and the Governor of these kind of things. Any other questions for Clerk Dawes? Carol, feel free to stick around I think we're going to invite Will back up for the end of the elections division comments and walked around the sections that he wasn't able to cover everybody's been very patient with me trying to roll out all of this so if you want to hang in the room please feel welcome to listen in and you may be able to chime in with some supportive comments I dare with Will's bad cleanup here Will did speak late yesterday afternoon and the draft of the bill as it currently exists certainly reflects the comments that he and I and the conversation he and I had yesterday so as I said the association supports the draft as currently I am going to in the background and listen but I have to start proofing my town leading ballots so I appreciate you being here during this busy time thank you thanks Carol thank you so much for being patient with us excuse me and I think maybe we'll pick up there on the right-hand section while it's fresh in folks heads and I can respond to a few questions as Carol mentioned the H-149 and is based on my first glance at it similarly legislation that was introduced a couple years ago two or four years ago and also included that language where write and vote excuse me for people who had not filed the form would be counted as blank I can't remember if that language came from our office or not but I have rethought that since then and feel like it is a better approach to report them as write-ins we use the word generic in here that can change if people don't like that and it was sort of that was my last minute move with Tim the point is what you were discussing though is that you would still have a row on the results spreadsheet that is write-ins that weren't that hadn't registered and I think it's valuable information for people to know the general quantity of votes that are being written in versus left blank I think there is a distinction there in what the voters communicating to put a fine point on that I hope everyone appreciates we keep really close track in elections and results of elections so for instance what I'm talking about is we know how many ballots were cast in each town or in each district and what we look for on the official returns of votes that the clerks filed is that the bottom lines reflect that number that means that you have a full accounting of the votes cast in each of those races of each ballot I don't know that that's the practice everywhere and it's interesting it's a distinction in how the votes are counted here at the legislature for some of the statewide offices to be frank if you do it the way we do it which is make sure you account for every single ballot you have the categories we have are candidate names write-ins blanks overvotes and that leads to a total could you define overvote for the uninitiated overvotes of somebody who marks more ovals than candidates to be elected in a certain race most of our races are vote for one the statewide offices to say you vote for two gubernatorial candidates the people counting your vote can't make a judgment about which of those was the intended vote they can't pick out of the two you marked so what do they do with that they say it's an overvote and in a vote for one race you record one overvote there because you would expect one vote to be cast for that race on that ballot and for instance a vote for two race in one of your districts if somebody then goes ahead and votes for three candidates same you can't choose which two out of the three they meant that's reported on the official return of votes as two in the overvote column actually because you would expect to have two candidate votes above and that's how if you look at their official returns of voting we tear our hair out in the week after the election when we're talking about results processing making sure that the bottom lines in each of those races add up to the same thing most of the time it's actually not it's that accounting for overvotes that throws those off so that's what we're talking about when we're talking about here it's just which of those categories that votes in I think why it's why the term blank came through because in the same bill some provisions that did pass in that bill in the past this is what Carol is referring to where we finally said that the fictitious names and the names of dead persons should be counted as blanks that's current law and is in there so if they come across the A. Lincoln or Mickey Mouse or the other guy those go in as blanks but it leads to that same accounting that ballot that vote has to count for so that's what we're talking about here is if somebody didn't file how are we going to report that vote and have the bottom line totals still continue to line up for each of the races and I think instead of calling them blanks it makes sense to have a line for writings that haven't filed and so just as Carol described you're going to have your named candidates on the ballot you're going to have any registered writing candidate names in their totals write-ins be it if we call them other write-ins generic write-ins, unfiled write-ins and then blanks and overflows that way people looking at the results have a general idea of how many write-ins were cast in a given race that weren't just blank votes people skipping over it more importantly what I want to make sure the committee understands and call your attention to places, we talked about the four elections that are being addressed here presidential primary, statewide primary general election, local elections in two of those the primary election and local elections there is a minimum threshold requirement for write-ins primary you have to to get written in I believe you have to have one half of the number that are on the petition and in locals it's 30 or 40% of the checklist, whichever is less the most important thing I think that the committee should consider and I'd be really curious Carol's opinion on this too as I talk it through is whether someone who failed to register as a write-in candidate with these new deadlines two Fridays before the election should still be able to become be declared the winner if they were to receive enough votes for the minimum thresholds the way the language is currently written in both cases is no that is certainly the easier way to administer it for the clerks because then again they get their list of names and those are the only names that they're paying attention to how many votes are cast for that person if you kind of went with if you wanted to go with a middle ground where you said in general we're just going to report the names of candidates who have filed beforehand the vast majority in the general election context and the presidential primary context you're really just talking about saving the clerks a massive headache of reporting names the ballots are full of names the minimum thresholds don't matter because even if they cross those thresholds there's going to be so many fewer votes than many of the named candidates those thresholds exist in the primary and in local elections because it's so much more likely that there's going to be an open nobody file for a certain office we talked about the Republican and progressive primaries where there's many many offices that are empty and don't have candidates filed that's where those thresholds become important but when I think this through in my head that middle ground reduces a lot of the positive impact of this for the clerks because it means that their counters still have to be paying attention and counting really carefully adding up the vote totals of the various names that they see in those instances to see whether or not they would cross the threshold I could see a version of this bill that says you don't have to report any names in any of these instances like we have it unless a person would cross the threshold and I've thought through in a race for an office that had no named candidates that could kind of target the attention of the clerks so in this empty race you want to make sure you're counting and seeing if anybody hits the threshold a cleaner way and I think it still makes sense to me and I still support it as it's written it's just to say if you even want to qualify for those thresholds you got to think ahead and file two Fridays before the election and the clerks really don't even have to keep track of adding up the totals that might be written in for one name by two or three times unless they're registered they're just putting that in the writing column I just thought that was important to point out I didn't cross over it as we're having the discussion and the polls deadline for the local elections gets at that issue to an extent to an extent still if somebody missed by the close of the polls there's an empty office of your local ballot which is pretty common and somebody didn't reach the threshold somebody reached the threshold excuse me but hadn't filed by the close of the polls as it's written right now they wouldn't take that office so what if there was an empty position with nobody on the ballot and only five people bothered to write in somebody and they all wrote in the same person would that position just not be filled? pretty common to come out of local elections with certain positions this is a question that we're bumping up against time this is definitely one that we need to think through I wonder if Carol has any initial reaction if she could do this to her but we could take that another time since you had asked Will sorry are you asking me for something different yeah Carol so Will had brought up the idea of a threshold for writing candidates even if they didn't file and if that would sort of negate the virtue of the system that is envisioned in this draft language I can sort of see a middle ground of a middle ground depending on whether it's the kind of as an example I have a two-person legislative district in Berry City so I would know whether I had anybody who had the requisite 25 signatures if it sticks with half of the petition amount I would know for a local election if I might have that number but one of the offices for election where you aggregate numbers across legislative districts or counties or statewide obviously it becomes a bigger a bigger issue so I think it's worth having some additional think time around it it's a very good point Carol thank you I don't want to brainstorm in front of the committee but that might be addressed by if it were limited to scenarios where there were no candidate on the ballot and then we could have all the clerks that are counting votes for that given office that's empty be aware of the need to at that point though you're back to basically reporting the totals for everybody but only in that race I think that's worth so I just want to for ten more legislative councils for everybody I think the next iteration was talking about this I'd like us all to think through if there's no candidate on the ballot a threshold where it would make sense because that seems to me to be a middle ground unless there's something I'm missing but I'd say keep in mind the filing deadline for the primaries where this is going to be an issue is in late May and you have two and a half months to file this right in Canada for the parties themselves to identify an empty office figure out somebody who they want to be their right in candidate for that office and file the much cleaner approach is what's here and the much more easy for the clerks to follow and not to have to be thinking about these various exceptions to the rule just keep in mind the amount of time that people have to figure it out and get this right in paperwork file I'm very supportive of the idea that we probably want to be electing people who know that they're a candidate for office and have thought through at least a week and a half before the election that's me we should really talk about that haha um so we have had quite a morning is there anything else Will that you'd like to tell us about the first pass on this draft language in the next few weeks now I am brainstorming in front of you but another option could be just to put in folks heads picking elections here this is a serious problem in the presidential primary that raises none of these other issues you don't have to report those names to anybody who doesn't register for the presidential primary there's always a full slate of candidates there's no minimum threshold same thing for the general election we could think about whether there's a special rule or an exception in the primary so just for folks who may not have been involved in a lot of the primary elections if we get into a situation with the primary election and there's no name on the ballot for a party what's the current procedure generally that happens when there's a new candidate for one of the major parties people write in whoever they choose to write in if anyone and there's a minimum threshold to win and then above that it's who gets more so let's just say hypothetically it's house race and minimum threshold 25 signatures 25 votes because it's a 50 signature threshold and 20 people write in John Doe so he doesn't quite make the threshold what's the mechanism the party wanted to make John Doe the nominee for that party on the general election they can just caucus and do that pretty quickly right after the primary but yes that's one of the reasons by which a party committee can nominate as failure to elect failure to nominate so the primary election itself is the only opportunity for a certain morning I believe on that I think the process is by understanding correctly that they have to have a duly warned properly warned meeting to conduct that business correct and it's um depending on the office as much committee conducts that thank you state committee state offices county offices well thank you very much Carol thank you this has been a highly educational morning we got a lot out onto the table it's kind of to be for that I know that we have we're switching gears this afternoon and tomorrow on other topics but we'll be coming back I think Tuesday afternoon to take a look and hearing from some other voices on a couple of these issues specifically attention at this point we'll be getting an agenda out for next week back tomorrow it's one of the most challenging things to figure out here but um yeah I will be seeing everybody back here this afternoon I think we're on at one o'clock we'll be talking about the sports weight training and with some experts on probably gambling so totally over topic this afternoon thank you very much everybody we'll be going on