By Rob Roper
As Vermonters cast their votes around the state this Town Meeting week, I want to bring attention to the issue of ballot integrity — and Vermont’s complete lack of it when it comes to voting by mail.
During the Covid 19 lockdown election of 2020 Vermont experimented with a policy of mailing “live” ballots to all registered voters regardless of request, with some exceptions for cases where the voter has been formally “challenged” as being illegitimate. In 2021 the legislature made this experimental policy the official way of conducting elections from now on, despite major problems around the ability to detect absentee ballot fraud if and when it occurs.
To be clear: there are now zero security measures in place that would allow an election official to independently verify that a vote-by-mail ballot was filled out by the person to whom the votes are being attributed.
In other words, if I somehow get hold of your ballot by accident (it shows up in my mailbox instead of yours) or by theft (I take your ballot out of your mailbox) or even by mutual but illegal consent (I buy your ballot from you and/or your neighbors) our election officials have no way of knowing or even suspecting that any of this is happening, let alone the ability to track down such fraud, catch and prosecute the offenders.
The only hint that something is wrong would be if I got your ballot, cast it in your name, and you showed up at the polls and protested that you had not, in fact, voted. In that case, if the officials believe you and you get to cast a vote anyway, my original fraudulent vote still cannot be removed from the final vote count in the election, and there is still no way for them to catch me.
If this sounds too ridiculous to be true, don’t take my word for it. During 2021 testimony over S.15, which would become Vermont’s election law, Act 60 (that number has no good associations, does it?), Vermont’s Director of Elections, Will Senning, testified that in a cases where one person filled out someone else’s mailed ballot and sent it in, “It’s likely that that ballot will get processed, and [the person whose vote was stolen] would be checked off the checklist as having voted.”
Asked a similar question, Montpelier City Clerk and later a candidate for Secretary of State John Odum admitted, “The short answer to the question is, no, we can’t necessarily stop them [from committing fraud].”
Carol Dawes, the Barre City Clerk, confessed, “At this stage of the game there isn’t any way in our current system that would preclude somebody from … voting on behalf of someone who doesn’t want to vote. … That is an opportunity that’s out there.”
Well, it shouldn’t be an opportunity that’s out there, should it? Because bad actors take advantage of such opportunities, especially when there is zero chance of getting caught.
So, when S.15/Act 60 passed, Republicans on the Government Operations Committee agreed to vote ‘yes’ on the bill in exchange for a provision that would mandate that the Secretary of State’s office do a thorough study into what security measures could be brought to bear to eliminate this danger in future elections. That section reads:
On or before January 30, 2023, the Secretary of State’s office shall submit a written report to the House and Senate Committees on Government Operations with its findings and any recommendations for legislative action on:… (3) implementing a voter verification system in Vermont that will not disenfranchise voters and that will verify that ballots have been voted by registered voters, including a report back on the time, training and cost involved in implementing the system or systems.
The reader might have noticed that the report on ballot security suggestions was due after the 2022 election took place, which is a case of only thinking about possibly shutting the barn door after the horse has escaped. So, this was pretty weak tea to begin with.
But, even so, on January 31 I emailed Director Senning with a request to see the report his office was required by law to produce. His response:
I have requested, and received from the Gov Ops chairs, an extension of the deadline to file the report until next Monday (2/6). I will certainly provide you a link or a copy of the report when it has been submitted. — Will
I suspect that week extension after having had twenty months to research and write the report was necessary because then Secretary of State, Jim Condos, completely blew it off. The thirteen-page report that emerged on the February 6, less than four pages of which was dedicated to ballot security, looked like it was written by an ill prepared high school student pulling an all-nighter on a subject for which they never went to class or cracked a textbook.
After reading the report, which basically said signature verification is a cumbersome, expensive, and unreliable security measure, I responded to Senning:
Hi Will, Thanks again for sending along your report on election security for mail in ballots. I think your office did not do the task asked of you by the legislature. You were not asked to give solely an analysis of signature verification, but rather to present “findings and recommendations for legislative action on… implementing a voter verification system in Vermont that will not disenfranchise voters and that will verify that ballots have been voted by registered voters including a report back on the time, training and cost involved in implementing the system or systems.”
I asked if anything had occurred to change his testimony from 2021 regarding lack of security, and I asked if the office had done any outreach to town clerks or other election officials about their experiences in 2022 in preparing the report. That was February 10. Here we are nearly a month later and, though Senning has emailed me twice to apologize for not having got back to me with an answer, I still have not received an answer.
The Republicans I reached out to — the ones who traded their votes in order to get this security study provision into the law in the first place — privately expressed concern about the lack of seriousness with which the Secretary of State’s office took this legal requirement. However, as of this writing they have not made any formal demand that the new Secretary of State, Sarah Copland-Hanzas, who before her election to higher office chaired the Government Operations Committee that helped write S.15, fulfill this promise and comply with the law by doing a legitimate study into ballot security measures. Nor have they made any public statement of outrage at having been lied to — by people who insist an honor code is all we need to ensure valid elections, which is kind of ironic, is it not?
If we are going to change the way we cast ballots — by mail instead of in person — we also need to change the ways we maintain ballot integrity in order to ensure that one-person-one-vote is actually what is taking place. Small communities where the Clerks “know everybody in town” is only a security measure when everybody in town shows up in front of the Clerk to cast their vote.
To be clear, I don’t necessarily have a problem with voting by mail or any other method that makes participating in elections more convenient, so long as doing so can be made fair and secure. Right now, what we have is not that. We cannot trust a system in which I get to cast my own ballot along with the four others that show up in my mailbox for the family that moved away six years ago.
But the way our elected election officials don’t seem to care and pretend this isn’t a problem makes me believe that this is not a bug in the system they’ve devised, but a feature.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. This article reprinted with permission from Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics, robertroper.substack.com
Jim Condos has left the building and a trail of destruction in his wake. Carry on or clean it up? The barn door was swung open, the horse got away, and elected officials pretending they have no idea how that door got opened or what would happen? Not only here – all across the United States. There is so much proof of conspiracy, treason, fraud, and foreign interference it would choke that horse to death. Yet here we are, the stealing continues, the process corrupted throughout, and the lies still being said and covered up with impunity. Any means necessary to win, even if it is illegal, unconstitutional, unethical and immoral – that is our election system from the top down.
I find it funny that everyone can show up in person for yesterday’s elections that involve serious issues and millions upon millions in spending but the other elections must have mail-in for those who can’t make it?
Now why would the communists in Montpelier go back to the old way of voting? They would lose their power and not be able to ram all this good communist crap down our throats. C’mon Man!
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution to establish a dictatorship”. – George Orwell
“We know no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it”. – George Orwell
Mail in voting was enacted country wide to Select and brain dead idiot who’s been a certified liar for 48 year in the swamp of DC. How else could someone who hid in his basement for most of the election cycle garner 81 million votes. The potato head’s appearances had huge crowds of 20 or less confirming his popularity./s
Mail in should be limited to those who are disabled and REQUEST a ballot and the military and overseas citizens. All others need to vote in person With ID like the rest of the world’s free counties.
Here is the straw that will break this camel’s back if VT tries to implement it. I will not comply under any circumstance.
https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/07/if-connecticut-and-washington-democrats-get-their-way-voting-will-become-mandatory/
all i can say is……..I got 2 ballots to vote in the last election. I had moved and was assured by local tc in a very small town that NO ballots would be forwarded…….well it was and i saved it in case anyone would like to see……and i cant be a 1 and done on this subject. Either CLEAN up the system you want to use for real, or go back to what worked……..
I often wonder if we are as divided as the main stream media (MSM) and national voting so called “results” would have us believe. We must have impartial news reporting and an iron-clad voting system. Given the foundation of those two things , I suspect we would be a much more united country. One timely example how misleading and outright false information has been promoted by MSM. Consider these headlines”
NBC headline: ‘QAnon Shaman,’ Capitol rioter who wore horns, pleads guilty
(name omitted) 34, was among the most well-known rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
CBS headline:”QAnon Shaman” (name omitted) sentenced to 41 months in prison for role in January 6 attack.
Wonder why the Jan 6th panel did not want surveillance video of the capital released for all to see? Maybe because it didn’t support their narrative. Footage recently released shows the dubbed :”QAnon Shaman” walking around peacefully, escorted by two Capital Police officers as if they’re giving him a private tour! Huh….did he “storm” the Capital? Was :”QAnon Shaman” attacking anyone? Did he create any damage? The video evidence does not support his jail time in my opinion, not even close. We’re being played folks.
Bob Roper,
The registered voter list should be run against a number of data bases, such as U.S. Postal Service, IRS, SSAdmin, etc., to determine who died, who moved, who is not a citizen, who is underaged, etc.
Cleaning the list and keeping it clean as we go closer to the election is vital to ensure no ballots are sent out Willy Nelly.
Another tactic is to change the zip code of selected registered voters, including those who almost never vote.
Then the mailed out ballots come back as undelivered.
An army of harvesters will descend onto the friendly post office to pick up those ballots and fill them in, as needed, to “win” close elections
That is why Biden was told to stay in the basement, because the “fix was in”
Or should we simply go back to voting in person and having folks request a mail in ballot, in addition to cleaning up voter lists.
The ballot counting centers are staffed by Dem/Progs, who have many years of “counting ballots” experience.
That staffing should be by independent neutral volunteers
All counting should be done by hand, as is done in Germany with 86 million people. Machines are not allowed, per the German Constitution
Everyone should have a voter ID card with photo, and other data, and show the card before voting, just as in Germany
Just look at the history of the mail-in ballot and ask yourself did the purported reason for this change turn out to have the expected effect? In other words did sending out mail-in ballots to whomever was on the voting rolls have any effect on the pandemic?
Now that results of mail-in ballots, lock downs, masks, school closures, the ineffective and now dangerous mRNA gene jabs are known, even a complete moron can see that the whole thing was completely unnecessary and injurious to a large swath of the population and promulgated by those who made a lot of $$$. Cui bono?
So assign mail-in ballots to the waste bin of stupidity, go back to what worked in the for oh so many decades – absentee ballots – and continue from there. It’s not like many who should have known did not know, they just chose to ignore the data and go with the political herd.
And while you’re at it, get rid of ERIC and find a working alternative.
Simple really.
But what does it matter, Mr. Roper? The “die is cast” in Vt. It is, and likely will be for a long time….uber Liberal, Uber Democrat…and strong Progressive/Socialist. It is dems and progressives who have no problem w/ voter fraud-ing….just another Saul Alinsky tactic…and it was embraced by Bernie…still is to this day…to fraud votes with out of state students acting as VT residents using an apartment address (not dorms). So if Dems have overwhelming majority….and it isn’t R’s who are vote fraud-ing….it’s Alinsky Dems and Progressives mostly…….but they already win the vast majority of VT votes anyways. So, Fraud-the-vote won’t matter much in the end. Vermont is a “locked” State.
Vermont is also an ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center) member State. While 34 States were members, five have recently withdrawn from the database because of several flaws in its methodology. Now, only 29 States, including Vermont, use the ERIC database, effectively with half the useful coverage its intended to have, especially with regard to Vermont’s allowing qualified out-of-state students and non-citizen immigrants to vote.
And don’t let the Left’s ad hominem attacks accusing those, like Rob Roper who question Vermont’s election system, of being an ‘election denier’ coerced by ‘the big lie’. The fact of the matter is that no one can say for certain any election was stolen. Verification is impossible. And that means the Left can’t prove any election was fair and accurate either.
What we can prove, and what Rob Roper so clearly points out, is that the Vermont election system is flawed and needs to be revised. Anyone who disagrees must be suspect of being intentionally deceptive.