By Rob Roper
There was more testimony in the virtual State House this week about the recent election, this time in the House Government Operations Committee, from several town clerks. Though the bulk of their comments were positive, a number of clear and present dangers regarding mail-in voting and fraud were exposed in the questioning.
As Director of Elections Will Senning testified a day earlier in the Senate Committee, the clerks confirmed that the only real way to detect fraud in our current system is if, when a ballot is illegally cast through the mail, the real voter shows up at the polls and contests their status as having already voted. However, when asked what happens if someone illegally casts a ballot for a non-voter (someone who has moved away or is just apathetic), Montpelier Town Clerk John Odum had to admit, “I mean, the short answer to the question is no, we can’t necessarily stop them.”
Town Clerk for Marshfield, Bobbi Brimblecomb, pointed out, this isn’t just a problem with unsolicited absentee ballots: “If someone was determined to do that type of fraud there’s nothing now stopping them from requesting an absentee ballot on behalf of that voter, and doing it at home.”
South Burlington City Clerk Donna Kinville addresses the House Gov Ops Committee.
A point further confirmed by Barre Town Clerk Carol Dawes: “There isn’t any way in our current system that would that would preclude somebody making a request and then voting on behalf of someone who doesn’t want to vote on that. Is it, you know, as we’ve talked about whether you’re mailing ballots out to people or whether you’re mailing them upon request. That is an opportunity that’s out there.”
This is, of course, especially a problem when you mail live ballots to everyone on the voter checklist even if they didn’t request a ballot — anyone can get hold of a ballot for a non-voter (35% of the people on the checklist in a high-turn out year), fill it out, have that vote counted, and, again to quote Clerk Odum, “we can’t necessarily stop them.”
Dawes went on to say that she “hoped” that the number of people who cast fraudulent votes in this manner are small, and “believes” that it is. But, and this is the critical point, she has no way of actually knowing what those numbers really are. They could be small; they could be huge. We don’t know, and the system does not allow us to know.
While this may not be a major issue in some tiny communities where the clerk “knows everybody,” as Dawes testified, in her district 64% of the housing stock is rental properties and there is a large transient population. Donna Kinville, city clerk in South Burlington, noted that there’s no way she can know everyone, and that in her district alone 2,000 live ballots came back as “undeliverable” for the November election. What is the situation in college towns where students register for one election and then leave after graduation?
Other major problems came to light as well. Kinville complained, “We don’t get a lot of election fraud training — how to detect it. … How do you find fraud? How do you investigate it?”
If the clerks and election officials aren’t trained in how to recognize fraud, how are they supposed to defend against it?
Perhaps more disturbing, multiple clerks complained that when fraud or potential fraud is detected, neither the Secretary of State’s office nor the Attorney General’s office does anything about it. Brimblecomb testified, “When we do report something it needs to be followed up on.” She relayed a story about catching a non-resident attempting to vote: “I reported it, nothing was ever done.”
Kinville had a similar story: “I have two instances where I confirmed with other towns where they [bad voters] actually did vote in both [towns], but I was able to catch the second ballot from going through and put it aside, and that’s it. It’s up to the Secretary of State’s office if they want to prosecute further on that. They said they’ll let me know what happens. And honestly, I haven’t heard anything else.”
As for “same day” registration, Kinville related, “After people registered vote on election day, I send them all a notice and welcome to the city and you’re a new voter. And there have been some presidential elections that I’ll get 15 to 20 of them back. [The person is] not at this address. Now it could be the post office not wanting to deliver, or it could be the fact that no one really truly lives there.”
Why don’t we know this? The secretary of state said repeatedly leading up to election day that if there were instances of fraud they would be investigated. This is apparently not true.
So, just to recap, these town clerks revealed that we have an election system that cannot reliably protect against fraudulent mail-in ballots, is run by officials who receive little to no training in how to detect fraudulent votes, and, when fraud or potential fraud is flagged, it is ignored by the Secretary of State’s office and the Attorney General’s office who, at the same time, tell us vote fraud isn’t a thing. And we’re supposed to have confidence in this system, why?
Rob Roper is president of the Ethan Allen Institute. Reprinted with permission from the Ethan Allen Institute Blog.
The real problem, besides Condie, is that the LEG and Guvnah all approved the mail in voting bill that just went through, WITH NO SAFE GUARDS in the voting process. Then we have Chris winters from Condies office saying basically, “our voting machines are old” Hence there couldn’t be hacking? Yea right. The older the machine THE MORE skeptical I am that there ISN”T hacking. But thanks for playing Chris.
Assiduously and carefully avoiding the elephant in the room: Dominion, and the auditing firm, in league with one another, and owned by…what’s that C-word country again that we have sold our souls to courtesy of our communist leaders, again?
Dominion tabulators were in use in ALL the counties where Biden one.
But lets skip right over that bit of deep corruption by technofascists who have Vermont by the short hairs.
No sane and sensible adult can trust the unreformed present balloting system.
This corrodes our democracy and demoralizes our voting public.
The first task to be accomplished is to get rid of Jim Condos. I see in the comments from Town Clerks that their requests to his office were never answered. In our town, some years ago, I heard from several Select Board members say that they asked Condos to look at college students that registered to vote in Vermont, did vote in Vermont, and then appeared to vote in their home state as well. He told them to get over it, there would be no investigation into their claims. WHY NOT? Because most college students are liberals? They vote “D” on everything! So, it is a winning formula for the liberal/progressive candidates?
I remember hearing Condos in 2020 (don’t remember the venue) saying that for poll watchers he had sent a letter to all lawyers in the state, as well as law students, to become poll watchers in November. Now who are these lawyers in most cases? By nature they are liberal, left leaning individuals. The proverbial fox watching the hen house scenario!. If true, this needs to be looked at by the legislature.
Vermonter’s we can post all we want and we all know there is a problem with
the way we vote ……. want it fixed, that’s pretty easy.
Just get rid of the Secretary of State Jim ” There’s No Problems ” Condos with
our elections…………… sure !!
Wake up people
The worst problem is that incumbents run the elections, issue ballots, count ballots and report “the results”.
Citizens should get their names on the voter roles ahead.
Every questioned state, was where the incumbents were charged with dishonest “management” of the elections and the counts/reports. All Totally Partisan!
Not speaking about our small towns, but the cities and states are guilty.
The system should be tri-partisan – however you define that.
If you want to fix voter fraud, we need voter ID! This will solve a lot of problems!
In Democrat-controlled Vermont cities and towns, feeding fake ballots (stuffing the ballot box) is a common practice.
Manipulating voter lists provides corrupt election officials more names to “play” with, to enhance Democrat power and command/control.
1) Not deleting dead people
2) Not deleting people who moved to another state
3) Enabling non-citizens and illegal aliens to vote (with documents, or not)
4) Enabling temporary residents to vote, even if they would reside less time in state than required by law
5) Enabling convicted felons to vote (in jail or not)
6) Enabling under-age people to vote
7) Enabling feeble-minded people in nursing homes to “vote”, by filling in their ballots
8) Enabling out-of-state students to vote.
NOTE: The Legislature of New Hampshire became Republican, because the “student vote” was absent. They likely voted in their own states.
Determining Voter Turnout
Here are 3 methods of voting:
1) Appear in person
2) Send absentee mail-in ballots to Town Clerks
3) Drop mail-in ballots in drop boxes located throughout various states. Typically, those boxes are unsupervised/unmonitored, which means the “chain of custody” is broken, i.e., in violation of election law.
Town Clerks, etc., receive those ballots, and are required, by law, to verify, USING DOCUMENTS ON FILE FOR EACH REGISTERED VOTER:
1) Voter full signatures; not just a scribble
2) Up-to-date voter IDs; not something 20 years old.
3) If voter met residency requirements,
4) If voter is dead or alive,
5) If voter met age requirements,
6) If voter were a citizen, i.e., born in the US (copy of notarized birth certificate) or naturalized (copy of citizen papers)
After checking all those criteria, Town Clerks, etc., mark the voters as having voted, on registered voter lists.
The total of such markings is called the turnout, which is reported by Town clerks to State election officials.
NOTE: Town clerks have stated they cannot check these criteria, because their records lack sufficient documentation.
Mail-in voting takes fraud opportunities to a whole new level, as was proven during the past election.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/here-is-a-write-up-about-a-voting-irregularity-that-led-to-many
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/eecieieeie
I would only add that all official ballots carry an indelible and unique identifier so that they can be tracked and not photocopied. Second, every counting machine should be required to imprint a date/time stamp on the ballot as it passes through the machine so that there is no possibility of the same ballot being counted multiple times.
These conversations taking place are a start and our Town Clerks are a wealth of information and not to be used as shields for what just might be really going on. Time to face it head on!
It’s been proven that the program cards for the exact Dominion scanners counting our ballots (the same ones as New Hampshire sold by the same company – the same company who was contracted by Sec of State to run the Vote by Mail ballots) can and have flipped votes. This hack was demonstrated in the 2006 documentary HACKING DEMOCRACY with the “then” Diebold machines, which were highly questioned during elections at that time. Follow the history from Diebold to Dominion – DO THE RESEARCH – the time is NOW for who, what, and how:
http://www.hackingdemocracy.com/about/
https://centipedenation.com/first-column/watch-hacking-democracy-this-is-the-hack-that-proved-americas-elections-can-be-stolen-using-a-few-lines-of-computer-code/
https://granitegrok.com/mg_manchester/2020/12/nhs-voting-machines-are-capable-of-redistributing-votes
Mail in ballots, same day registration and early voting is all in the name of increasing voter participation. All of this should be eliminated and in person voting should be allowed for 5 days beginning on the Thursday before each election day, including the Saturday. Absentee ballots for people who physically cannot be at the polls can be requested up to one month before election day.
If people can’t take the time and personal responsibility to show up and vote during that five day period or formally request and absentee ballot then too bad you missed your chance to vote. Some personal responsibility to vote needs to take place. Hard fought battles for the right to vote shouldn’t be tarnished by the mess we have now. Those rights were fought by people who desired honest elections.
Presidential elections should be held separately from state and local elections to allow college students a chance to vote in their college towns for president using their college ID’s. A separate national presidential election would produce cleaner results and more opportunity to detect fraud. In all other elections college students should be made to vote by absentee ballots in their home states. Why should students be voting on local issues in their college towns when most will be moving away in one or two years. Their votes should not sway decisions that will have lasting effects on their college community after they have cleared out. It’s not fair to the local residents.
It’s not hard to clean up the voting mess we have now. Political shenanigans need to be dropped and legislators need to get serious about producing honest elections with ample opportunity to people to get to the polls.
This is what I stated below. Voting is a civic responsibility not a state or government responsibility. If a person can’t motivate themselves to vote one day every 2 or 4 years that’s their problem. Also, temporary students from out of state should not be allowed to vote on issues related to instate politics. They can obtain absentee ballots from their home states where their parents pay for their bills and living expenses. Colleges have turned into liberal breading grounds for local vote harvesting. Motor voter and same day registration and voting should be eliminated. The dishonesty from democrats/progressives is staggering. Voter ID now!
“Presidential elections should be held separately from state and local elections” – Elections cost taxpayer money and require many man hours of work. Voter identification, vote in person or request in person a mail in ballot, paper ballots and observers from both parties present, not thirty feet away or sent home because of a watermain break, whenever counting is taking place. Having representative of both parties is better than “impartial” observers because – who appoints those “impartial” observers – and anyway, the opposing party observers are each keenly watching the other side. The impartial one gets bored and inattentive. It is unfortunate, but the Progressives (or Bolsheviks, take your pick) have organized their forces forced against the voting public.
Mail in voting was just part of a concerted effort nation wide to get rid of Trump in my opinion.
Nothing to see here – right Jim Condos?
!!!!!!!THIS!!!!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t75xvZ3osFg
VERMONT NEEDS TO AUDIT THE OPTICAL SCANNERS!
NO MORE COVID EXCUSES!
Wonderful Video Mike!
That is a most enlightening video. You can tell from the people in charge of caring for our elections this is completely disturbing and not expected.
This video would make a wonderful first page, above the fold video about elections and their safety. this was done in 2014?
This demonstrates the power of free press, free speech and people coming together to solve problems. You’ll not find this video being published on other sites.
Our state is in charge of our elections. We the people, those of whom we’ve elected to represent us should be on this like flies on stink…..
Liberty is Freedom + Morality
If we have no morality, a fair election, we’ll have no liberty. They will run ruff shod over us and our ignorance of what is truly going on.
Mike,
Thank you for that video.
Here is a summary.
THE “HURSTI HACK” OF A DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINE
A Diebold voting machine was selected, at random, from many machines by one election official.
An electronic card, that had been altered, was inserted into the machine
Eight election officials filled in ballots 6 to 2 that the Diebold voting machine could not be hacked
After running the ballots through the machine, the recorded vote was 7 to 1, i.e., the Diebold machines can be hacked
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t75xvZ3osFg
This hack proved any America election can be stolen, using just a few lines of computer code.
All this is well-known by many election officials, especially those in the six swing states, which miraculously were donated to Biden
The above ‘Hursti Hack’ in this video is an excerpt from the feature-length, Emmy-nominated documentary. Please watch it.
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/hackingdemocracy
ALSO WATCH: Pam Bondi demonstrating Hunter Biden and Joe Biden corruption concerns in Ukraine and elsewhere, are legitimate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPvMuzyVOig
“Government By Proclamation Without Verification.”
Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania Wisconsin all illegally changed their election laws, the republicans had four to five months to get a challenge thru those states legal systems and lay it before the U.S. Supreme Court. The rhinos in the Republican Party prevented that for occurring. Why you may ask? They wanted Trump gone every bit as much as the Socialist Democrats. The only Republican in danger of losing in these totally Socialist Democrat controlled states was Trump! Republicans had no seats at risk. So here find ourselves without a legitimate United States Government. If “TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION”, was a problem, what the hell do we have now!
“NO JUSTICE – NO PEACE!”
So this goes directly to our Vermont problem in the VTGOP.
We are kept from voicing change. I say kept, from a practical standpoint somebody could stand up and say…”hey..this is just wrong and illegal”, but in the subverted state, where there is no freedom of press, where all media is owned and operated by political operatives…..
You’ll never be heard, the people won’t know.
Having a group of people will be heard, will support each other. This is the duty of our Republican party. However when a majority or even half cast down the idea or are saying and doing something entirely different and they are the only ones given an microphone or media access……..this corruption continues.
The most effective thing to happen would be to become one voice. Could be via caucus.
When others are causing too much dissent, Sen. Benning et. al……they need to be shown the door.
Rinos = NWO pimps they are not for the American ideals….time to clean house if only 2 or 3
Who knew Vermont was sending mail-in ballots? We didn’t have any idea and certainly don’t approve. The ballots were postmarked from Mass which I thought peculiar. I cast one for my son, at the polls, in-person while I was voting. He was away at school. No one even looked at it. One woman said, “you can’t do both” and I simply told her it was my son’s. She didn’t even look at it, simply said, “OK!”. They don’t even have a system to check the mail-ins but that didn’t stop them from blanketing the state.
There you go….mailed from Massachusetts, There is one piece to the puzzle. By state statute are our town clerks supposed to mail them?
If so who by passed the legal voting procedures?
End of voting for me. Who would be stupid enough to think it served any real purpose?
And that, Sir is one of the objectives. To disenfranchise you and get you to stop voting.
From Town Meeting Day budgets to the Presidential elections, your dissenting vote is no longer wanted by the majority. Stay the course, regardless!
Comrade Bammo,
Disagree. Problem is not that dissenting vote not wanted. Problem is dissenting vote not counted! Not stay stay course any longer. No Bammo head against wall any longer!
“Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is do you Mr. Jones?”
Mr. Gallagher may have a valid point. Doesn’t participation legitimizes rigging & fraud?
No, it just allows those cheating to always win. If the other party can find the you know whats to start sending in thousands of “mail in votes” from wherever, that forces them to address the issue! They are not enforcing the issue now because only one party is cheating!
Until the people perpetrating the fraud are given jail time this will only get worse as we saw in the nov
election. The officials allowing the fraud to happen by not prosecuting should be jailed for life for desecrating their office and oath. But since we all know that the left is doing 99.9 percent of the cheating
nothing will be done. We now have courts that are as corrupt as leftist political hacks so thinking something will be done is only a pipe dream…. sad for our once proud Constitutional Republic…
forgot to add: the only way we can have fair elections is with 3rd party poll workers and software free voting machines only made to count boxes. I’d suggest the Iraqis with some purple ink as a added safeguard……
Our biggest problem, well one of them in Vermont is education.
We simply don’t know. Our children, grandchildren adults and legislators don’t know.
It is not part of our educational system. If we for instance had the class below going on in our state house, in our schools, churches and groups we’d not have the problems we have in our state.
https://libertyfirstuniversity.com/
Do we even know the very basics of our foundation? I fear not, I know I have much to learn.
Below is a seminar of her lecture. I’m going to sign up for some classes above. Great food for the mind. I have to laugh as I’m overjoyed when hearing the truth in the below video. We are experiencing all of the same problems today. It so good, I’ve watched it several times, it’s one of the best.
https://greenmountainparty.com/the-constitution-history-by-krisanne-hall-learn-what-is-so-special-about-our-timeless-document/
It is our responsibility to keep our state accountable.
https://krisannehall.com/index.php/resources/the-krisanne-daily-journal-test
Are we going to hold our governor and S.O.S. responsible?
How about Ms. Gray? Where are our representatives? Who certified she met the qualification?
we need education, education, education……….
My husband and I got 2 sets of mail in ballots, we have lived here almost 30 years!! I ripped them up and threw them away and called the Town Clerk and got us each an absentee ballot. Which we used… this is the only way voting by mail should be done,or vote in person!!
Using mail in ballots is just asking for trouble when the voting lists do not jive with the actual town counts.
PLEASE stop this practice!! It is not right and just asking for inaccurate voting totals!!!
This goes back to WHO MAILED THEM OUT??????
I bet our town clerks wouldn’t have done that!!!!!!
And yes of course they were asking for inaccurate vote totals, that was the plan. If 80% of the state votes one way, you givem’ 2x more ballots, guess what, your guy gets more votes.
Our legislators who love our Republic should as for a complete audit of the laws, the vote and what went on this election.
Then all people will know and feel comfortable that the most important event we do in our entire country is open, honest and fair. Wouldn’t a statesmen do that? Wouldn’t an honest group of representatives do that? Wouldn’t that prove we are as good as we think we are?
So why aren’t we?
I agree 100% The only thing tried and true about this practice is that increases fraud. We need confidence in our elections and right now I have none. I’m so tired of our representatives doing NOTHING about this. And I’m sure our AG is just fine with the practice – he is a complete democrat hack and I’m sure he loves that this helps his party.
You should have did what a Commiecrat would have done and voted for Trump four times like the people who sent in four ballots for Biden. Two can play the same game.
Why on earth would the government send out ballots to every person on voter registration lists knowing the lists are not audited or even looked at for accuracy, people die, people move, people cheat. Voting is a civic duty and a responsibility of the person not the state.
Educated office holders in charge of elections know the only way to prevent fraud is by requiring voter ID. The state could send post cards to voters requiring them to send the card back requesting a ballot with a signature from the same address and provide a space to correct the address if the person moved. A simple certificate of death should be sent to the town or city and that person should be removed from the voter list.
Certainly ballot harvesting should be made illegal. People showing up to vote should be required to show Identification and a current address from an envelope which was mailed to them like a bill. Voter fraud is being protected because it works for one party. Ballots could be numbered with a tab the could be removed before it’s run through the voting machine. Those numbers could be matched with a ballot if there is an issue. This would also eliminate fraudulent ballets.
Trying to suggest or accuse people of trying to suppress the vote is BS. This last election was and is still a mess. Like I said above, voting is a civic responsibility of the citizen. The state could issue voting cards for ID. It is unbelievable that a person in todays world does not have an ID card. If a person does not know how to get an ID card, perhaps that person shouldn’t be voting. I can’t believe that people would not want fair and transparent voting laws. Only those who benefit from the chaos like what just happened are dishonest and shouldn’t be running elections or making laws suppressing laws that encourage honesty in our elections. Are you listening Mr. Condos and the legislators who brought this last mess to us.
Is voter fraud a surprise to anyone, just look at the last election ……. what a crock !!
If you want to vote, you either need to go to the polls and we should mandate voter
ID or request an absentee ballot….. anything else is just wanting fraud.
Those in the VT election offices that don’t want voter ID, just tell me why not ???,
Oh yeah……. frauds easier !!
I have to show mt ID and have for years. I don’t mind.
so what if each town clerk held onto the returned ballots in the signed envelopes, until after the polls closed and any name that voted in person and by absentee vote is refereed to the DOJ and the signed envelope turned over… Granted election night might be a little longer, but it would be honest.
I have spent election night counting votes so I know what effort is required.
Anecdotally, in my town of Westminster, we rarely have more than 1100 registered voters vote. More often than not, fewer than 1000 people vote. But in this 2020 election, approximately 1600 votes were cast. And, more interestingly, nearly 2400 ballots were mailed to Westminster voters by the State. There are, according to census reports, about 2400 people in town 18 years or older. But the unusual numbers do give one pause. For example, what happened to the 800 ballots that were never cast?
I’ve heard Bristol had more votes than registered voters.
I’ve heard ballots were not mailed out by the town clerks, which I’ve been told is state statute.
So…..who knows where some were mailed and returned? If this were that case, nobody would know. They could have been sent to a certain address, and returned, making all illegal votes and nobody would know.
We could do an audit foresic audit in a day. The gentleman who has the technology to determine if every vote is legit, based upon paper, codes, folds, hard data.
The VTGOP could put that flag up the pole. Everybody wants a safe an accurate election correct?
Neil, I don’t believe I said Bristol had more voters than were registered. If you have information in that regard, then it must be from others. What I discovered was that there were more votes cast in the last election than the total population of the town, which includes those under 18. The population is 2,030. Yet, there were 2,227 votes and the town claims there are 3,067 registered. Now, how can that be?
It can’t unless there is fraud.
Yes because they do not purge the voter roles like they should. Red states FORCE this to happen annually so we have accurate voter rolls come voting time. Blue states do not do this because it allows for fraud. BTW, Wisconsin just purged over 200K worth of false voter registrations. Far more than enough to have changed the election outcome. Go figure….
In fact, some of the states had to take their cities to court to force them to purge the voter roles. But don’t worry, no fraud going on here….just another fair election….