Votable ballots ending up in wrong mailboxes across Vermont

Mail-in ballots are going to wrong mailboxes across the state, and the mixups are causing Vermonters to question Secretary of State Jim Condos’ decision to mail votable ballots to every registered voter ahead of the November general election.

Rick Lawrence, a resident of Morrisville, is one of many Vermonters who was surprised to get ballots in the mail in recent weeks that belong to other voters. On Facebook, he shared a photo of an extra live ballot that belongs to someone who has long since moved out of state.

The woman for whom the ballot was intended, Lawrence told True North in an interview, lived at the same townhouse but moved five years ago. When he attempted to contact her about the incident, he discovered she had moved to New Jersey, changed her address and registered to vote.

“If you think that every little town clerk in the state of Vermont is going to check every ballot and check every signature, I don’t believe that for a second,” Lawrence said. “I think there’s going to be a whole bunch of fraudulent [votes], and I am extremely concerned about the election. So now she can vote in Vermont and New Jersey, and she was very disturbed by this also.”

Lawrence said he worries about about “dead people voting” as well as “ballots mailed to people all over the country that shouldn’t have the extra ballots.” When he contacted his town clerk about the incident, he learned that voters have to alert the town when they move away to get off the voter checklist.

“According to [the Morrisville town clerk], the only way a person gets taken off the voting register in a town in Vermont is if they physically write a letter or an email to the town,” Lawrence said.

Another mail-in ballot mixup occurred over in Randolph. James Dwinell sent photos of the extra ballot to True North and said the person had not lived at the address for five years.

James Dwinell, of Randolph, received an extra ballot of someone he doesn’t know.

Dwinell said he has “no confidence in anything but polls and absentee ballots.”

“The instance in the North Carolina congressional seat in 2018, where a GOP operative harvested ballots in poor uninformed voter neighborhoods by the thousands to help the GOP candidate win, is the best recent example of an election going off the rails with mailed out ballots,” Dwinell told True North, referencing a recent high profile case of alleged voter fraud.

He said the way the Condos is implementing this change does not represent the will of the public.

“We are letting the media and Dems shove this down our throats without our elected representatives in Congress and the White House, or the legislature and the governor, being able to represent us,” he said. ” … [It is] amazing that we have fallen for all of this. It is like the frog and the pot of water; it’s now boiling and kissing our freedoms away.”

Todd Harrington, a resident of Essex Junction, knew something was wrong when he received multiple extra ballots at his address. He posted a photo on Facebook to let others see the wayward ballots.

“Two registered voters in my house and we get five ballots delivered to the door with different names and addresses. Two correct, three belonging to others! What idiot thinks our voting system is any good this way?” Harrington wrote as the caption to his photo.

President Donald Trump, a vocal critic of mail-in voting, recently highlighted seven examples of mail-in voter fraud and mistakes that have made headlines across the country. Examples include thousands of ballots getting discarded, ballots found in the trash, and ballots being counted a week after the election, among other mishaps.

Michael Bielawski is a reporter for True North. Send him news tips at bielawski82@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @TrueNorthMikeB.

Image courtesy of Public domain

15 thoughts on “Votable ballots ending up in wrong mailboxes across Vermont

  1. Meanwhile, 5 years ago the PO transferred my rural delivery from Wolcott to Hyde Park. Eden, My town of domicile was properly notified — tax bills have come through fine. I have yet to get ballots. I rather presume that the mailing list used for check list is so out of date that it still has the Wolcott address, which the PO no longer recognizes. I am waiting to find how long this charade takes. Very discouraging.

  2. Can more people here use their first names too? I need them for all the ballots I am filling out in order to win a free pizza from George Soros

  3. My ballot came, but the inside return envelope was torn open at the bottom, not sliced. No idea….

    So if I tape the envelope closed it will certainly appear “tampered” and be thrown out.
    If I asked someone else to sign my name as a test, no one would know or care.

    We had planned to vote in person anyway – the right, honest and secure way

  4. ‘How in hell did he (Condos) ever get in that job?’

    Really? The answer is clear. Because progressive democrats are good at misleading voters and conservatives don’t know how to respond.

    Case in point: In last night’s debate, VP candidate Harris claimed – ‘Of the 50 people who President Trump appointed to the Court of Appeals, not one is black. You want to talk about packing a court? Let’s have that discussion,’

    What went unnoticed was that Harris’ remark had nothing to do with ‘court packing’ and everything to do with continually casting conservatives as racists. It was a bombshell statement – if only it were true. And no one, not even Pence, is holding Harris accountable.

    Consider this from the Detroit News almost a year ago.
    ‘Senate approves Trump’s first black female judge nominee’

    The point is: urging voters to vote in person does nothing to change hearts and minds. If you want to change the course of this fraudulent behavior, do your homework and call out the deceptions. KISS. Keep it simple. President Reagan did it best. When a deception is published, he called it out. ‘There you go again’!

    Don’t be distracted, as Pence was in the debate. Again, Harris’ remark had nothing to do with ‘court packing’ and everything to do with continually casting conservatives as racists…. and no one caught the ploy.

    If you see voter fraud, identify the specific circumstance. Todd Harrington’s post is effective. And Melissa’s comment is the only one here that identifies the issue with a specific circumstance and casts real doubt on Condos’ position. There’s no point questioning further why Condos is Secretary of State. We already know why.

  5. Condos should be prosecuted for implementing a voter fraud scheme. Could there be a federal criminal investigation?

  6. I received one for someone that hasn’t lived here for over ten years. Also, some neighbors got two ballots in their name! How does that get by? These extra ballots people are getting just may be remnants of illegal votes casted in a past election. People may have faked living at someone’s home just to cast an illegal vote. Now that they are on the voting rolls at the address, ballots are getting sent to that registered election. Think about that. This is why voter rolls need to be cleaned up at least every two years. What’s wrong with running the name and addresses through the postal services move update that they use to clean up addresses where people have moved or addresses where homes don’t exist?

  7. There Was Just No Stoppin’ Jim’s “Election’s Gone Wild !”

    I went to Vermont Superior Court to stop this insanity (20-CV-00307) however both Secretary Condos and A/G TJ Donovan delayed the proceedings until it was too late for Judge Zonay to do anything to stop Condos from executing his Vote by Mail mass-mailing scheme.

    Act 92 had given Condos wide latitude in the conduct of the 2020 election with just two safeguards: (1 Governor Scott was to be consulted and had to consent to the changes proposed by Condos AND 2) if it was deemed necessary to conduct the mass-mailing of ballots, those ballots would be sent out by the local town (and city) clerks – those best informed as to those who should be sent a ballot (and those who should not).

    Governor Scott wanted to wait until the primary election was conducted to see if the promotion of Vermont’s Early and Absentee Voting AND the enhanced health protocols (masks, social distancing g, surface disinfection) would be sufficient to protect the participants and prevent “the spread” of the virus, Condos had a temper tantrum and was having none of Phil Scott’s conservative approach. Condos complained to his Progressive and Liberal allies in the Legislature and in short order they passed Act 135 which amended Act 92 removing the safeguard of the Governor’s consent from the occasion, but leaving the second safeguard of the town clerks being the election officials to mail out the VBM mass-mailing is it was deemed necessary.

    Vermont’s Primary Election was conducted without any issue of infection among voters or election officials, but Condos proceeded to execute his mass-mailing scheme. However, he unilaterally decided to exceed his authority and hired an out-of-state contractor to assemble, address and mail out nearly 500,000 live ballots to every single name on every town voter checklist (including: duplicate names, those who have moved away and those who have passed on to that great heavenly voting booth,)

    Using a Massachusetts mailing house guaranteed that Vermont’s ballots got the grand tour of New England being mailed to the Springfield MA USPS Distribution Center and then forwarded to the USPS Regional Distribution Center in Nashua NH before being sent to White River and Williston for delivery. By using the out-of-state vendor, instead of the clerks as required by the Legislature, the ballots traveled beyond Vermont instead of being mailed locally to be delivered locally – substantially increasing the opportunity for mistakes, errors and intentional interference.

    As we are beginning to learn from stories like this one by Mike Bielawski, Jim Condos Election scheme was put into play to protect the health of Vermonters or to preserve the integrity of our Election Process – he used the Coronavirus as an excuse to force his dream of a VBM mass-mailing election upon Vermont Voters. As has been reported elsewhere, Vermont is totally unprepared to conduct an Election using VBM mass-mailing of ballots. Vermont Election Officials have no tools to authenticate the returning ballots – no signature samples to the signatures on the security envelopes no personal data to verify that the in the person whose name appears on the envelope is the individual sending in the completed ballots. If Vermont had an effective Voter ID program, the state would be better positioned to conduct an effective trustworthy fraud-free VBM election, Condos has adamantly opposed creating a Voter ID program on the specious and speculative grounds that Voter ID automatically results in voter suppression, because it places an unfair burden on poor and minority citizens. A vast majority off poor and minority citizens (and voters) favor Voter ID and to claim that Voter ID would prevent qualified citizens from being able to vote is a biased (racist) claim AND a recognition of the potential incompetence of the Vermont Election Division staff – if he believes they are incapable of creating a fair and honest identification program.

    The November Election will prove Jim Condos incompetence and his willingness to sacrifice the integrity and propriety of Vermont’s Election to his partisan political goal of Universal Vote By Mail chaos,

    Secretary Condos is a partisan bureaucrat who has overstayed his welcome and Vermonters have the opportunity to remove him from office in November.

    H. Brooke Paige
    Candidate for Vermont Secretary of State and Attorney General

    • When the result of a program is predictable, indeed has been predicted, and when that result is more than virtually certain it is folly to assume that result is not what was intended. The Russians strove to create election chaos and uncertainty in 2016, to throw the election into doubt (it sure worked on Queen Hillary who is still of the opinion she won). In 2020 the Progressives are achieving Putin’s goal.

  8. Mike,

    It is great TNR has a “Ballot Integrity” category at the top of the TNR website.

    People will have a great opportunity to report the malfeasance of the Condos debacle.
    He is a former CERTS cough drop salesman.

    How in hell did he ever get in that job?

    He is a lackey/tool of the Dem/Prog elites.
    As such you likely have minimal morals.
    They tell him to jump.
    He asks how high.

    Vermonters get screwed up and down in the process.

    The Dem/Progs HAVE TO BE DEPRIVED OF THEIR VETO PROOF MAJORITIES

    I URGE ALL REPUBLICANS TO GO OUT AND VOTE IN PERSON

  9. “the only way a person gets taken off the voting register in a town in Vermont is if they physically write a letter or an email to the town” – I moved to another state ten years ago. I notified the election board of my move. I suppose I should write a letter notifying the election board of my death and file it with my papers. When I get around to it… Well, that’s one thing good about the “forever” stamps – the postage will still be good. Implementing this looney “send everyone ballots” without first updating voter rolls was either sheer madness or part of an insidious scheme to manipulate the vote, and I have my suspicions… People would have been protected just as well if they were permitted to request a ballot and that wouldn’t have resulted in the thousands of ballots mailed to wrong addresses.

  10. Jim Condos has got to go. I spoke with him via telephone weeks ago and mentioned the situation in Victory, VT. He denied that the vote exceeded eligible voters.
    I have no doubt he is aware of the current potential for voter fraud with mail in ballots that are not requested as with Absentee Ballot request, but after all, he is a liberal and will do what it takes to win an election no matter the method or legality. VOTE THIS BUM OUT!!!!

    • The Demo Commie party and Jim Condos assured Vermont voters this kind of thing and the voter fraud that will come out of it wouldn’t happen. When I go to my poling place I’m going to take mine along and return it and let them know they can tell Jimmo he can shove it up his south bound hoha,along with Not Voting For Him.

  11. We got cards from our town clerk asking us to send the cards back if we wanted absentee ballots. We did not send them back and got ballots anyways. We intend to go to the polls on our town. What kind of s–t is this?

  12. Come on, Jim Condos and all the other Liberals stated that fraud was not going to
    happen, I bet you’ll hear it’s an ” honest ” mistake, so what would one expect from
    a voter list that hasn’t been up dated in years !!!

    Wake up people, there’s a fox in the chicken coup, it’s Jim the Liberal following
    the agenda, hey want to win by hook or by crook, no shame no morals………….

    • Kevin Hoyt has been long chomping at the bit to expose voting “irregularities” and corruption he has discovered just in Bennington, which is surely not unique; he has said as much. His long odds election to office would improve chances for that; he is that committed. We need more like him.

      Vermont has its own Swamp to drain.

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