Editor’s note: This commentary is by Robert Roper, the president of the Ethan Allen Institute. He lives in Stowe.
[T]he vote fraud case in Victory concluded with 11 “voters” being removed from the town checklist. For this small Vermont community it meant a full 13 percent of registered voters were illegitimate, and these illegitimate votes were more than enough to alter the outcomes of elections.
What’s truly alarming about this case is that the root problem had more to do with election officials – either stubbornly ignorant or flat-out corrupt — than with the non-resident voters. It’s hard to blame the out-of-towners who were told repeatedly and defended by those in charge that what they were doing was OK. As Superior Court Judge Thomas Devine stated in his decision, “… this is a situation where the facts as found by the BCA do not support the legal conclusion of residency.” In other words, the election officials did not understand the law, and, as a result, allowed many people to vote illegally.
The Victory Board of Civil Authority argued that non-residents who were were eligible to vote because they had an “intent” to establish a primary domicile in the district at some point in the future. These “voters” included second homeowners from Connecticut, the adult child of a Victory resident who lived and worked in Burlington, and folks who owned a camp in Victory, but lived primarily in Montpelier. However, Vermont law clearly defines a resident as:
“a natural person who is domiciled [not was or will be] in the State as evidenced by an intent to maintain [not establish] a principal [not secondary] dwelling place in the State indefinitely and to return there when temporarily absent, coupled with an act or acts consistent with that intent.” (Bracketed comments added.)
Judge Devine’s ruling in Victory clarifies the obvious, “… domiciled requires having residence ‘coupled with an intention of remaining indefinitely,’ and neither residency or intent alone is enough to establish it.” It is the job of local election officials to determine that a potential voter is A) currently domiciled in the district in which they would like to vote, and B) that they intend to maintain that residence as their primary domicile as evidenced by action. The Victory BCA did not do this.
Which raises the big question, is this fundamental misunderstanding and misapplication of Vermont election law isolated in little Victory, or is this a common belief and practice among BCAs and election officials throughout the state?
I will say here that it is the latter. Why?
Remember when Garrett Graff attempted to run for lieutenant governor immediately after having lived and worked in Washington, D.C., for over a decade? To qualify for that ballot there is a four-year residency requirement, and, as VTDigger reported at the time, “While Graff has lived in Washington, D.C., for nearly a decade, he recently quit his job at Politico and moved to Burlington with his wife. He said he has remained a registered voter in the Green Mountain State … ‘If someone is able to vote for office, they should be able to run for office,’ said Graff.” (VTDigger, Jan. 27, 2016)
Sound logic. But, as we know in accordance with Judge Devine’s ruling, Graff was not and never was able to legally vote in Vermont after he established a primary domicile in D.C. Yet, despite these very public comments in a statewide debate over someone seeking the second highest office in state government, nobody batted an eye at the fact that Graff had been voting illegally in Vermont as a non-resident for over a decade. Not local election officials, not legislators, not the attorney general or secretary of state, not the press. Why not? Because they all incorrectly believed Graff was right about his voting status.
The loosely interpreted “future intent” or “intent to return” is the standard that has been applied – and applied wrongly — to Vermont’s voter checklist on a statewide level for at least a decade. This has allowed people who do not reside in our communities to influence the outcomes of our local elections. First, we need to find out how widespread this problem is. Is it the 13 percent level of Victory? It’s a small town, but not as hot a second home destination as many other Vermont communities. And then we need to get to work cleaning up our voter lists and correcting this injustice.
