Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bruce Pandya, who is a member of the Vermont Agency of Education Ethnic and Social Equity Studies Standards Advisory Working Group. He lives in East Montpelier.
VTDigger recently published a commentary by Vermont Republican Party Chair Deb Billado, who argued that mail-in voting should not be expanded, due to concerns about “voter fraud.”
The Brennan Center for Justice lists almost 20 analyses and studies which have been done in an attempt to assess the scope of voter fraud. In all cases, it has been found to be statistically insignificant.
One study by Dr. Lorraine C. Minnite concluded that “reports of voter fraud were most often limited to local races and individual acts and fell into three categories: unsubstantiated or false claims by the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error.”
Regardless of the massive statistical evidence, these claims continue. What evidence does Billado offer? Needless to say, it’s not very compelling.
To begin with, she accuses Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos of resisting “any attempts at addressing or even examining the extent of voter fraud in Vermont.”
This is a highly misleading claim. Billado is referring to a highly controversial panel created by the Trump administration to investigate voter fraud.
Condos was not alone in opposing the commission’s attempts at data collection. Forty-four states refused to hand over some types of voter information to the administration’s panel.
That is 88% of the 50 states in this country, including many that are controlled by the GOP.
In the end, the commission disbanded without presenting any evidence of voter fraud.
A former member of the panel has since spoken publicly, saying that the panel was not meant to investigate voter fraud, but to “actually affirm and validate the president’s claims whether or not we had any evidence of any such voter misconduct.”
Given this, it seems to me that the secretary of state’s decision not to provide this panel with voter information actually made our state’s elections more secure, rather than less.
Moving on, Billado cites a story from 2018, which she claims as evidence that our state is open to “integrity vulnerabilities.”
This is an interesting example, because reading further into the article she linked shows that she is wrong.
The vulnerabilities which were found by an outside firm were, in fact, being resolved at the time the tests were run.
In the article Billado linked, Condos explains “we already knew we were going to fix that problem.”
The next argument Billado uses is interesting. She cites a Russian Federation linked hacking attempt on the Vermont voter registration database.
I say that this is interesting because it seems very hypocritical. Billado has previously described attempts to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election as a “desperate, coup like attack on our duly elected President.”
Her newly found concern for Russian interference in our elections is noted.
This was a failed attempt to access a voter registration database. I do not see how an expansion of mail-in voting would make us more or less vulnerable to such attacks.
Finally, Billado cites a series of tweets as evidence that there is no real plan to expand mail-in voting.
Further down in the tweet thread, however, the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office notes that the tweets in question were not meant to be a plan. Rather, they were meant to be “short answers” to questions asked.
If these are really the best arguments for continued in-person voting during a global pandemic, then I am not convinced.
In the end, Billado chalks it all up to “a power-play by the Vermont Democratic Party to boost their vote counts.”
As evidence, she cites a tweet by Burlington Democratic official Sam Donnelly, who tweeted “Biden’s margins are about to go up” in response to Gavin Newsom’s expansion of mail-in voting in California.
Of course, this does not prove a plan among the Vermont Democratic Party to tip the scales in their favor.
It’s simply one person saying that an expansion of mail-in voting will result in increased numbers for Biden.
If Deb Billado really has evidence that Vermont Democratic Party officials are colluding to create a fraudulent result in November, I would highly recommend that she contact the Federal Election Commission.
Until then, let’s call this argument what it really is: a baseless conspiracy theory.
