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The pandemic has altered nearly every societal interaction. It’s changed the way many of us work (remotely), the way we shop (curbside, in lines and online), and the way we live (rarely leaving the house).
Covid-19 will also likely change the way most of us vote in the general election. While the state’s response to the pandemic has been viewed as among the best in the nation, epidemiologists say there is likely to be a resurgence in the fall.
That could make November polling places a vector for outbreaks among poll workers, most of whom are 70-plus retirees. Some are already telling town clerks they won’t be able to volunteer.
The 2020 election also happens to be a presidential year. Not to mention the competitive gubernatorial and lieutenant governor races. That means a lot more of us will be voting. About 500,000 people in Vermont (out of a population of 626,000) are expected to register for the Nov. 3 election. In the last presidential election cycle, 469,833 Vermonters were registered.
In short, without a vote by mail option, the stage is set in Vermont for a shortage of poll workers, long lines at the polls and longer wait times for vote counts, according to Secretary of State Jim Condos.
Condos has proposed an expansion of the state’s early voting by mail program for the general election that would allow 80% of voters to bypass the polls altogether. In past years, early voting by mail has represented about 30% of ballots cast.
The logistics are complex, but the idea is simple. While there is currently a vote by mail ballot system for early voters, Condos wants to expand the effort by sending ballots from a centralized location directly to every registered voter in the state. Voters then can choose either to mail in the ballots to their local town clerk, drop off the ballot at a polling station or vote in person on Nov. 3.
The change is for this calendar year only, the secretary says, but action has to be taken immediately to ensure the Elections Division can meet tight deadlines set by the federal government. All early ballots must be made available by Sept. 18 — a month after the primary election is certified.
“We have two primary goals: Preserve eligible Vermonters’ right to vote and protect the health and safety of voters, town clerks and poll workers,” Condos said in an interview during a break from weed-whacking his yard over the Memorial Day weekend.
But the issue, as it has in many states across the country, has turned partisan, with Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, dragging his heels, Democrats in the General Assembly crying foul, and a prominent GOP House representative raising the specter of unfair elections.
Democrats, who have an overwhelming majority in the Legislature, are moving to cut the governor out of the process altogether. On Tuesday, the Senate Government Operations Committee voted on a bill, which will eventually arrive on Scott’s desk, that would eliminate the requirement that Condos reach an agreement with the governor.
The governor is fine with that. “He has been very clear that he would not stand in the way if the Legislature was to take him out of this process,” Rebecca Kelley, Scott’s spokesperson, said on Friday.
Scott has hemmed and hawed over the secretary’s plan in recent weeks — not quite saying yes, and not quite saying no. The governor has said he agrees with Condos’ goals and isn’t “philosophically or politically opposed” to vote by mail — adding he didn’t want to be in the drivers seat on the vote by mail issue in the first place.
The House GOP, however, didn’t give Scott a choice but to weigh in, by including a provision requiring that he come to an agreement with Condos in the emergency election statute that was enacted at the end of March.
Ever since, Scott has tried to thread the needle on the issue. He has said he wants a return to “normalcy” for the general election (despite scientific consensus on a coronavirus resurgence) and believes a final call could be made after the Aug. 11 primary on whether to move ahead with a vote-by-mail system. Subsequently, the governor suggested the appointment of a committee of five people, including the health commissioner, that would make the decision. That idea didn’t pass muster with Condos.
Kelley reiterated on Friday that ballots can’t be printed until after August anyway. “We don’t have to make the decision right now,” she said.
“Vermonters have had to go through an incredible amount of change,” Kelley said. “Voting is our most important democratic tradition, and people take a lot of value in going to the polls. We can just not completely close the door on it until we have to.”
The problem is, in order to get general election ballots out to 500,000 voters in time, Condos says he needs to finalize contracts with vendors now and start printing the 1.5 million envelopes needed.
Scott has greenlighted the contracts and says the Secretary of State should go ahead with printing, although there is a chance, under a new agreement with Condos, the governor could “opt out” and pull the plug in August.
That yes and no answer puts Condos in a bind. His office will incur $1 million to $1.5 million in expenses in the meantime. While the cost is largely covered by the federal government, it could be subject to a clawback if all those envelopes have to be thrown away. Condos asked if the Scott administration would cover the cost in its general operating budget, but didn’t get a response. Kelley said in an interview that Condos received contingency funding from the federal government “for just this kind of scenario.”
“We’re going forward anyway,” Condos said. “We don’t have a choice.”
Now after six weeks of impasse between the secretary of state and the governor, the drop dead deadline is looming and Condos is scrambling to finalize contracts with vendors. The Elections Division is working to prepare for the primary election Aug. 11, which involves printing three different ballots for 275 districts with four envelopes and 246 different return addresses. For the general election, his office estimates it could take a month just to print the three separate envelopes needed for the Covid vote-by-mail initiative.
At a press conference Friday, Scott said since the state already has a widely used mail-in ballot already “putting the plan into place, moving forward with this, it makes a lot of sense.”
“We’ve done this throughout this pandemic,” the governor said. “And we should do it here. I’m just saying. Let’s take another look after. Things are changing very quickly here in Vermont and throughout the Northeast. Let’s take another look in August, to make sure that we get this right.”
Chair of the Senate Government Operations Committee, Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, says the governor has come up with a number of objections, none of which make sense, in her view.
“First it was he wanted things to be normal, then he said he was not afraid of fraud, then it was the decision shouldn’t just be made by the secretary of state and then it was it shouldn’t be made by someone on the ballot,” White said. “I quite honestly don’t know what his main objection was.”
White, who picked up the phone Saturday between window cleaning chores, said the situation in Montpelier has become partisan. State GOP House representatives and senators are “railing against this,” she said, echoing rhetoric from the national Republican Party.
President Donald Trump has criticized mail-in voting, saying it will lead to “the greatest rigged election in history,” making it easier for people to stuff the ballot boxes. GOP strategists have said they are concerned that an expansion of absentee and early voting could give Democrats an edge in November.
A new study shows the GOP might stand to benefit from voting by mail. Condos says it should be a nonpartisan issue and he pointed to Utah, a solidly red state, which has had a mail-in system for years.
On Sunday, the Republican National Committee sued the state of California for pursuing a vote-by-mail program. In neighboring New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu, also a Republican, has opposed vote-by-mail efforts.
Absentee ballot fraud was an issue in a 2018 North Carolina congressional race. A Republican operative was indicted on ballot tampering in July last year.
Scott has a largely nonpartisan approach — and a complicated relationship with the national party. While he has been ahead of his Republican colleagues on the Covid response — Vermont has had among the lowest number of cases, even though it’s surrounded by states that are still managing major outbreaks — he has danced around national rhetoric on the issue of elections. His candidacy for reelection to a third term has not been announced yet, but a few weeks ago, the Republican Governors Association independently released an advertisement on Facebook, touting Scott’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Rep. Sarah Copeland Hanzas, D-Bradford, and chair of the House Government Operations Committee, says her committee is poised to take the matter up next week after the Senate moves a bill forward.
Copeland Hanzas says the governor’s stance has been “a little perplexing.”
“He says it’s the right thing to do and then he says he wants everything to go back to normal,” Copeland Hanzas said. “It’s really hard to understand what the basis for his refusal is. If he didn’t want to be a part of it, he could have said so before it was signed into law.”
Copeland Hanzas said people in their 70s and 80s who are ensuring that voters are on town checklists, and who are interacting with hundreds of people “all day long,” will be at a higher risk. Yet many of the town clerks need their participation, White added, because they won’t be able to handle the volume of voters at the polls. “They need clarity so they can do this,” she said.
The clawback, Copeland Hanzas says, is also “a very real worry.”
That’s less of a concern for House GOP Rep. Jim Harrison. Reached at his home in Chittenden, where he was cutting trees in his yard Saturday, Harrison compared the $1 million to $1.5 million for ballot preparation that could be wasted to the investment the state made in Covid surge facilities that were never used and eventually dismantled.
Harrison, who requested the insertion of the phrase “and agreement from” the governor in the emergency election provision (Condos originally proposed, “in consultation with”), also objects to the idea of giving the secretary of state “carte blanche” to change election law.
“He does not write election law, the Legislature and the governor do,” Harrison said. The secretary of state would still have the ability to send out ballots in September, Harrison said. “Do we want to send a message that we’re closed through November?” he asked.
If push comes to shove, Harrison says he can “live with either scenario.”
Still, Harrison worries about potential voter fraud. When the bill comes to the House, he will likely propose a limit on who can submit ballots to ensure that the state has a prohibition on grassroots and parties canvassing votes and submitting them to town clerks. “If a political group wants to collect ballots, there is nothing to prohibit that,” Harrison said. “There’s too much opportunity for ballots to get lost or results to get skewed.”
Condos says while he believes existing statutes already prevent that possibility, he has proposed a provision that would require voters to submit ballots by mail, in person, or through a family member or caregiver.
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