Secretary of State Jim Condos said Monday that he plans to bar candidates from turning in other voters’ absentee ballots and allow municipalities to begin processing mailed-in ballots up to 30 days ahead of the election as part of a forthcoming directive.
The announcement comes as absentee ballot requests are at a record high in the state amid the coronavirus pandemic. As of 3 p.m. Monday, 81,891 residents had requested an absentee ballot for the Aug. 11 primary election — a mammoth sum that is more than double the total number of absentee votes in the 2016 and 2018 primaries combined.
Condos was granted unilateral authority by the Legislature to change election procedures this year after he and Gov. Phil Scott struggled to come to an agreement on expanding mail-in voting.
Currently, Vermont state law permits anyone to collect and turn in another person’s sealed absentee ballot. During deliberations over expanding mail-in voting, some Republican lawmakers raised concerns about the practice, which is known as “ballot harvesting.” Condos said Monday that he plans to bar candidates and campaign staffers from collecting constituents’ ballots, but would allow others to continue the practice.
Condos said opposition to the practice was “rhetoric to raise an issue that doesn’t exist.”
“The ballots themselves are sealed in a certificate envelope where the person has signed under penalty of perjury,” Condos said. “It’s against the law for anyone to try to influence, to try to alter or destroy a ballot. Those laws already exist in Vermont law.”
While ballot harvesting was a part of one high-profile election fraud scheme in a 2018 North Carolina congressional election that was eventually overturned, voter fraud is rare in the U.S., including in states where all registered voters are mailed a ballot.
“It’s really just a matter of transport and ease and making sure that everyone has every opportunity to get their ballot back to the clerk in time,” said Will Senning, the state’s director of elections and campaign finance.
Condos also said that he plans to allow municipalities to begin processing — but not counting — ballots up to 30 days prior to election day. Currently, Vermont only allows town clerks to begin processing ballots on the day prior to the election.
Many states — including the five that mail ballots to every registered voter — allow for ballots to be processed further in advance of election day.
Condos said that in the 135 towns that use vote tabulators, ballots will be able to be run through — but the machine will not produce a result for officials to see. In municipalities that count ballots by hand, he said, ballots will be able to be taken out of their sealed envelope and put in a lock box until Election Day.
In prepared remarks Monday, Condos — a former president of the National Association of Secretaries of State — said he welcomes skepticism of vote-by-mail, but pleaded that critics “look to the facts and the evidence, and not to second-hand anecdotes or baseless claims and rhetoric.”
Vote-by-mail has come under attack from President Donald Trump, who has claimed repeatedly, without evidence, that mail-in voting leads to fraud. Condos referenced on Monday a Brennan Center opinion piece from April that says Americans are more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud.
“Can it happen? Anyone can point to a few cases out there,” Condos said of voter fraud. “But they are incredibly rare and usually are detected and prosecuted. The true voter fraud is to deny any eligible voter their right to cast a ballot, which is why we cannot take any chances when it comes to our upcoming elections during 2020.”
