On the ballot for secretary of state in Vermont is a veteran Democratic lawmaker who helped shepherd Vermont’s universal vote-by-mail system into law and a Republican fond of debunked presidential election theories who wants to do away with the practice.
Rep. Sarah Copeland Hanzas, D-Bradford, 52, comes to the race after nearly two decades in the Vermont House of Representatives. Since 2019, she’s chaired the chamber’s Committee on Government Operations, a panel that has jurisdiction over many of the same state functions overseen by the Secretary of State’s Office, including public records laws, elections and governmental ethics.
She won the Democratic primary by one of the narrowest margins of any of the statewide races this cycle, beating Deputy Secretary of State Chris Winters, her closest competitor, by just two percentage points.
If elected, Copeland Hanzas said she would create a voter guide to help Vermonters educate themselves ahead of casting their ballots, and that she’d hire an education and outreach coordinator to help create a civics and media literacy curriculum for Vermont teachers.
She further wants to embark on a “democracy tour” to combat cynicism and disengagement with practical advice about how to get involved in politics.
“We also need to empower people to understand how to influence their government. So it’s not just about undermining lies about stolen elections — it’s also about empowering democratic participation,” she said.
Also at the top of her agenda: looking for a new contractor for Vermont’s election management system, after technical glitches delayed the certification process during the primary.
Her opponent, H. Brooke Paige, 69, argues that it is because election officials have not sufficiently answered questions about the integrity of the country’s elections that voters are disengaged.
While former President Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election have been exhaustively debunked by the press, dismissed by state and federal judges in over 50 lawsuits and called “bullshit” by his own former attorney general, Paige suggests that’s not enough.
“We have to resolve these questions in people’s minds, so the questions don’t exist — or our whole democratic process is gonna go to hell in a handbasket,” he said.
Paige tends to dodge the question of whether he believes President Joe Biden won the election in 2020, offering instead that Biden has been installed as president and that “possession is nine-tenths of the law.” When pressed, he said he’d seen pictures that suggested ballots being fraudulently filled out.
“I have a hard time not believing my lyin’ eyes,” he said.
It is not the first time Paige has doubted the legitimacy of a Democratic president. For years, he doggedly pursued a lawsuit attempting to throw Barack Obama off the ballot. In a twist on the common “birther” conspiracy theory, Paige did not argue that Obama was not born in the U.S., but instead that because both his parents were not themselves born in the U.S., Obama did not qualify as a “natural born citizen.” It was thrown out of court.
The oft-top-hatted candidate has been on the ballot every cycle since 2012, including in 2020, when he ran for president on the “Grumpy Old Patriots” ticket. Recent posts on his Facebook page, which doubles as his campaign website, include a picture of “Asswipe”-branded moist towelettes and the caption: “The Perfect ‘Holiday’ Gift for All Your Liberal Loser Friends !”
For all his idiosyncrasies, Paige is also part of a larger trend: He is one of 11 election deniers who have won a major party nomination to be their state’s secretary of state in this year’s primaries, according to the States United Action, an advocacy group tracking these trends. Paige, as he often does, won this year’s GOP nomination by default, after the party fielded no other candidates. He is also the GOP nominee for Vermont treasurer.
Asked for her final thoughts about the race, Copeland Hanzas offered a short public service announcement echoing the secretary of state’s own pre-election messaging: If voters haven’t mailed their ballots by now, they ought to hand them to their town clerks in person or drop them in collection boxes. Voters who plan to vote in person on Nov. 8 should bring the ballots that were mailed to them to their polling places to help town clerks from running short on ballots, she said.
Clarification: This story has been updated to identify the States United project tracking election deniers running for secretary of state.
