Voting concludes Tuesday in an election that will decide the future of Vermont’s congressional representation and could lead to changes in the state constitution.
As of Monday night, more than 170,000 voters had already cast early ballots. But likely another 100,000 or more may head to local polling places on Tuesday to decide on Vermont’s next members of Congress, state executives and legislators, as well as two proposed constitutional amendments.
Meanwhile, candidates are making their final public appearances before races are decided this evening. Polls close across the state at 7 p.m.
VTDigger reporters and photographers are reporting from polling places across the state. This post will be refreshed throughout the day with live updates.
At Hartford polls, ‘it feels better than in 2020’ (5:56 p.m.)
During a quick walk through the sunny parking lot of Hartford High School on Tuesday afternoon, as voters cast ballots in the high school gymnasium, Hartford town clerk Lisa O’Neil said the day was running smoothly. More than 3,500 ballots were received ahead of Election Day, she said, and foot traffic was steady, with “quite a few” people delivering pre-filled ballots by hand. That put Hartford on track to surpass some 4,000 votes cast in the 2018 midterms.
She estimated hundreds of such ballots would be turned in by day’s end, each requiring the voter to sign a document affirming they had not already mailed in a vote. The process is “a lot more work and a lot more work to keep track of,” O’Neil said, but she believes the effort is worth it so that the public can have faith in the process.
Plus, O’Neil said, voters have been on good behavior this season.
“People have been — despite the national conversation — locally, it feels better than in 2020 in terms of how people have approached us and our office and each other, so I’m appreciative of that,” she said.
White River Junction resident Bill Schellong said voting was the least he could do, even as he described cynicism toward politicians across the board. Driven by his concerns about taxes and the cost of living, the 65-year-old owner of a headhunting firm cast his votes for the Republican slate, including for incumbent Gov. Phil Scott, who he described fighting an “uphill battle” in a liberal state.
“I think he’s done a decent job,” he said.
Neither he nor Laura Cooney, another White River resident who voted the Republican ticket, described being propelled to the polls by Proposal 5, which would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. But both voted against it, describing personal beliefs about, in Schellong’s words, the “start of life.”
But several supporters of the amendment described it as their top issue, including spouses Heather and Chad Albrecht, whose two teenage children were top of mind when they voted for the measure.
Heather Albrecht, 39, described being “pissed off” and “frustrated” when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer. As far as Proposal 5 goes, she said, “we shouldn’t be having to do it.”
— Maggie Cassidy
Voters turn out in person for Chittenden County recycling bond, a question not included in mailed ballots (5:45 p.m.)
In Burlington’s South End, some voters said they had specific reasons for voting in person on Election Day.
General election ballots were mailed to every active registered voter for this election. But because of changes to election law, one ballot question in Chittenden County was not included in mailed ballots.
The Chittenden Solid Waste District is asking voters to borrow $22 million for an updated facility in Williston. But for voters to weigh in on that question, they would have to either request a ballot from their town clerk’s office or vote in person.
Deborah Loring, a 60-year-old environmental chemist from Burlington, said she wanted to vote in support of the CSWD bond question. Loring had come out to the Pine Street headquarters of Burlington Electric Department, the polling station for Ward 5 in the city’s South End.
“I think they do a really good job,” Loring said of the county’s waste district. “And so I wanted to support that.”
Samuel Whitesell, who was also voting at the electric department, said he wanted to vote in support of the two proposed amendments to the Vermont Constitution that would clarify the state’s ban on slavery and ensure the right to reproductive autonomy. But Whitesell, a 38-year-old pianist and piano teacher, also mentioned the CSWD bond.
Whitesell said he had read news reports of the CSWD bond not being mailed to everyone in the county. He came out when he realized he would have to vote in person to support the bond.
— Patrick Crowley
Williamstown voters turn out for closely watched Orange Senate race (4:45 p.m.)
Outside Williamstown Middle and High School Tuesday afternoon, a slow but steady stream of voters filed out of the town’s polling place.
Both major parties have highlighted Orange County’s senate seat, held by longtime incumbent Sen. Mark MacDonald, D-Orange, as a race to watch. MacDonald faces opposition from Republican John Klar, a Brookfield attorney and former candidate for governor.
Becky Watson, a retiree in her 80s that doesn’t identify with any party, said she was voting for MacDonald.
“I have to go with Mark,” she said. “I don’t like what Klar writes.” (Klar’s prolific blog posts highlight his conservative views on issues such as abortion, racial equity and transgender rights.)
Father and son Scott and Ryan McCarthy, both of Williamstown, were leaving the polls at the same time Tuesday.
Ryan, a 27-year old tin knocker, said his desire to vote out Mark MacDonald drove him to vote.
“I don’t think he puts Williamstown’s interest — or anyone’s interest — first,” he said. “John Klar stands with what I value more.”
Scott, a self-employed construction worker, said he’d voted for MacDonald 40 years ago. Now, though, the 59-year-old Republican was voting for Klar.
“Mark’s a good guy. He just goes along with everything the Democrats want,” Scott said.
— Ethan Weinstein
Steady turnout in Bennington as voters express support for abortion rights amendment (4:33 p.m.)
Bennington’s town clerk, Cassandra Barbeau, said she was only able to relax around noon on Tuesday when she saw that the town’s two voting locations were likely to have enough ballots to get through the day.
Bennington, Vermont’s sixth largest municipality, has 10,400 registered voters. But the Secretary of State’s Office sent the town clerk’s office only 2,400 ballots, since all registered active voters were already mailed absentee ballots, Barbeau said.
The clerk worried that people who chose to vote onsite would exceed the number of ballots available. Poll workers can photocopy more ballots, but the votes on them would need to be hand-counted since the voting machines can’t read information on the photocopied versions.
“It’s prone to human error,” Barbeau said of hand-counting votes, especially when the counting takes place after the she and her staff have already been working for 13 hours. “I didn’t feel relieved until today, when I saw people coming in with their ballots.”
As of 2 p.m., seven hours after the Bennington firehouse opened to voters, at least 3,900 ballots had already been received. That total includes absentee ballots returned as of Monday.
Shawn Devlin, 21, a Bennington poll worker for seven years, said he’d seen a steady stream of voters all day.
He believes the Bennington County Sheriff race, in which three people are vying to succeed the incumbent, has drawn the interest of local voters.
Several voters — including a good number of men — told VTDigger they turned out to support Proposal 5, a proposed state constitutional amendment that would guarantee reproductive liberty.
“I do believe it’s the woman’s choice,” Jeff Lubeck, 66, a retiree, said of the decision to have an abortion. “Are they gonna be forced to have this kid? They should have the option at least available to them.”
Michael Lacroix, 27, who works in retail, said he knows someone who’d been raped. That person getting pregnant and having no choice but to keep the child “would have killed her,” he said.
“They have to be able to choose when they want to be a mother,” Lacroix said.
— Tiffany Tan
In Burlington’s Old North End, a city council member encourages voters to ‘have fun’ (3:13 p.m.)
At the Integrated Arts Academy polling place in Burlington’s Old North End on Tuesday afternoon, participation was steady. In a dense neighborhood in Burlington, many voters walked or cycled to the polling place in the sunny but cool afternoon.
City Councilor Gene Bergman, P-Ward 2, isn’t on the ballot this election, but a major citywide ballot question is. Bergman said he had spent the last two hours standing outside his home polling place with a sign in support of the proposed $165 million bond to build a new high school.
Bergman, who was also showing support for David Zuckerman, a Progressive/Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, said he was optimistic about the bond question. Bergman said he had taken to pacing to keep warm.
As Bergman neared the end of his “two hour shift” outside the polls, he said he had been trying out a new greeting to voters headed toward the Walnut Street entrance.
“Have fun in there,” Bergman said.
On the way out of the polls, Sara Glasgow, 53, said local elections were important to her.
“It’s a bottom up kind of issue — that the more I can participate in local elections, the more change can be effected up the food chain, so to speak.”
In particular, Glasgow said she came out for Proposals 2 and 5, two proposed amendments to the Vermont Constitution. Proposal 2 aims to clarify the state’s prohibition of slavery, and Proposal 5 would enshrine the right to “personal reproductive autonomy.” Glasgow supported both efforts.
“Let’s get it in black and white and be unequivocal about it,” she said.
— Patrick Crowley
Some Democrats say they back Republican Phil Scott for governor (2:00 p.m.)
In Hinesburg on Tuesday, at least some Democratic voters said they had voted to reelect Vermont’s Republican governor.
Anna Stuart, a 31-year-old attorney from Hinesburg, said she had been “really excited” to support Democratic state Sen. Becca Balint’s bid for the U.S. House and had generally voted for Democrats up and down the ballot. But when it came to her vote for governor, she selected Republican Phil Scott over Democratic challenger Brenda Siegel.
“He’s just been a very measured incumbent, and I think his stance on women’s issues is divergent from other Republicans,” Stuart said. “He has a backbone and he’s just very practical.”
The third-term Republican also garnered support from Katie Holmes, a 42-year-old substitute teacher and events manager from Hinesburg, who said she generally voted for Democrats.
“Being a liberal, progressive state, I think it’s nice to have that juxtaposition with him,” she said.
Holmes said she wished Scott had been more proactive in fighting climate change. But, she said, “For the most part, I think he’s doing a very good job for our state. And it’s nice to have that other voice — sometimes.”
— Paul Heintz
On Election Day, Joe Benning and David Zuckerman spend a little time catching up on their day jobs (1:44 p.m.)
As Vermonters voted for a new lieutenant governor on Tuesday, the major party candidates split their time between campaign work and their day jobs.
Former lieutenant governor David Zuckerman, a Progressive/Democrat who is seeking to reclaim the state’s No. 2 job, dropped by voting places in Chittenden County and then planned to head home to his Hinesburg farm to work on protecting his crops from the cold.
Outside Hinesburg Town Hall on Tuesday morning, Zuckerman waved to voters as he chatted with Phil Pouech, a town selectboard member who is running for the Vermont House as a Democrat.
Zuckerman said he was feeling optimistic about his chances of returning to state office in January. “I think my views, my experience, my name recognition is in line with the majority of Vermonters,” he said. “We’ll have to see.”
Zuckerman, who first ran for office in 1994, said he had noticed an uptick in negative behavior this election cycle, which he attributed to the “national tenor changing.” At honk-and-wave events, he said, “a few haters” had made known their feelings about him using certain hand gestures.
“They seem to be displaying that I’m No. 1, but not with the typical finger,” he said.
Across the state, Zuckerman’s chief rival for the lieutenant governor’s post, Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, said by phone that he had spent the morning picking up 75-100 lawn signs he’d distributed around his home turf in Lyndon and St. Johnsbury. “And I am now at my law office trying to play catchup,” the defense attorney said, noting that his practice had suffered while he was on the campaign trail.
Benning said that he had decided to stick with his typical Election Day practice of avoiding the polls entirely.
“It’s been tradition for me to leave people alone and let them vote,” Benning said. “I think when they show up at the polls, they already know what they want to do, and I don’t want to be in their face when they do that.”
The first-time candidate for statewide office said he was feeling “cautiously optimistic” about his chances of becoming lieutenant governor.
“I do know that I have done everything I possibly could with the resources I had,” Benning said. “So I don’t feel like I left anything on the table.”
— Paul Heintz
Pownal voters weigh in on inflation, crime and reproductive rights (12:58 p.m.)
A dozen voters were lined up outside the Pownal Valley Fire Department by the time the polling place opened at 10 a.m. today.
The first voter to arrive, half an hour before the doors opened, was Vince Martinek, 85, and his German shepherd, Gunny. A lifelong Republican, Martinek said he turned up to support his party’s candidates, though he didn’t feel strongly about any of them.
But he hopes that newly elected leaders would find a solution to the problem of inflation. “The economy in this country is foremost on my mind,” the retiree and Marine veteran said. “I’ve never seen the country in a worse state of affairs than it is today.”
The economy — as well as public safety — also drove other Pownal residents to the polls.
James Morgan, 50, a machinist and dairy farm worker, said he has witnessed hordes of jobs disappear from this juncture of Vermont, Massachusetts and New York in the past 20 years.
“Nothing comes back except for drugs and drug counselors,” said Morgan, who also said he voted straight down the Republican ticket. He is similarly worried about public safety, citing the two recent shooting deaths in Bennington.
Unlike Martinek, on Proposal 5, a proposed state constitutional amendment that would guarantee reproductive liberty, Morgan believes women should have the right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy.
“Why should anybody tell you what you cannot or you can do?” he said. “This is a free country.”
Some women voters felt the same way.
“I feel that the woman should have the choice,” said Donna Gessing, 65, a retiree who moved to Pownal from Massachusetts two years ago. “They shouldn’t force you to bring a baby into this world,” she said, underscoring pregnancies that result from rape.
A Democrat, Gessing said she’d once had to undergo an emergency abortion because of a medical complication that threatened her life.
Candace Chapman, 39, said abortion should come down to “freedom of choice.”
A local nurse who does not identify with any political party, Chapman said she votes for candidates based on who can make people’s lives better. Right now, she wants to see the inflation rate and violent crimes come down.
— Tiffany Tan
Phil Scott casts his ballot in Berlin (12:40 p.m.)
In Newfane, Brenda Siegel checks the odometer on her gubernatorial campaign (12:05 p.m.)
Ask Brenda Siegel to sum up her Democratic campaign for governor and she’ll cite plenty of every-person stories — as well as 35,000 miles of car travel, a menagerie of animal sightings and one flat tire.
Siegel, voting at Newfane’s fire and rescue station, said she has heard from hundreds of Vermonters.
“People are really struggling,” she said.
The candidate also has seen her share of cows, deer, foxes, turkeys and groundhogs, as well as one snowy owl and a Texas trucker who stopped to help with that flat tire.
Siegel, who is running against three-term Republican Gov. Phil Scott, departed Newfane Tuesday for one last state-spanning car trip to Middlebury, Winooski, Essex, South Burlington and finally Burlington.
“It’s been a journey,” she said. “No matter what happens, we left it all on the field.”
— Kevin O’Connor
In Brattleboro, Becca Balint’s final push for the House begins at home (9:50 a.m.)
Becca Balint could make history Tuesday as the first woman to win a Vermont congressional seat. But before she embarked on her final hours of campaigning for the U.S. House, she ensured all was taken care of back home.
Balint woke in Brattleboro at 5:15 a.m. to walk her dog, breakfast on a mix of yogurt, cereal, blueberries, nuts and coffee and kiss her wife and two children goodbye before moving on to the town’s American Legion post to greet friends and neighbors casting morning ballots.
Two years ago, the longtime state senator used her local poll time to unveil signs that swapped her usual “Working for Windham County” slogan for the simpler “For Vermont.”
“Who knows what the future holds?” Balint said at the time.
(Two months later, she became president pro tempore of the Vermont Senate.)
Today, Balint is set to travel north to campaign in Hartford, Randolph, Barre and finally Burlington, where she’ll join fellow state Democratic candidates at a joint election night party at the Hula event space.
— Kevin O’Connor
Correction: An earlier version of this page misspelled Lisa O’Neil’s name.
