Vermont’s longtime elections director plans to leave his position for a role in the federal government next month, Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas announced this week.
Will Senning has worked for the elections division for more than a dozen years — 10 of them in charge of the office, which administers state elections and oversees campaign finance reporting and lobbyist disclosure. Starting Feb. 12, he will be joining the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security responsible for national cybersecurity and infrastructure protection, Senning said in an interview Tuesday.
“I was born and raised in Vermont and so it holds a special place for me,” he said. “To have been able to play a role in administering Vermont’s elections for the last decade really has been an honor.”
Senning’s departure comes on the cusp of a busy election season, with presidential and state primaries on the horizon. Vermont is scheduled to hold its presidential primary on Town Meeting Day, which takes place March 5. State primary elections are scheduled for August and state and federal general elections in November.
“I have a good amount of time to try to set the table as well as I can for my exit, but I have full confidence in my team,” Senning said of the elections division.
In a separate interview Tuesday, Copeland Hanzas also expressed confidence that Senning’s departure would not impede her office’s administration of the coming elections. She said the search for his successor would begin immediately but that her office would likely be unable to find a new director in time for the presidential primary.
Copeland Hanzas said the division was also in the process of hiring a new administrative support staff member and that it would otherwise be able to “make adjustments with current personnel” to carry out its duties for the March primary, though she did not specify what those adjustments would be.
“We’ve got other folks within the secretary of state’s office with lots of experience and some retired clerks who have a deep understanding of election proceedings and can help field questions for us,” she said. “I feel like we’ll be in pretty good shape.”
At CISA, Senning will take on a role as one of 10 regional election security advisors, a position recently created in the agency with an eye toward strengthening election security across the country. He will focus on the six New England states.
“The reason Will was scooped up by CISA is really his high profile in the region and the country as a very solid elections director,” Copeland Hanzas said. “As much as we’re sad to see him go, his appointment is really good for elections in Vermont as well as in the nation.”
Senning said he was proud of the slate of election reforms that he oversaw while running the elections division, including the introduction of same-day voter registration and the expansion of mail-in balloting.
“I really think we made a lot of significant gains in making elections more accessible to all Vermont voters,” Senning said.
