This story by Aaron Calvin was first published by The News & Citizen on Feb. 20. 

The first piece of legislation signed into law by Gov. Phil Scott last week cleared up the uncertainty following the discovery of decades of technically illegitimate elections in Hyde Park. The law was primarily inspired by the town’s predicament.

The law, known as H.78, updated Vermont’s laws around Australian ballot voting, allowing the process to be used for “any and all” officer elections. Previous law allowed only for the election of all town officers by Australian ballot or not at all.

Crucially for Hyde Park, the law also clarifies that “the validity of a vote by a municipality to elect some, but not all, municipal officers prior to the effective date of this act shall not be subject to challenge for failure to comply” with previous law and “any municipality that voted to elect some, but not all, municipal officers prior to the effective date of this act, the election of a municipal officer shall not be subject to challenge for failure to comply” with previous law.

The law was sponsored by the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs, which includes two members from Lamoille County: Lucy Boyden, D-Cambridge, and Mark Higley, R-Lowell, who also represents Eden.

Boyden said the law was crafted by the committee following testimony from Deputy Secretary of State Lauren Hibbert after Hyde Park’s realization that their Australian ballot elections were not in compliance with state law. This revelation also prompted an unspecified number of other Vermont towns to reach out to the secretary of state’s office with concerns that they had also been conducting similarly noncompliant elections.

Hyde Park officials discovered late last year the town had been conducting officer elections out of compliance with Vermont law since 1994, electing some of its town officers by Australian ballot but not all of them, as the previous law required.

Though the secretary of state’s office initially recommended a special town meeting be held to affirm the legitimacy of most of the selectboard, it was eventually agreed that the selectboard could affirm its own legitimacy, which it did in December.

By passing this new law, the state is both ratifying three decades of Hyde Park elections and legitimizing the process by which they were conducted going forward.

“Section two in the law kind of waved the legislative magical wand and said, ‘If you haven’t been complying with the law, no worries. It’s all OK, you’re not going to get into any trouble or anything, but just going forward, this is the way to more clearly follow it,’” Boyden said.

Boyden said the committee found that a major issue behind the Australian ballot process for many Vermont towns was the lack of a town charter, and therefore the lack of a legal document outlining how voting was conducted within the town, which led to an inconsistency in the implementation of ballot voting. Many towns use a mix of Australian ballot voting just as Hyde Park did, but have language in a town charter that legitimizes it.

Despite the passage of the law, it’s back to the drawing board for Hyde Park, where residents will elect all officers by floor vote on Town Meeting Day this year and decide if Australian ballot should be reinstated for some town officers, all town officers or replace the in-person Town Meeting Day tradition entirely.