MONTPELIER — The Vermont Secretary of State’s office is launching a task force with leaders from Gov. Phil Scott’s administration and a number of advocacy groups to boost voter turnout ahead of local, state and federal elections next year.
Vermont already has some of the highest rates of election participation in the country. According to data compiled by Secretary Sarah Copeland Hanzas’ office, which oversees Vermont’s elections, more than 70% of registered voters in the state cast ballots in the last two presidential elections, compared to an average of about 65% of all registered voters nationally.
Voter turnout has been lower in recent non-presidential election years, which are known as midterm elections, according to state data. Primary elections and local races typically see substantially lower turnout figures, as well, regardless of what year they’re held. Turnout is often lower, too, during so-called “off-year” elections, such as Tuesday’s.
But Copeland Hanzas said Monday at a press conference in Montpelier that the state could do more to improve turnout, specifically, among four groups her office has identified as facing substantial barriers to voting. Those are people experiencing homelessness, people with disabilities, survivors of domestic and sexual violence and people who are incarcerated.
A report earlier this year found that nearly half of surveyed people incarcerated in Vermont and Maine said that they did not know how to vote at the prison where they were held. The report, by the Washington, D.C. based nonprofit The Sentencing Project, also found that people incarcerated in Vermont and Maine had limited access to the paperwork and other resources they’d need to vote, and that staff at prisons in those states lacked the capacity to help them do so.
“We’ve got some foundational challenges there that we want to make sure we address,” Copeland Hanzas said Monday. “No government can say that they have the mandate to do this or to not do that if we don’t have everyone participating in our elections.”
The task force, which is slated to start meeting later this month, will include leaders from the state Agency of Human Services — which oversees state prisons as well as the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living — as well as Disability Rights Vermont and the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, among other advocacy groups.
The push also comes as President Donald Trump has said he wants to “lead a movement” to get rid of a form of voting that 64% of voters used in Vermont last year, including in state prisons: mail-in ballots. Trump says he wants to eliminate mail-in voting before next year’s elections, when control of Congress will be up for grabs.
Part of Trump’s plan, he wrote in a social media post in August, includes signing an executive order that would bar states from using mail ballots and potentially some voting machines. He has said — without evidence — that voting machines are “highly inaccurate,” as well as more expensive to use than processing paper ballots, according to NPR.
Copeland Hanzas said Monday that she was committed to preserving access to mail-in voting in the state. Isaac Dayno, policy director for the state Department of Corrections, added at the press conference that access was critical for people who are incarcerated.
“A person in custody can’t freely browse political news online, can’t register using their correctional facility address, and can’t visit a polling place on Election Day. Mail-in ballots remain their only option,” Dayno said. “Which means preparation, communication and civic education are essential to making sure every vote counts.”
