Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Welcome back after that short break. We are now being joined by deputy secretary of state and our elections director. And, we are going to be discussing, a report, an audit, multi district audit report that was, issued as a request of this committee, at the tail end of the Bennington one election process last session. Everybody was present for that one, so I don't think I need to speak to that era. And, yeah, I guess I'll just hand it over to you folks. Yeah, let's

[Rep. Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault (Member)]: take it

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: from there. Well, thank you so much for having us. Good morning. My name is Lauren Hibbard. I'm the Deputy Secretary of State, and I have with me

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Chea, the Election Director.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: I like the euphemism of the process for Bennington one. That was quite a process. And we're very excited to be here to talk about the multi district audit report that this committee had us do as a result of Act 70. Specifically, that act asked our office to coordinate with clerks of multi municipal boundaries that are divided, with representative districts and senatorial districts, to audit their checklists and to ensure that those checklists accurately correspond to the prescribed district boundaries. We did file the report as asked. I understand the committee assistant is going to post that onto your website. I appreciate that. We did not file testimony because the report really speaks for itself. So we also, as part of that request, the clerks had to provide a written summary of their audit process, and that those findings would be incorporated into the report. And so you will find all of that within the report that's posted. All 24, there's 24 municipalities that are multi district. All 24 of them complied with the requirement. And all but one did so within the legislative deadline. So we're happy that that happened. And it did take some work from our office and certainly a lot of work from the towns as well. We're very grateful to the town clerks and the BCAs from those respective communities who did this work and the collaboration with our office to make this report happen. This audit found three categories of issues. I'm going to talk about the first, and then I'm going to hand it over to Sean to talk about the remaining two. The first and probably most significant in terms of changes going forward is there were minor errors in operationalizing the 2022 redistricting process. So we redistrict every ten years. And after the census, which happens in 2020, it will happen in 2030. So the legislature redistricted in 2022. Again, presumably, something changes, which redistricting is sometimes changing in the national conversation, we're scheduled to do so again as a state in 2032. After the 2022 redistricting process, some minor errors were made. The largest number of errors was in Burlington, where there are more than 29,000 voters. There were 26 errors. And in Williamstown and Colchester, they had to move voters as well. Williamstown, one Colchester, five. So in all three towns, if you looked at them altogether, fewer than one in 1,000 voters were incorrect. So that is why our office characterized that as minor. It certainly is minor. We have a recommendation related to this, which doesn't require legislative action. It will just be something that our office does. It could be legislatively mandated. But to stop this in the future or to mitigate this, we think that there should be a district audit conducted by clerks and BDAs immediately after we disjointed, as is sure safe. And it could be required from the legislature. That certainly might be helpful. But it will be requested by the Secretary of State's office. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Sean.

[Sean (Elections Director, Vermont Secretary of State)]: Great. Thank you. The second issue that was found related to data integrity issues, specifically data from prior election systems, even you know, long ago before there there were the the computer systems that then carried forth and subsequent, systems related to to addresses. These towns, these these issues related to resulted in voters being assigned to an incorrect district and town. And 12 towns were impacted collectively. They had to move 68 voters to another legislative district. So on average, just under six voters per per impacted town. On on this side, the safeguard issue or part of the piece that gives us confidence, I guess, for continual improvement going forward is the new election management system, which we launched last May, May 2025, has the ability to do many things that the previous systems didn't, one of which is to run control reports. We're able to run control reports that identify legacy data issues. And so this summer and fall, we ran control reports. We're able to help identify data that was impacted, pass those on to clerks, work with them to correct the data formatting and so forth of their voter roles. We continue to run these reports on a monthly basis just to monitor data integrity. So it goes beyond the issue of

[Unidentified Committee Member]: where folks

[Sean (Elections Director, Vermont Secretary of State)]: what districts they're in, but even just for the formatting and so forth of the addresses, what we see in there. If something isn't being entered correctly, it's able to provide that alert that we can follow-up with clerks on. Beyond that, the new system also has safeguards in place doesn't that controls the formatting. So you wouldn't you would throw an error message if you improperly enter a format, which will help as well. The third issue, and we say kind of issue in quotes for the third one, it just didn't fall in those first two buckets. So it's a third, is there was one voter in one town who the BCA and the clerk found they had moved to another residence across town. And so they had to be moved, their address updated, moved to another district. That's obviously nothing unique happens all the time at every election time and every biennial checklist and cleanup process, but it happened in this process so that we included there. We don't think additional measures or remediation is needed for that third issue. There's plenty of processes in place, including that biennial checklist review, including the processes that happen at each election where voter checklists are posted, where people check-in to vote and so forth. At a high level, I think just speaking of that biennial checklist review and the ongoing reviews, that's another piece that I think in the broader context of really what we're looking at with this audit, was just how we're doing in the overall effort to keep our voter checklists up to date with as much integrity as possible. We did continue that work this summer, worked very closely with all of the flurgs, not just these 2,000 and their BCA on that checklist review following the thesis and statute in '17 VSA 2150 for that review, both of the biennial checklist in the systematic way and the ongoing review. Certainly continuing to enlist the vigilance of voters themselves as 17 GSA two thousand five hundred one speaks to having the checklist posted and explaining the procedures by which a voter is on the wrong chest checklist, for their geographical area can be added to the proper proper checklist. So we think that through all of these measures together, Vermonters can continue to work together to ensure that every voter is in their proper district and that our elections are as free and fair and accessible as possible.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: All right. Okay. Any questions from the committee?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just want to thank you for that work and publicly thank the town clerks and the VCAs for that work, because I know it's extra for them. But it was really important to me, and I'm glad that we fixed a few things that maybe were out of sorts. So thank you.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yeah. And also speaking to the new elections management system, new tool.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: Is a significant step up from our previous tool, in terms of what we're able to identify as a problem and how we can identify it.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Excellent. We've talked a little bit about this leading up to this. Of course, I reviewed it, I had an opportunity to talk with the secretary herself ten days ago. And I just I'm encouraged that it's, you know, it's been identified. We're looking at it more granularly and have more tools to make sure that the system is running as cleanly as possible. So, for a desired outcome for that request for last year, I think this is, in my mind, all positive.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just like to say I appreciate that there are, you know, to go through in that. Even the breakdown of the towns is in here. You know, I'm not just saying, well, there was 68, and there was an average of six. It has by the number on there, and I appreciate having that information. Thanks.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: I will say that that is, director Cheaghan's work right there. So, I can take no credit.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But, no, I like having that, those breakdowns. The same as when we do a charter change where there's a vote and we ask for the not just the percentage, but the number of voters that participated. Yes. It's the same Yeah, absolutely. For that transparency. Thank you.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Anything else from the committee? Two days in a row, early in Austin. I hope to

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: be here tomorrow.

[Rep. Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault (Member)]: We're just kidding. I

[Sean (Elections Director, Vermont Secretary of State)]: hope you're just across

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: the street. Hope

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: you're able to be here tomorrow, but I will be watching your public records conversations and may ask to participate in that conversation.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: We'll be three for three then.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: No, we can't be three for three. Maybe next week.

[Sean (Elections Director, Vermont Secretary of State)]: I know. Have a lot of rough things, but I know.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yeah. All right. Well, wonderful. Again, thank you so so much for this. Like I said earlier, I was, like, reflecting on this a year ago at this time, what we're embarking on, and this is good closing, not necessarily closing the loop, but following through on that and knowing that we're very keenly on the job. So

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: Yeah, it's really encouraging that it was so minor that there was nothing glaring that came up. I was nervous that that was going to happen. We were, too. But I think with these systemic changes, really, most importantly, the audit after the redistricting and more support from the Secretary of State's office in that auditing process post redistricting, I think that is the most significant. The legacy data issues, fingers crossed that I'm jinxing us, will be much reduced because we're in the new system. Ensuring that the redistricting process went smoothly, I think, is the most significant change that can be made in the future that can remediate these problems. And We're committed to it.

[Rep. Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault (Member)]: Did you have something to add? I was just going to say that the clinics were amazed that there weren't as many errors as they thought they were going to find. Very dreading it. It's like, oh my gosh.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Claims the worst, hope for the best.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: Well, hopefully that gives Vermonters confidence in the accuracy of our voter rolls. We have a lot to be proud of here. Most significantly that town clerks are very concerned, as you just heard from your member, about the accuracy of their voter checklists. And we have so much election integrity because we run elections so much at the local level. And we have individuals who really give their heart to protecting democracy. So we all owe a lot of gratitude to Democrats. And what's a good thing about running it locally, too, is

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: the clerks know voter checklist.

[Rep. Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault (Member)]: When a petition comes in, I can literally go through and say yes, yes, yes. There might be one or two that I don't really know. They've moved into town recently, but I should say pretty much 99% of the people, I don't have to go and look on the checklist to see if they're there. Know people.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: And that is true to a lesser extent, but to a great extent in our larger communities as well, the clerks are very aware of it.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Everybody knows everybody. Was six degrees of maple bacon.

[Sean (Elections Director, Vermont Secretary of State)]: And I think that conversation overall that we've had with the clerks, I think a lot of comfort with the biennial checklist review and going through name by name, which really is the most thorough part. I think this audit was a little different for some of the smaller communities. Obviously, of the larger communities have always had multi district, something used to it. But there's other communities who were always just a one district town up until 2020. And so the first time, this was somewhat new for them. And so obviously, process, I think, of our office back two years ago, helping use those parts of the system of the street segments and how to distinguish the different districts in town is a piece we look at, but also in the ongoing work of doing the audit and checking that part as part of the biennial checklist. So I think if there speak to if there was any kind of uncertainty I think some of the uncertainty we heard of how it would turn out were folks for these districts were new. As we noted in the report, as you all know, committee works to try to have as many single district towns as possible for that reason, to make it simpler. Over 90% of the towns in the state are are single district, which is good for them. But, you know, for the others, this was an extra wrinkle. We know it was more work for the clerks in the BCA to work on, and we we appreciate their work and overall the fine work they've they've done.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yeah. Very excellent recognition there. Okay, folks. Anything else? No. Alright. We will break for lunch, and we will come back with the, Department of

[Rep. Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault (Member)]: Public Safety