Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: Are we fired?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: No. We

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: are now. And welcome back to the Senate Committee on Government Operations Committee meeting of Tuesday, 02/10/2000 We and are gonna take a look now at s two ninety seven, an act relating to electronic ballot returns in local elections. And senator, will lead us off again. Thank you. Thank you, committee and vice chair for the record. That's.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Eate sponsor of the bill.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: And you, as a committee, have before you probably several bills. I know at least two that I have sponsored that deal with voting rights and administration of essentially, electoral administration. I appreciate you taking these up even though it is not the practice of the committees of jurisdiction to look at elections matters in an election year. I really appreciate you giving this time because I think they are all offered in the spirit of making sure that everyone's right to vote is maintained regardless of any intimations or changes at the federal level. You know, we have been proud, I think, in Vermont of trying to protect people's access to the right to vote, have had secretaries of state stand up and remind people of their rights when we started to see more tactics that might intimidate voters when they go to the polls to vote. And, you know, I'm not gonna try and call up verbatim statements from the current presidential administration, but they are statements that are giving pause and concern to a lot of Vermonters. Some of us represent very diverse districts where we have tried to ex expand the franchise and allow more people the right to vote. We've been very protective of same day voter registration and same day voting. You know, we we have you know, we've taken pride in making sure students and young people can vote as well as new Americans. Okay. And I think one area that we are less than proud of our progress is in ensuring people with disabilities in Vermont are able to access fully their right to vote. I was a justice of the peace in Burlington for ten years. And I remem I mean, I remember unless something's changed, you know, looking at the way that someone who cannot physically get to a polling place would vote, should they not have gotten their their paper ballot requested or gotten it in time, is that two justices of the peace would physically go to their home and kind of stand over them and make sure that they have voted. And I never felt good about that. I also never saw anyone take advantage of separate opportunity because that's fairly invasive, I would say. Because we we do it

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: all the time. Voting at their kitchen table.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: Okay. Well, there are I mean, I just think that there were a lot of people who did not want two people to enter their homes.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Oh, and we've never gone in a home.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: Okay. At least not. So you go to the curbside.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: We would ask the door for curbside.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: We I you know, I can forward you complaints from folks who may or may not agree with the premise of this bill, but who have waited outside at the curb for Yeah. That's cool. Over an hour in the cold, couldn't keep their car running. You know, we just getting beyond anecdotal, we rank forty ninth in the country for access for people with disabilities to vote while we rank among the first for access otherwise. I think that's an MIT study if you wanna look that up. Decided the last time we were celebrated for our access in general, but this was noted. So I certainly don't wanna speak for any community that, you know, is feeling concerned about accessing the ballot box. But what I think we know is that we have had a lot of success with mail balloting. And, you know, it's still we a lot of us still have to remind people you're gonna get three ballots. You know, one, you can't sign too many. You can't put too many in an envelope. People do a lot of their daily business activity, as private as it may be, through electronic means. And they don't expect that they're just, you know, putting something in an app and the rest is magic. You know, they wanna know that if they've DocuSign something, they can get a physical copy of that, that we're making paper government still available through electronic means, even if it's not full digital government. So as more communities and municipalities particularly look to advancing electronic ballot return in the future, this bill doesn't speak to the validity of that. It doesn't speak to the requirement that you choose a particular vendor or that a municipality moves forward with this, but it gives them permission to look at options that may become available in the future and do some piloting of electronic ballot return with safeguards and parameter. And I think there should be a full and open discussion of what those safeguards and parameters are for the future. That when, you know, I think we're getting more vendors reaching out to us saying, do you want to do your campaigns with more AI data? Right? Like, there's just vendors out there who are gonna start to come to us and say, you know, we can do this or that, and the state should be able to help municipalities and help our own, you know, sort of all of our future elections be guided by some principles that are discussed in the open about what it takes to do the electronic ballot return. I keep saying electronic ballot return because I think it's really important that there is a paper copy on the other side. So you'll hear from the experts, you know, who have been working on this that this would, you know, this doesn't just compile an electronic vote count. This is the idea around the safeguards is that you would have end to end encryption on someone's ballot who's overseas or isn't otherwise able to get to the polling place with their ballot.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: We have a 04:00 to do a

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: great explanation of how it works. It would go to their town clerk, you know, to the person who's supposed to be tallying those votes, and they would print out a paper copy that would be fed into the machine just like we do with mail. Right now, I still think that's the safest way because we all and I know I have been part of elections because I have a lot of students in my district where thousand ballots were lost and found, you know. So while I wish I could say, you know, our system is perfect as it is, you know, I think this is yet another tool that gives people access. And then we still rely on all of our audits and our quality control checks at the secretary of state's level for every election in case there's questions about a vote count.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Senator Vyhovsky?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: So we heard, I think it was last year, from secretary of state that at this point they were not posing any electronic ballots because they deemed that there was no secure enough way to do it. Has that changed?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: I mean, you know, I think what we've seen in the last year is that there are municipalities that are have some means of electronic ballot return that they're using. And so this doesn't speak to state elections. This speaks to if municipalities wanted to take advantage of this option. I would say if this could be an open door to just talking about how people with disabilities are not able to access the ballot, that would be great, because ideally, you know, we'd, they wouldn't be waiting outside for a ballot. We wouldn't have these problems. And ideally, we wouldn't be worried about people's mail ballots, but my mother lives in South Burlington, which I think of as pretty hoppin' place, and they, like, they get their mail maybe once or twice a week. I mean, there's a lot of problems with the postal service right now. And then on top of that, we have a will they, won't they send, you know, people, observers, those meant to intimidate two polling places in future elections. So especially where we have communities that have non citizen voting. So, you know, I think this is something I think we should make sure municipalities feel like they are given the opportunity to explore every tool in their toolbox. And we know that we are already falling behind on access to voting for people with disabilities. So if this created a conversation about voting access, and that would be that would be great.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Right? We have great witnesses to to explain how it all works.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I certainly appreciate having a conversation about disability access, but and and I understand this is at the state level, but if it's not secure, it's not secure. It doesn't matter if it's a municipal election or a state election. Sure.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: And I mean, I think being able to walk through those concerns, you know, is is helpful and being able to learn from maybe municipalities that are already engaged in this. If it's not secure, it's not secure. It could apply right now to a lot of different means of voting. And so, you know, like, we should just make sure we, there is security and enfranchisement everywhere we look in our voting system. And I think you're

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: gonna hear about cities that are already, that are doing it or about to do it, and how it is secured. Senator White, you had a question?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Oh yeah, we may want to move on, but my question to you is going to be, I believe Anchorage, Alaska is doing this. That was one change. Question, Senator Vyhovsky, was kind of framed as what's changed. And I would say that that was one compelling bit of information for me is a very large city larger than And

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: there are cities And your relatives on the truck

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: that are too Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: So I would say that was, like, the one piece that I was thinking of.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: Yeah. I mean, it's you know, we are just facing a lot of unpredictability. And I think I mean, we've we've looked now through the pandemic and through floods at, you know, do we make this option available on the fly if something should happen and it's very hard to access your polling place? I can't think of a more unpredictable time for all things democratic. So, you know, I think it's it would be good to learn from communities that are looking at this, that are moving forward. Even, you know, I mean, town meeting, we hear often is accessible only if you can be there in person at 10AM on a Tuesday or what have you. And, you know, I think we're gonna see experimentation with Massachusetts communities where you could be casting a ballot that's secure in real time while remotely participating. So that alone, I mean, part of the reason we're so behind on people with disabilities being able to vote is because a lot of our elections are on the floor on a weekday, and being able to use this tool much like, you know, almost like a poll, but one that's very secure and gives you real time information would help a lot of people who otherwise can't participate in town meeting.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Just given our time and how short our time is, and we have two experts on this that would be Definitely

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: gonna get there. I'm gonna have Tucker luncheon and go first. Sandra, you did a great job without any notes. I tried.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: I'm almost better without notes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: No. Also, you have it sort of embedded. Yes.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: Embedded. Thanks, Alison. Thanks for this.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Tucker, could you join us and run through the bill, please?

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Absolutely, and good afternoon. Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel. You have in front of me S-two 97, and actively to ballot return in local elections. So just to orient all of us back to the subject of local elections, there are two systems that are used at the local level. Australian Valley governed by 17 VSA section twenty six eighty, and then votes from the floor, which were just brought. Votes from the floor are conducted by voice vote. There is no ballot involved unless there is a request from the floor or division, in which case it goes to a paper ballot based on the affirmation of five voters based upon the motion, but it is a simple paper ballot. Everything else is determined by the moderator, similar to how your parliamentarians do it on a voice vote, and you want it to change. Alright. Section one adds a new section 2680A to title 17. We're gonna work through the definitions first. Recall that definitions are constraining, right? Mhmm. So here we go. Defining electronic ballot return, a system that allows a voter to use electronic means to return a marked local election ballot to the clerk of the municipality in which the voter is registered. The next definition is for the qualified electronic transmission system, which is an electronic transmission system that allows the voter to receive marks and return a ballot, and I'll call your attention to the fact that there are some qualifications added to this defined term later on in the bill. Moving into page two, subsection b of this new section. At an annual or special meeting that is called for that purpose, town city or incorporated village, so this is the limited list of municipal corporations that would be able to use this authority, may vote to adopt a system of electronic ballot return for its local elections held by Australian ballot. So this is specifically for those Australian ballot elections because those are the ones where a ballot was used.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Okay. So this would not be for the town meetings of the world. This would

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: It it would be for those town meetings that are held pursuant to seven p b s a section twenty six eight, which are the Australian Ballot. Like our herds. That is correct. Hold your town meetings the weekend before the March. Correct. I know that charter like the back of Okay. The These municipal corporations shall not use electronic ballot return at the same election at which its voters decide that the system shall be used. Brief explanation there, that is the same standard that is used when municipalities adopt the Australian ballot system of voting, The reason being is that it is impossible to appropriately warn the votes that will be held if you are going to change the system of voting based on the first order of business at the annual meeting. So you've adopted, and then at subsequent meetings with municipality, you can use the system. Subsection C, these municipal corporations that have adopted this system may send to voters and receive from those voters ballots only by means of a qualified electronic transmission system. Subsection D, we have the further definition of what that qualified system is. It's a system that shall offer and maintain reasonable data security and voter integrity protections, including, and I'll use the Betsy Ann emphasis on including, because that means including, but not definitive to, Security auditability, end to end encryption, end to end verifiability, dual factor authentication, and biometric or equivalent digital identity verification technologies. Subsection E, the clerk of municipal corporation that has authorized the system shall ensure that each ballot received through the system is transcribed through an anonymous paper ballot. The clerk shall secure account, maintain, and store the transcribed ballot in the same manner as any other ballot pursuant to the chapter that governs system. So you've heard about saying whatever the transmitted ballot is to a physical form that is then co mingled with the other ballots that are Okay. Over the machine, right? Subsection F, all information or data generated by a voter using an employment based systems shall be confidential and shall not be used for any purpose other than aggregate voter participation statistics. So the duty of confidentiality here would be applied to public agencies, so it would constrain the disclosure of this information to the Public Records Act, and some of these clauses with SAC also constrain those that are holding data if it is the intent of the committee to expressly require the transmission services to hold all of this data confidential and, for example, to not sell the data that they accumulate based on the return of these ballots, it's probably something that should be called out as far as.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, agree with that.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Subsection Secretary of State is directed to publish guidance documents concerning qualified electronic transmission systems that are available to municipalities, including recommendations for minimum security standards, motor privacy standards, auditability, and verification technology. Guidance documents under the Administrative Procedures Act do not require that the public agency follow the same procedures, for example, as rules. They can be published without public hearings, for example, but they do provide important frameworks for other public agencies, and in this case, municipal governments.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: Thank you, Tanya.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Senator Weiss?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: What does it so dual factor authentication, that just means, like, when I get an email to confirm that I am the correct person, like, logging into my account? Or does that what does that actually mean in this? That's what I think it means.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, it is a secondary account based verification system. So you might receive a code under There some are apps that are authenticators themselves so that on the same device you can be logging in and sent a two factor authentication notice the To the other. All that

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: you have and approved the login.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: For some governmental agencies, particularly at the federal level, there's an actual, like, chip or badge. These are carrying a key chain, and it has to be within a certain number of feet of the device in order for the authentication to go through.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Oh, wow. Okay. Cool. So it just it it's not a specific app or anything. It's just the of doing it.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: It is a second step or a second factor in authenticating who you are when you log into a system. Okay.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Cool. Thank you.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Any other questions for Tucker? Great. Thank

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: you. Thank you all.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So on the screen is Floris Centi from the Mobile Voting Project. And welcome, and the floor is yours.

[Forrest Centi (Mobile Voting Project)]: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. So my name is Forrest Centi. My background is in defense and cybersecurity. I spent years doing secure system design and implementation for the United States Air Force, the Department of Homeland Security, United States Army. I'm an honorary commander at the United States Air Force Academy, and I've supported cybersecurity and capacity building initiatives for the United Nations, the State Department, and USAID across 15 different countries. What's relevant to this conversation is I worked at the National Cyber Security Center, both doing hands on technical work and as an executive. While there, I actually led the nation's first independent third party audits and mobile voting systems, and I've been working in this space since 2017. Personally, I've helped run 21 pilot programs across seven different states. 11 of these states in total have now piloted these technologies, and I'm not here representing a vendor. I'm not here selling anything. I'm here because I've watched this technology mature, And I really do think that Vermont is the right place to take the next step. Vermont already values access. You were one of the first states to adopt universal mail in voting. You've invested in early voting. Your Secretary of State launched a voting accessibility task force. And as Jocelyn noted, or will note, a lot of our neighbors are already ahead on electronic ballot return. Places like Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware all have some form of it for military voters right now. And this bill is the next step in the direction that Vermont's already moving. To me, this bill is narrow and deliberate. It allows municipalities to opt into mobile voting as an additional method in odd year municipal elections, and it doesn't mandate anything. It doesn't replace an existing method, and these communities can decide for themselves. It's a walk before you run approach. So Jocelyn's going to tell you more about what it looked like from the election administrator side. But I want to tell you what it looks like from the security side and tell you a little bit more about the independent audit that we did back in the day, which was a ballot generated through tabulation. We actually verified every cryptographic step of the process, and turnout among overseas military voters doubled in that election that we worked on. Every single participant preferred this option over other return options. And we found zero security incidents in

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: that election.

[Forrest Centi (Mobile Voting Project)]: In a similar example, in King County, Washington, a conservation district election, exactly the type of small local election that this bill targets, turnout has since tripled when mobile voting was offered. And Jocelyn mentioned, or Will mentioned, that Seattle District actually has now used it for almost five years. And 94% of those voters choose the digital option. In West Virginia, across 24 or 55 counties, we deployed mobile voting for military and overseas voters. And participation increased around thirty five three to five percentage points. In 2020, 25 voters with physical disabilities even got to use the system for the first time to independently mark and return ballots in a federal election, the first time in their history that it was possible. And in South Carolina, ballot returns among military and overseas voters jumped from 9.8% to almost 55%, saving election officials an estimated seventy hours of annual work. Additionally, you heard this earlier, but Anchorage and Juneau offered mobile voting to all municipal voters last year. And so far, they've had zero security incidents. And internationally, over 150 municipalities in Ontario, Canada have used mobile voting for more than a decade. This movement is growing because several of these communities that try and see the results higher turnout, broader access, and security that works when implemented correctly. So I want to take a brief moment to walk you through what the voter actually experiences, because it's simpler than you might think. And I'll just verbally discuss it for this example. So step one, you download the app. Step two, you verify that you're a registered voter through multi factor authentication, or in this case, I'll say dual factor authentication to use the same word. You prove who you are and who you say you are. In step three, you mark your ballot. In step four, you hit submit, and three things happen simultaneously. Your ballot is encrypted, it's anonymized, and you get a tracking code. Step five, your ballot goes instantly to the election officials, who then take it offline, decrypt it, and print it, and mix it into paper ballots for tabulation. At step six, you get to use a unique tracking code to verify that your vote was cast, recorded, and counted correctly. Think of this like a sealed ballot on a public digital bulletin board that only you can verify with your code. So to speak a little more on the security side, when I came into this space, I brought the same standard that I personally applied in defense, which is that systems are designed to fail safe, to detect intrusion, and to prove their own integrity. The technology behind this bill should use things like end to end verifiable cryptography as it's laid out. And think of it this way. Every single ballot is sealed, tracked, and mathematically provable at every single step from the moment a voter hits submit to the final count. This is the key concept, end to end verifiability. Voters can verify that their ballot was cast as intended. They can confirm it was recorded without being changed, and anyone from a journalist, an auditor, any Vermonter can verify that the final tally is mathematically correct. This level of public verifiability does not exist in other forms of voting. The technology is open source. It is formally verified and built to the same mathematical standards as military grade encryption when used correctly. And the best part is, and the part that I love, is that anybody can audit it from Denmark to the local post office to anybody who can get access to it can check into it. And at the end of the day, every single mobile vote ends up as a paper ballot and is processed through existing tabulation equipment. Your clerk's audit procedures do not change. Mobile voting is a transmission method. It's how voters mark and return their ballot. It is not how you count. The paper trail ends up being preserved. But with all this said, Vermont's system is strong, but it has gaps. A military family stationed overseas has to pay up to $75 in private carrier costs to return a ballot. A voter with a disability has to ask someone else to mark their ballot for them, giving up their private vote every Vermonter deserves. And as of this last January, the United States Post Office postmark rule change means a voter could mail their ballot on time and still have it rejected. Mobile voting reaches every single one of these people, and the ballot arrives on their phone. And it gets to election officials instantly. And screen readers, in this case for the disabled community, work natively. So 11 states have piloted mobile voting. Over 150 municipalities internationally use it. Alaska has deployed it. Your New England neighbors already allow this. The movement is growing because the technology works. The security has improved drastically. And communities do see the results. Vermont has always led in voter access. And S. Two ninety seven continues that tradition. Again, this bill is opt in. It's municipal elections only. The paper trail is preserved. And it's open source technology that anyone can audit. So I want to thank you for giving the time to give this. It's all about removing Vermont forward. I'm all about improving access, increasing transparency, and giving communities the tools they need. And I'm happy to answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Anyone have questions to Senator White?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Yeah, thank you, Mr. Scenti. Legislative So counsel, Tucker Anderson, brought up

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: a really important point, which

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: is the bill doesn't explicitly call out not being able to sell the data or potentially information collected through the third party vendor potentially who would be maintaining the security of the system or even putting forward the actual process of doing the voting. And I'm wondering if you have any reflections on that or if you've seen other communities be able to effectively limit that from happening. Cause I certainly don't want, that's a big concern of mine. And I would, if we move forward with this bill, I'd wanna see some language to that, but concern for all. Sure.

[Forrest Centi (Mobile Voting Project)]: Madam Senator, on a personal opinion, I don't think they should be able to sell the data. I mean, if that's something that you would feel strongly about, I I don't have anything off the top of my head where I could cite any other states that did something similar. But on a personal level, I don't think that we should sell any data related to voting on a mobile device. So I would personally not object to that. And I'd be happy to find additional evidence or anything that would help support that.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: Yeah, thank you for the

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Any other questions? Thank you very much for us. We appreciate it.

[Forrest Centi (Mobile Voting Project)]: You answered. Thank you.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Oh, I'm sorry. No, it's okay. I was deciding if I was gonna ask or not. Who funded the research and development of the vote secure platform?

[Forrest Centi (Mobile Voting Project)]: Sure. That all it was funded by Tusk Montgomery Philanthropy. So it was a foundation that was started by Bradley Tusk.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Good to know. And I'm looking at an article from 01/16/2026 signed by 21 pretty well known cybersecurity experts that pretty clearly says this is not secure. So I I guess I'm a little confused why cybersecurity experts are actually saying that there's a there could be problems with malware on a phone that could change votes, malware at the receiving end that could change votes. And the challenge with it being mobile, not paper, is that that could be done in a a systematic way with just a bot. So I I guess how I guess my question is is are the cybersecurity experts wrong?

[Forrest Centi (Mobile Voting Project)]: Sure. Which could you give me the name of the article, ma'am?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yes. It says Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections. And it is from a peer reviewed article in CITP.

[Forrest Centi (Mobile Voting Project)]: Got it. So I think there's a couple of things that I would speak to specifically on that, ma'am. I think that when it comes to the first part of that, when you talk about security, the systems that we're talking about themselves and like the Vote Secure Protocol that that was referenced in that paper and some that kind of piece, it is designed to fail loudly. In a system at scale that was attacked in this way, you're talking about something that is possible. I'm never gonna say that anything can absolutely be 100 secure, but we're experiencing issues in a lot of these different places for the other systems as well. Vermont already uses universal mail in voting, which has similar vulnerabilities for an attack at scale from the post office system. And for me, when I think about this, security is just one of those things for me where if one community is telling you it's not right and the other community is telling you it is,

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: it's something that has to

[Forrest Centi (Mobile Voting Project)]: be established through trust and through research and through established process. And the people that work on these things, this is an evolving place, and it's getting better and better. There is an entire community of this that no matter what you say, they're going to say this is bad and they're going be against it. But with things like end to end verifiability, end to encryption, separate device verification, end to paper trail, you can combat a lot of the issues that they brought up in this paper. And when it comes to the way that this bill is written, we would have to prove vendors would have to prove that they were able to do some of these things that they're calling out as issues. So in my opinion, this is something where if the bill was passed, a separate vendor would have to go and basically have to challenge those points and prove on paper and in the case of on a system level that they could perform those things and do it reasonably. So so that would be my answer, manager,

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: for Map Center.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Thank you.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: You're welcome now.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you again, Forrest. And let's move now to Jocelyn. Is it you, Carlo or Bu Carlo?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: It's Bu Carlo. Thank you. Thank

[Jocelyn Bucaro (Former Denver Elections Administrator; Mobile Voting Foundation)]: you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, senators. It's a pleasure to be here with you today and thank you for the time and opportunity to speak on this bill. I'm, my name is Jocelyn Beccaro. I am here both as a former election administrator. I ran elections for a decade in the city of Denver, as well as in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio. And I am have also been working on with the Mobile Voting Foundation and on this issue for the past five years. So happy to help answer questions for you all today about both my experience from an election administrator's perspective, as well as, you know, the background information I have on you know how this works in practice and the security and team behind the technology that Forrest referenced. So I when I was the election director at Denver, I had the opportunity to pilot mobile voting technology for our military and overseas voters. And in that pilot, you know, I witnessed firsthand both the ease of use for voters and for election administrators on administering a system to support this. And I also, you know, was able to experience what it's like to process ballots in this way. And I can tell you that not only does this provide tremendous benefit for voters, as you know the senator has mentioned and Forrest mentioned, this closes accessibility gaps for voters who for whom voting remains challenging, especially in in lower profile, lower turnout elections where there may not be as many voting options available to voters, including, you know, town meeting formats and local elections as as this bill applies to. So I'm in my experience in Denver, you know, our voters loved the system. A 100% of them surveyed said that they would love to vote that way in all elections in the future. We saw how turnout increased among those eligible voters and, you know, we have not studied this in particular in Denver, but in a similar pilot in Charleston County, South Carolina, the election administrators actually clocked how much time it took them to process ballots in a system like this and found a significant cost savings and just time and energy spent processing military and overseas ballots. At scale for a local election, it could not only provide better access for voters but could also make the election process itself more efficient for election administrators. I can also speak, you know, as a passionate supporter of this topic and someone who's worked on the technology side for the last five years, as I've mentioned. This issue and this bill that I'm very excited that Vermont is considering addresses two key issues in elections right now. First is access. As we've mentioned, there are far too many voters, who cannot access a ballot easily or accessibly, particularly voters with disabilities, the military and overseas voters for whom returning a ballot by mail can be challenging if not impossible. I don't know if it's been mentioned but it's probably worth mentioning that the country of Denmark is no longer doing home mail delivery. This is a growing trend around the world that where, you know, postal services are becoming increasingly limited, which will only impede the ability of American citizens living in those countries being able to exercise their right to vote by mail. Voters in emergencies, you know, may have absolutely no option to vote if they are displaced because of a natural disaster at any time close to an election. So there's a lot of, voters who'd be served by technology like this, but also, and as importantly, this can also help make, or rebuild or restore trust in elections. I know that sounds counterintuitive, especially given the obvious concerns and questions about security in online voting and mobile voting. But, by requiring systems to meet standards for end to end verifiability. This system any system used under this law would have to enable public publicly verified elections. In other words, instead of simply trusting election administrators to count ballots and report results correctly and audit the results after the fact correctly, you know, there is a great deal of trust that we have to put in election officials. Having been one, I know that that trust is not misplaced and that there are rigorous safeguards in place in elections currently to protect the integrity of elections and ensure that the correct result is reported. But there is a lot of trust that the public has to rely sort of without evidence necessarily that those results are correct. A system that enables end to end verifiability, actually removes that sort of blind trust. It actually turns what's currently a black box process that happens inside an election office, sometimes behind closed doors, into a glass box. The election results are entirely publicly auditable and verifiable in an end to end verifiable voting system. And that can not only increase the transparency of elections, but can also help restore trust that the election result is correct and enable the public to feel more confident hopefully in elections in the future. So we really think this is not only a step towards more accessible and convenient voting options that can increase turnout and help address gaps for too many voters, but can also, you know, lead to more public transparency and therefore verifiability and confidence in election results in general. I also want to speak to the team behind the technology that we helped to support the the research and development of. The team was led by leading academic experts in cryptography and cybersecurity and national security. It's a team led by Doctor. Joseph Kanairi, who works in his day job for a firm that does a number of national security projects for the federal government including critical infrastructure projects and some of the most sensitive data communication projects, you know, that the federal government has. So he is no stranger to sensitive data communications and transmission, and he and his team actually published a report in 2015 through the US Vote Foundation called the Future of Voting Report that laid out what it would take for US elections to be able to be conducted online, for online voting to be possible in this country. The the number one requirement in any system for online voting has to be end to end verifiability. That's that's what that report stated first and foremost. And the team behind that and the other researchers involved in that project include some of the researchers who I know signed on to the statement that the senator referenced from last month. Were the Joe Kanyere was the lead author of that report. He and his team were responsible for that research eleven years ago now, and they are the ones who actually worked on this project and published this protocol that will support end to end verifiable online voting in systems that if this bill were to pass would be required for use in Vermont. So we're really excited that they have continued to to build on the progress from, from that report and actually publish a protocol that meets those requirements. It is a public technology resource. It's available publicly. It's open source, and it's undergoing peer review now, which is partly with that that post from last month is referencing. And, you know, we're we're excited that you're you're considering this. We think it's a step forward towards, you know, the future of voting in this country that will not only make voting accessible, but also publicly verifiable and transparent. And with that, I will stop and and find out if you have any questions.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: Committee?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Apparently you've answered all the questions potentially you had,

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Can I Well done? Yeah. Senator.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Bill Sponsor)]: I'm Griffin Stail. Know, it it was helpful to hear miss Lucaro talk about trust that we have in our current election system. And as I look around the room, I think I'm at least maybe the only senator in this room who's currently worried if something like the SAVE Act were to pass. If I have changed my last name from my birth certificate. Oh, yeah. I went through the hundreds of dollars and the significant amount of time to make sure I have all the new documentation I would need to be a legitimate have legitimately changed my name. But I have had to stop and think, thankfully, probably not in Shelburne, Vermont, where most people know me when I come to vote with my kids, but there are gonna be potentially, and mostly women around the country who might have to bring the documentation you usually think you need for the DMV, you know, to vote and still could end up being turned away because of a mismatch between their their birth certificate and, you know, their name on their ballot. So I I feel it's very personally right now that I I need a system to make sure that I have all the documentation I need to prove I am who I am, given what's even been passed by a chamber of congress at this point. So this should not be theoretical that there are those who are using notions about what's secure to disenfranchise millions of people around the country. And for many of those people, an online system that says, oh, wait. This doesn't match our records. Oh, wait. You forgot to fill out three names instead of four names or, you know, all the things that can screw up a ballot. It's able to tell you in real time, this is gonna work or this is not gonna work, you have something you need to cure. Something we've been working on for decades in this building is to make sure you don't get one shot at getting it right to vote or you're not turned away when you're with your kids to exercise your most basic right in this democracy.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Thank you. Our final witness of the day on this bill is John Odom,

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: who is the city clerk for

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: the city of Montpelier. John, welcome. Thanks. I have never written notes.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: I apologize for the pain.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Oh, okay. I've got some.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: I've never done it before. I don't know what I'm gonna sound like.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: You're gonna sound just like John Odom with law control with notes.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: I'm always off the cuff.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I I apologize. I have to go to another meeting with the Taiwanese delegation. So I apologize in advance, but I didn't watch your testimony.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: Oh, it is. Yes. Alright. So thank you for having me. I promise that I'd just take five to seven minutes. I think I can do

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: that. Okay.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: Unfortunately, I just heard about this, and my friends I'm working with, I don't know how they misread it, so they weren't able to ask to be heard. So I'm trying to fill in for about five people who would like to be here and be heard in about five to seven minutes. So I thought about that, and I realized I can't do it. It's not possible. So instead, I've got a little bit of a bullet list here. I'm going to tell you what you're gonna be missing out on, basically. So first of all, just to set the stage, you're gonna be hearing terms like mobile voting, online voting, Internet voting, electronic ballot return. They're for all intents and purposes, they're the same thing. So don't let folks confuse you with that terminology. This is what you'll be hearing. Okay? And you've already been hearing. You're gonna be hearing from many in the disabled community about how important this technology could be for them, which everyone on every side appreciates. You'll be hearing from folks who wanna increase participation, which all of us hold as a sacred goal. You're going to hear about the challenges of weather and road conditions, overseas voters, problems that we demonstrate our concerns about through the most robust early voting system ever. You're going to hear about these problems that are not solved, that they need to be solved, and you'll get 1000% consensus from everyone on that, especially election administrators like me. And I'm a certified ethical hacker, which granted is only worth so much, but it does mean I've I know how to get into places that I shouldn't be. But let me tell you, but you're not gonna hear. You're not gonna hear from these folks who you've heard from today and the ones that you made that this just just doesn't work. This cure doesn't work. This is what we'd be missing right now. So I hope if you do go on with this, you'll have another session so I can bring some of these people in. You're not gonna be hearing from the Vermont Municipal Clerks and Treasures Association. Carol, more than about a 138 members responded to a survey question about mobile voting and rejected it by more than 82%. Now in that case, I was able to scramble around and find the survey responses. I do have copied them with only the comments from that question included flight. You wanna hear from opponents who will tell you about the failure of the mobile voting project. We heard about King County, Washington, but what they didn't mention is that some fundamental aspects of the operating systems that the mobile devices work on didn't work for the visually impaired. And in some cases, they had to be ubered to the polls. So there's still a lot of stuff out there that hasn't been that we don't need tested on us. It should be tested in one laboratory circumstance. You won't hear from the cryptographer who was a creator, possibly b creator, because of their some of it's named after him, of this end to end verifiability paradigm that the Tusk the Bradley Tusk of mobile voting mobile voting project that his cryptography system is based on. He stands for score score against its use in this way. He's totally happy to testify. You won't hear from opponents who will tell you that the mobile banking system, paraphernalia here, makes our point for us. For one thing, Internet banking fraud is a millions and millions of dollars problem. We've heard about the warnings and stories. Are we prepared to hardwire that level of hacking right into our democracy, especially since banking systems are designed for the opposite. Right? You connect to your account. Opponents will tell you you won't hear from opponents that will tell you that that vote secure is not a true system at all. It's what we call a kit decided to sit on top of an independent system to enhance its cryptography and that you're actually gonna be depending on a third party vendor like Democracy Law, which has a very spotty spirit of this. You're not gonna I'm running out of time, Robbie. You're not gonna hear from opponents who will tell you that.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: You can slow down, John. You you have all the time.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: Oh. Oh, then I

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: should have written more. Well, within reason. Okay. I just have it until three, but

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: that's what I'm John's our last person. Right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: You know, take a deep breath. Relax. Okay. We're listening. You didn't even hear

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: my my auction earbuds. I

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: was I was born and

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: raised in Kentucky. I can do gloves. Wow. But, anyway, so you won't be hearing from the opponents who'd like to come in who will tell you that no matter how robust the whole system is, that it cannot stop malware and that and that malware that can alter votes and set people up for identity theft. I've had this conversation with doctor Kanairi, who was just referred to myself. We're all part of the election verification network, who he has not been able to do this together like this. And he had all he had told me is that it was part of their threat model, but it is not dealt with. Even Bradley Tusk, now I have read his book, acknowledges that that's a problem. So you won't and and the thing is malware is is is scary because if you get malware that's gonna replace the actors, it's gonna counterfeit something, it's gonna counterfeit your voters. One thing you'll never know. It doesn't matter if it's printed out on another site. You don't get to pull it off and look at it, right, the one that was printed off at the clerk's office or anything. That just doesn't make any sense. That's a false sense of security, now that I have more time, coming from somebody who the the head of this, the paper ballot types are a little like the anti vaxxers. So that one gets to it will teach you better than it's a lot longer to share. But, anyways, the thing about malware too is that you get it on your you get it on your phone by phishing. We all know what phishing is. Email me. And we call this

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: an email today.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: Right. It's on mobile devices, it's called smishing. So there's a little word for you. So if you run the smishing numbers, alright, this can it means you can target malware both by election and demographically. And they will do that because that's what the fake robocalls now have. Let me just tell you what I did. I have to read from my own substack to get this right. A quick call to commercial vendor gave me a number of +1 available mobile numbers available for sale out of about 1.1 and a half million registered voters in New Hampshire. That's down to to the moment I checked it. So let's cut 30%. Let's off of that list to account for the unregistered. Leaves you with 90 plus thousand targeted voters. If it's a malware attack you've never seen before, you can hit a potential targeted click through rate. Smishing click through rates that are targeted will have click through rates of 14 and a half percent. Now you've impacted 1.14% of the electorate. Now add the turnout rate to 74%. That gets you down to a mere point 85% of the electorate that just got fooled. Okay? And in the process of getting fooled, probably had something like, you know, identity theft. Alright. The margin of victory in the twenty sixteen New Hampshire senate election, you remember, that was point one four. So this stuff matters. You're not gonna hear, again, about how the remote printing of a paper ballot is meaningless because it can't be verified by the voter, certainly not without breaking anonymity. So that's just sort of I don't know what that's. That one makes me scratch my head. And the biggest thing you won't be hearing about is from the technology experts, are the folks I wanna come in, Dave Gottemore. I'm impressed, because in the book, a third of this book is testimonies, you know, people who want online learning. Not a single one of this form of technology. But the absolute alphabet is suit, NIST, CISM, you know, in places like Berkeley, full of scientists who have looked at this, cryptographers, computer scientists, they almost universally say, this is a bad idea. We're not ready for it. It's overwhelming, including a study that Bradley Tusk himself commissioned by Berkeley, which had experts, cryptographers, election administrators, they all came together. It was for how can we have our best practices for mobile voting? They came back with a report that said, you can't. And he doesn't talk about that. Anyways, my real fear, and I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to because I'm on a roll, is that we're being pushed around, that we've got, you know, this just pivot. I I don't want people from outside of the state to think they can come in and wow us with fancy terms. I I really shouldn't say that, but it scares me, Jesus. And that's what I'm afraid But, anyways, if you all don't don't listen. I'm I'm only representing myself here, even though I say I'm trying to speak for everybody. If you all come back to this, please let me get some of these other folks in to have their chance to be heard because I just can't do it. And thank you. You let me talk longer than I

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: said I would. I appreciate that. Senator White.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Well, thank you so much, mister Odom. It's great to see you, and I appreciate kind of the way you framed this up. I am not sure what our next steps are with this bill, but I doubt the chair would allow us to move forward with it without having extensive testimony from the town clerks at the very least. So my understanding was this was kind of a high level overview of the bill for today.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: So That's great. That's so reassuring. Thank you.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Senator Vyhovsky? I would insist on hearing from security experts if we're moving forward with this. I don't know who my question is for. So it may not be for anybody that we've heard from today, but it is about Tusk in just strategies, who also represents Google and Walmart and FanDuel and AT and T and a whole bunch of the sort of world. But maybe, you know, maybe you don't. It is my understanding that in June 2025, a campaign finance complaint was filed against Tusk Strategies for illegal campaign finance activity in the Cuomo for mayor election. Do you have any idea about that or what the don't. Oh, okay. That's interesting.

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: Because you know secondhand that he Definitely,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: that's a

[John Odom (City Clerk, Montpelier)]: hard sell on people. I walked your window to secondhand stories, but he's very committed. He's a passionate guy. The thing is, like I said, I read his book, and his main point is about Turnout and his analysis of primates and the way they affect elections and how Turnout needs to be erasing him. I think it's perfect. I think it's absolutely spot on. I was reading this, and I haven't quite heard anybody say it. It was really impressive. It's just, like I say, the cure being worse than the disease. The scale, you know, you could, there's a mention about comparing the scale of something done at the post office to a potential cyber attack. I don't see any comparison scale to that. There's comparisons of the scale between something that could happen at a local administrator's office. I don't see any scale for that. This scale that you introduced, when you put this onto the internet, is like nothing else we've ever seen. So if things go wrong, they can go wrong for a lot of people. Okay.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: John, thank you for your time today. We do appreciate it. I'm glad we were able to Thanks for having again. Tomorrow, we will hear from at least three witnesses about the Vermont State Youth Council. They do have, an appropriations request. I told the Eagle was $130,000 but no one told me to that. And then we have Sarah Lunderville coming in, who's the executive director of Vermont Center for Independent Living, and tomorrow is disability advocacy day. Then we're gonna wrap the day up with more testimony on s two fifty five, the pilot law enforcement governance council. I would emphasize senator Ruth Hardy will begin to testify on that bill, and I'll let her speak for herself, but I think she'll be probably raising some questions about the bill. Oh. And the rest of it is town administrators and town managers.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: This is the Wyndham Sheriff, though?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yes. So that's tomorrow. And unless there are other matters for the committee to sit here today, we'll adjourn for the day. Thank you, members, and we'll go out until tomorrow. We'll see you to

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: the rest of the week.