In a debate forum on Friday, Republican H. Brooke Paige said programs to boost voter registration in Vermont have led the state to sign up 70,000 more people to vote than there are eligible voters. He later retracted his statement.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation wrote in its study “Safe Spaces” that the 1993 National Voter Registration Act makes it easier for noncitizens to register to vote because there are no other verification systems required to be in place.
The city of Montpelier is considering letting noncitizens vote in local elections by next Town Meeting Day, but city officials say the chances of getting approval by the Vermont Legislature are slim.
Creating loose registration requirements, easy access to absentee ballots, and extended voting periods, and removing voting from supervised locations, gives bad actors the tools and time necessary to commit meaningful election fraud. The unscrupulous are already taking advantage of this.
The left’s argument that election integrity is a smoke screen for discrimination is fallacious. And as the Heritage database — and the Ritter and Mason cases — prove, election fraud is a real issue meriting a serious policy response.
Voters who do not cast a ballot during a full federal election cycle are sent a mailer confirming they are still residents of Ohio who wish to remain registered voters. If the mailer is not returned, and if the individual does not vote for the next four years, they are removed from state rolls.
Secretary Condos is either intentionally or unintentionally perpetuating the incorrect understanding that intent to move into a district (or back into a district after having established a primary domicile outside the district) is enough to allow someone onto the voter checklist. It’s not.
This week, the Heritage Foundation added 26 new entries to its election fraud database, bringing the searchable ledger to a total of 1,132 proven instances of election fraud. That includes 983 cases that ended in a criminal conviction.
While I agree that non-residents voting in Vermont elections would dilute the votes of Vermonters, I could not disagree more with Ms. Bucknam’s premise that my office provided guidance to allow or encourage this activity.
A member of the Board of Civil Authority for the town of Victory says the Secretary of State’s office has not taken responsibility for the town’s election woes, even after a Vermont Superior Court judge ruled that the voter checklist contained unqualified voters and non-residents who voted in recent elections.
The secretary of state’s website provides that individuals with a subjective intent to move to a town are eligible to vote. The website states, “The law creates a subjective standard.” That is not what the law provides.