Crossposted here and updated to reflect a mis-read on my part.

H477 is a bill that aims to make a handful of what might seem like administrative changes to Vermont’s election laws, but could have a bigger impact than at first glance. In this age of terrible voter turnout, this could serve to further disenfranchise people from engaging in the electoral process.

There are a few basic and probably uncontroversial principles I want to stake out:

• Elections are extremely important but limited mechanisms for voters to communicate their wishes about government
  
  
• Retail (that is, single-person) election fraud is rare, but easily detectable
  
  
• Wholesale (compromising an entire polling place) election fraud is rare, but less detectable
  
  
• People legally eligible to vote should have their votes counted correctly
  
  

The first, third, and fourth principles are violated by this bill. Several of the changes included in H477 are as follows:

1. Making voters’ physical addresses public records (this has been on the wish list for the Vermont Democratic Party for several years now)
   
   
2. No longer counting an “X” or a cross to the right of a candidate’s name as a legal vote
   
   
3. Making it harder for candidates to run under multiple parties Update: this portion was struck from the bill on March 18th
   
   

At present, many people (like Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, for example) list their Post Office Boxes on their voter registration to maintain their privacy, and candidates and political parties requesting their contact information only receive this mailing address, but not where the person actually lives. With H477, both addresses would become public records.

While it might seem redundant to require voters to “fill in the bubble”, there are a significant number who still mark their ballots with an “X” or a checkmark. Here’s an example. The ballot tabulators can read these correctly, but H477’s proposed change could classify those as invalid markings. Of the ballots from the 2014 General Election that I have access to, I found the following numbers of ballots marked with an “X” or similar:

E. Montpelier: 10/1094 (0.9%)

Fayston: 10/532 (1.9%)

Manchester: 43/1581 (2.7%)

St. Johnsbury: 10/1960 (0.5%)

Westminster: 5/943 (0.5%)

Wolcott: 12/559 (2.1%)

Total: 90/6669 (1.3%)

Because any recounts of these ballots will be done with a tabulator, there will be no option for a human election worker to decide voter intent, and all of these votes could conceivably be discarded.

People like me, who ran under the label of two different parties in 2014, will also find it much harder to do so should this bill pass, especially in light of the roadblocks put up to disenfranchise voters who would write in candidates. Chris Pearson put it this way:

Chris Pearson and Sandy Haas intend to introduce an amendment when this comes up to a vote tomorrow to allow the nomination process to remain, and while I’m not a fan of any of this bill, their amendment at least makes it slightly better. Please contact your State Rep and ask them to support the amendment, but vote against the bill.