House panel advances amended H.474 after deal on write-in thresholds and disclosure rules

The House Committee on Government Operations & Military Affairs on June 16 took an informal favorable position on the senate-amended H.474, an elections “miscellaneous” bill that preserves existing write‑in thresholds, narrows the scope of several earlier proposals and clarifies campaign-finance reporting and ballot‑handling procedures.

Senator Collamore, Rutland District, the Senate shepherd for the bill, told the committee the senate adopted a “strike-all” amendment that largely returned the law’s write‑in thresholds to current levels. “All it does is I don't wanna say return to, but it makes current law still current by continuing the threshold for writing candidates to be 25% or 25 votes in the house and 50 in the senate,” Collamore said.

The committee was briefed by Lauren Hibbert, deputy secretary of state, who described the major changes the senate maintained and the changes that were removed. “The key takeaway for your floor report is this increases transparency of spending in all political spaces,” Hibbert told members about the bill’s campaign-finance provisions.

Nut graf: The amended H.474 is a narrowed version of a larger elections package. Committee members and state elections officials said the changes were negotiated to…