Witness urges committee to restore ballots, cites checklist errors and tabulator questions

Mister Busa, a witness at the House Government Operations & Military Affairs committee hearing, told lawmakers that a post-election review found dozens of voters in Bennington assigned to the wrong checklist and urged the committee to "get these 55 people their ballots and let them vote" so their votes can be counted.

The witness said the committee's review of entry checklists and town files showed a set of 55 names that he believes should appear on the Bennington 1 checklist but were on Bennington 5 or otherwise misrecorded. He described color-coded checklist marks that he said indicate mailed ballots and in-person entries and asked clerks to confirm why two entries on a Bennington 5 entry list had a handwritten "c" next to their names.

The issues matter, he told the committee, because the panel previously saw a discrepancy between the number of check-ins and the number of ballots counted: "Remember when we were looking before and there was, 1,333 checked in, but there was 1,334 ballots counted?" he said. He said his review of town-provided materials showed one subset where 30 people voted by mail and 14 voted in person (44 of a moving total he later described as 55). The witness asked the committee to verify which ballots those individuals actually received.

In addition to checklist items, the witness raised two procedural and legal concerns. First, he said a suggestion by counsel to adjust boundaries so the entire road, not the road centerline, defined polling assignments could not be applied retroactively and cited Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution in calling a retroactive change "ex post facto." Committee members and staff clarified in the hearing that the attorney's statement appeared to refer to future recalibration of lines, not changes to an already-held election.

Second, the witness asked for access to the tabulator's programming (what he called the tabulator "language code") or, alternatively, for a hand count of the same ballots used as input to the machine so outputs could be compared. "If we don't do the thing that we know what the input is, we know the inputs so we can compare the output. We have nothing to compare to," he said, explaining that he had professional experience reading code and wanted to confirm the machine tally.

Committee members asked clarifying questions about how the witness compiled his lists. Rep. Waters Evans (first reference) asked whether two residents who did not receive ballots may have received ballots intended for Bennington 5; the witness replied they reported getting no ballots and had not voted. Other committee members pressed for specificity about whether disputed names were removed from checklists through the clerks' routine challenge process.

The witness described several categories of checklist issues he found: people listed at storage facilities or PO boxes, people who had moved out of state and were removed, a small number who refused to sign petitions when canvassed, and specific cases where a family member told him a ballot had been destroyed. He flagged two names on the Bennington 5 entry list with a handwritten "c" and requested that the town clerk verify what the notation meant and whether those individuals received Bennington 1 ballots.

The hearing produced no formal committee vote on remedies. Staff and members said they intended to review the documents further; the committee scheduled follow-up work with the clerk and legislative counsel. A committee member told the witness that clerks had been broadly cooperative in providing records and thanked him for his effort.

The witness also referenced prior contested election materials submitted to the committee, including historical write-ups and a US Senate page on close elections, and urged clerks and the committee to consider giving the affected voters an opportunity to have their ballots counted or to determine whether a revote is needed.

The committee hearing transcript records discussion and information requests but no formal motion outcome affecting the election results. Committee staff noted they would follow up with the towns to clarify checklist notations, verify which ballots were issued, and determine whether additional official action (for example, a challenge process or referral to a judge) is appropriate.