House concurs with Senate changes to H.474 and sends election-law package to governor

The Vermont House suspended its rules to take up and then concurred in the Senate’s proposal of amendment to House Bill 474, “an act relating to miscellaneous changes to election law,” and ordered the measure sent to the governor forthwith.

The measure was taken up under suspension and returned from the Senate with several edits. Representative from Charlotte, reporting for the House Government Operations and Military Affairs Committee, said the Senate removed requests that had appeared in earlier drafts for reports on ranked-choice voting and on electronic voting by the secretary of state, and struck a provision requesting voluntary demographic information from candidates. She described the committee’s testimony that afternoon from the deputy secretary of state, the director of elections, the senate reporter of the bill and the Office of Legislative Council and noted a committee straw poll of 11 in support.

Committee reporting showed several substantive changes to how write-in candidacies and counting are handled. The amended bill requires a…