Witnesses urge overhaul of H.541, warning draft could chill political speech and lack due-process safeguards

Lawmakers heard hours of testimony on a bill, H.541, that would make certain interference with election officials a civil and criminal matter, with witnesses urging substantial rewrites to avoid constitutional and procedural problems.

Sally Ober, town clerk of Lincoln and a member of the Vermont Municipal Clerks and Treasurers Association, told the House Judiciary panel that clerks face repeated, time-consuming harassment that disrupts election preparations. "Election officials perform their work under oath to uphold the laws of their state and of The United States constitution," Ober said, and she read the VMCTA resolution "strongly condemn[ing] threatening, harassing, bribing, or interfering with election officials." Ober described a "7 page manifesto" email and a 2024 incident in which a voter warned of violence; she said she reported the threats to the secretary of state's office and to the FBI but received only an automated acknowledgement.

Legal experts and prosecutors told the committee the bill's current draft raises constitutional and procedural concerns. Tom Zonne, chief superior judge, urged the committee to note that a 2022 change to the criminal-threatening statute in Title 13 includes a requirement that a threat place a person "in reasonable apprehension" of death or serious injury; he said H.541's Section 2 lacks that second clause, creating different standards for similar conduct. "You're giving different standards," Zonne said, and he recommended reconciling the language so overlapping enforcement provisions do not conflict.

Kim McManus of the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs backed stronger protections for election officials but asked the committee to define terms such as "intimidate," "coerce," and "threat," and to include a savings clause protecting constitutionally protected activity. "We would suggest defining the terms," McManus said, and she warned her office does not have the bandwidth to carry out the civil investigations the bill appears to authorize.

Matt Valerio, defender general for the state, warned the draft is constitutionally vulnerable when it regulates political speech. "With this bill . . . you're in deep water with ice skates," Valerio said, urging the committee to consult First Amendment experts. He said civil investigatory tools in the draft — compelled written responses under oath, broad authority for the attorney general to designate agents, and contempt provisions — risk becoming "a criminal prosecution in sheep's clothing," exposing the state to Fourth, Fifth and due-process challenges.

Witnesses disagreed about how to reconcile the bill's civil investigatory provisions with criminal protections. Zonne and Valerio recommended adding clear procedural guardrails: timelines for responses, limits on the scope and number of written inquiries, explicit rights to challenge notices promptly, and clarifying whether contempt is civil or criminal and how a person may purge contempt. McManus suggested borrowing elements from campaign-finance statute language but warned that campaign-finance tools and speech-focused restrictions are not directly analogous.

Committee members responded that H.541 will need more work. The chair said the bill will be put on a longer runway and revised language will be developed by a working group that will include legal expertise on First Amendment issues. No formal vote on H.541 was taken during this session.

The committee scheduled additional witnesses for related measures later in the day and signaled it will return with revised language that addresses definitional, procedural, and constitutional concerns.