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Committee weighs Vermont Voting Rights Act; clerks, AG urge clearer standards and implementation steps
Summary
Lawmakers and witnesses discussed S 298’s goals to protect voters from dilution and intimidation, while municipal clerks and the attorney general urged the Legislature to add explicit enforcement standards, language-access thresholds, and pre‑litigation investigatory tools before enacting the bill.
The House Government Operations and Military Affairs Committee heard three hours of testimony on April 8 about S 298, the Vermont Voting Rights Act, with municipal clerks and the attorney general’s office urging clearer standards and practical implementation steps before the Legislature enacts the measure.
Representative Patty McCoy testified she supports the bill’s intent but raised specific objections to two provisions: language allowing campaign funds to be used for candidate security and a broadly worded intimidation clause. “Not quite sure how much that would encompass. Can I go buy a gun? Can I buy a knife?” McCoy said, questioning whether donors’ money could be used for those purchases and expressing concern that a private right of action could lead to litigation against town clerks over subjective perceptions of intimidation.
Carol Dawze, city treasurer and chair of the legislative committee for the Municipal Clerks and Treasurers Association, said clerks generally back the bill’s aim to protect voting rights but stressed the practical questions the draft leaves unanswered. “Vermont clerks are the chief election officials for local, state, and national elections,” Dawze told the committee, and she asked how jurisdictions would determine which languages require translated ballots or interpreters, who would fund those services, and how covered languages would be defined.
The committee heard extended legal context from the attorney general’s office. Julio Thompson, co‑director of the AG’s Civil Rights Unit, said much of S 298 “largely mirrors” the federal Voting Rights Act but warned the bill lacks statutory criteria for what counts as unlawful dilution or impairment of voting rights. “The federal Voting Rights Act … applies to all elections,” Thompson said, adding that without legislative guidance courts and enforcement agencies would rely on divergent federal case law, producing uncertainty for municipalities and for the AG’s office about investigative standards and remedies.
Assistant Attorney General Leslie Welts urged adding investigatory tools and confidentiality protections to the bill so the AG could investigate before filing suit. Welts said the ability to conduct pre‑litigation inquiries under existing campaign‑finance statutes provides speed, cost savings, and nonpublic fact‑gathering that would help discern whether a municipality had reasonable alternatives when a change (for example, removing a polling site) had potentially disparate effects.
Committee members also probed how S 298 intersects with H 541, separate legislation moving through the Senate that addresses interference with voters and election officials. Witnesses highlighted a key statutory difference: H 541 uses a recklessness standard (‘‘intentionally or recklessly intimidate’’) while S 298 as drafted focuses on intentional conduct, which would reach a narrower set of events.
On language access, witnesses explained federal Section 203’s trigger thresholds (typically 5 percent or 10,000 limited‑English households) and noted Vermont currently does not meet the federal thresholds. Several witnesses and members said the Legislature could adopt its own state thresholds or funding mechanisms — as other states (for example, New York) have done — to avoid obligating very small jurisdictions to provide full translations without state support.
No formal votes were taken. Committee members concluded the bill’s goals are broadly supported but that S 298 needs clearer statutory standards, explicit implementation steps for language access, clarity about the campaign‑security language, and consideration of investigator tools or pre‑litigation procedures. The committee asked legislative counsel to review cross‑references and drafting anomalies and signaled plans to hear further testimony from clerks, election‑officials in population centers such as Burlington, and other stakeholders before advancing the measure.
The committee left the record open for additional written comments and indicated staff would assemble witness lists and proposed drafting revisions for future sessions.
