Playlist 2: The first five clips are from the 2018 General Election Secretary of State Forum on Town Meeting TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ysjw8SLuuU and the last one is from 2010 CCTV Town Meeting TV, Vermont Associated Press Candidate Debate at Saint Michael’s College, https://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/vermont-press-associations-secretary-state-debate.
I wonder if Vermonters like to choose their candidates themselves? H. Brooke Paige and Condos both think that a Caucus format might be preferable for primary elections. In this situation, we would not be able to choose our preferred major party candidates – instead it would be chosen by the party. It would be a good thing if we didn’t ever have to worry about bullies. (Clips 1 & 2)
Do citizens want their votes back? Well H. Brooke Paige, who in 2018 didn’t think Jim Condos was doing a bad job ‘by any stretch of the imagination’ (Clip 3), argues that only 10-15% of the voting population think that at least something about the process is fraudulent and that they don’t vote as a result of this perception (Clip 4 & 5). That is quite a ways away from what the statistics indicate. Even in recent years when many people were trying with all of their might to make sure that a president did or did not get voted in, closer to 40% of the voters were not counted as voting. https://sos.vermont.gov/elections/election-info-resources/elections-results-data/.
In his first campaign Condos didn’t come out and say that voters have any reason to suspect the system but he did say that they don’t trust their government (Clip 6). I wonder if something like this could be why – IT systems intended for end users should be relatively easy to learn, maybe not quite as easy as not making the best use of grant money. Condos, from the beginning and still today, has emphasized that what the Office is doing is better educating local officials. I can’t say much more about this 25 page document covering how local officials should handle vote tabulators than that it is lengthy and that I’m not the least bit relieved.