Observations

Joe Stalin’s idea of holding elections and the results seems to have found a strong and secure position in Vermont elections. It isn’t the vote that counts but the people who count the votes; Vermont’s Progressives just want to insure that the election returns are favorable.

Brooke Paige to Condos: 70,000 more on voter rolls than eligible

In a debate forum Friday, Republican candidate H. Brooke Paige said incumbent Secretary of State Jim Condos’ initiatives to increase voter registration have caused the state to sign up 70,000 more people to vote than there are eligible voters.

By the end of the day, however, he retracted his statement, saying he made “miscalculations.”

Vermont is heading into the general election with about 481,111 people listed on its voter rolls, the highest number of registered voters in the state’s history. On the campaign trail, Condos has cited the statistic as proof that newly enacted policies such as automatic voter registration (AVR) and Election Day registration are working as intended.

But during the debate hosted by VPR’s Vermont Edition, Paige attacked Condos’ record, saying his office has out-registered the eligible-voter population in the state by about 70,000. According to his calculations based on census data, only 407,390 Vermonters are qualified to vote. [snip]

Condos, apparently surprised by the challenge, responded that there is no evidence to support Paige’s claim. He added that the voter registration system was updated in 2015 and is very robust, and that it’s largely the role of town clerks to keep voter rolls clean and accurate. [snip]

Late Friday, however, Paige retracted his challenge, saying his numbers were wrong. He now estimates Vermont has 497,394 eligible voters. [snip]

According to official state registration data, there are around 16,000 more eligible voters for this election than in 2012. As of mid October, there were 481,111 residents on Vermont’s voter rolls, amounting to 92.5 percent of the state’s 520,000 eligible voters. [snip]

If Vermont has more registered voters than people eligible to vote, it wouldn’t be the only problem encountered by states that adopt policies like automatic voter registration through the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Elections expert Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, told True North that automatic registration “fairly regularly” puts noncitizens on the voter rolls.

That glitch appeared in Vermont as soon as automatic voter registration was implemented at the start of 2017.

“Green card holder and Burlington resident Luke McHale was one of those affected by the glitch in the DMV system,” the Burlington Free Press reported back in February 2017. “McHale’s wife, Becca, said Thursday her husband was surprised to pick up the mail and find a letter from the Burlington city clerk’s office saying he was now registered to vote.”

The Orange County Register said Vermont’s DMV registered 1,500 voters by mistake, including noncitizens. [snip]

Those extra names are handy when one needs to, ahem adjust election results. Like in Minnisota, when they ‘needed’ some extra votes in the Al Franken race, they can find boxes of ‘misplaced votes.

Duplicates on the checklist

Harris said motor voter registration also can lead to names showing up more than once on voter rolls.

“There are significant problems with merging two data bases — then overlap will occur,” she said.

She explained that if someone already registered as a voter goes to the DMV and updates name spelling with any change from the original, it creates a duplicate voter registration.

“You’re gonna end up with a bunch of extra people on the list,” she said. “If you are an insider then you can pull out those extras that aren’t really voters, and you can cast absentees in their names.”

Condos has come out before and said that people owning second homes in Vermont should be allowed to vote

I wonder if he also means all the illegals in Vermont working the farms and the ‘french fry factories’ like MacDonald’s. Chick-fil-A isn’t included; they’re racist and homophobes and they close on Sunday.