Vermont Public is independent, community-supported media, serving Vermont with trusted, relevant and essential information. We share stories that bring people together, from every corner of our region. New to Vermont Public? Start here.

© 2024 Vermont Public | 365 Troy Ave. Colchester, VT 05446

Public Files:
WVTI · WOXM · WVBA · WVNK · WVTQ
WVPR · WRVT · WOXR · WNCH · WVPA
WVPS · WVXR · WETK · WVTB · WVER
WVER-FM · WVLR-FM · WBTN-FM

For assistance accessing our public files, please contact hello@vermontpublic.org or call 802-655-9451.
Vermont Public
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
Vermont Public
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
Next Up: 12:00 PM Hidden Brain
0:00
0:00
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
Vermont Public
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Explore our coverage of government and politics.

Socialist Candidates Say Vermont Ballot Petitions Are Being Unfairly Rejected

Taylor Dobbs
/
VPR
Socialist Workers Party vice presidential candidate Osborne Hart, left, with Jacob Perasso at Burlington City Hall. Party officials say Vermont's system for getting names on the ballot is stacked against them.

The Socialist Workers Party is trying to put its presidential candidates on the ballot in Vermont, but party officials say Vermont's system for getting names on the ballot is stacked against them.

At a news conference in Burlington Friday, Socialist Workers Party officials and candidates, including vice presidential candidate Osborne Hard, said voters are being disenfranchised because more than half of the signatures the party collected to get on the ballot in Vermont have been rejected by local officials.

“Here in Burlington, whoever was doing the checking indicated one person did not specify whether they were a junior or a senior, and so that signature was not counted,” said Jacob Perasso, who is the party’s candidate for U.S. Senate in New York and working to get Socialist Workers Party presidential candidates on the ballot in Vermont.

Under state law, officials aren’t supposed to check the validity of signatures unless they have reason to believe the signatures are invalid. Otherwise, the official checking the signature list only has to verify that the names are legible.

Burlington City Attorney Eileen Blackwood said the city is simply following directions from the Secretary of State's office.

"We just did the process that the city always does and is directed to do," she said.

Major party candidates submit their signature lists directly to the Secretary of State's office in Montpelier and don't have to have the signature lists checked by local officials.

Third parties are required to check their signatures with town clerks anywhere the signing voters live, and the Socialist Workers Party says those clerks are making it especially hard for the party to get on the ballot.

“The largest problem we’re facing is a systemic problem,” Perasso said. “That is, that town clerks don’t use the statewide [voter] list. So if you live in Winooski but you registered in Burlington, and you moved to Winooski, but for whatever reason, your status hasn’t been updated with the Winooski town clerk, then they don’t find it on their list.”

Because major party candidates aren’t required to have their signature lists checked locally, they don’t run into these problems.

A letter from attorney Paul Gillies, a former deputy secretary of state in Vermont, calls on Secretary of State Jim Condos to tell clerks to re-check the signatures submitted by the party.

"Of the 789 signatures submitted to nine clerks, they have validated 349, or 44 percent." - Paul Gillies, Attorney for Socialist Workers Party

“Of the 789 signatures submitted to nine clerks, they have validated 349, or 44 percent,” Gilles wrote, adding that the number should be higher, especially since all signatures were collected on voters’ doorsteps, making it especially easy to confirm their city or town of residence.

The letter says party officials “are concerned that differences in the criteria clerks are using to check signatures lead to keeping their candidates’ names off ballots for invalid reasons.”

The state law governing the signature review process explicitly directs “[t]he officer with whom primary petitions are filed” to “not attempt to ascertain whether there are a sufficient number of signatures of actual voters … unless the officer has reason to believe that the petitions are defective in this respect.”

In other words, the clerks are only supposed to confirm that the names on the list are legible – not check the signatures against a voter list – unless they suspect there's something wrong with the signatures.

After looking up that state law, Blackwood referred questions about the signature verification process to the Secretary of State's office.

Condos and the head of the elections division within the Secretary of State's office were not available for interviews Friday.

Gilles' letter says that “[t]he SWP circulators report that they have not been told anything about why the signatures are found wanting.”

Burlington Licensing, Voting and Records Coordinator Lori Olberg, whose office denied a number of the signatures, was not immediately available for comment Friday.

Taylor was VPR's digital reporter from 2013 until 2017. After growing up in Vermont, he graduated with at BA in Journalism from Northeastern University in 2013.
Latest Stories