Brandon Town Clerk Sue Gage Credit: Ian Curry Inside the vault of every town office in Vermont are bags filled with ballots cast in past elections — a testament to the state’s dedication to democracy. Per Vermont law, local election ballots must be stored and sealed in the town vault for 90 days, while state and federal primary and general election ballots are kept for 22 months. Holding on to the ballots provides physical proof of election results. That’s important in Vermont, where a few votes can sway the outcome in local contests, sometimes leading to recounts. “People don’t really understand how it all works,” said Sue Gage, the Brandon town clerk and treasurer. Gage, who’s in her 12th year as town clerk, said widespread allegations of voter fraud — President Donald Trump, for instance, still falsely claims he won the 2020 election — ignore the safeguards in place. Keeping the ballots in case they need to be recounted is a key precaution. Once the polls close at 7 p.m. on Election Day, ballots are fed through tabulator machines and double-checked by poll workers, a process that usually takes about two hours in Brandon. Once the tallies are finalized, the ballots are laid flat in labeled bags and transported by at least two people to the town vault for secure storage. The vote tabulator machines keep a record of results on memory cards, but a recount requires checking the original paper ballots by hand to determine a winner. Craftsbury recently received its blank ballots for the August primaries, and Michelle Warren, the town clerk and treasurer, said she was looking forward to getting rid of the old ones. “It’s an ongoing refresh. You take the old ballots out and put the new ones in,” she said. While Craftsbury only has about 1,000 registered voters, Warren said the cycle of town, primary and general elections leaves the vault crowded. Burlington needs two vaults to store all of its used ballots. In fact, she’d like it to be more so. Elections in Craftsbury are still “community affairs,” according to Warren, but she finds it troubling that Election Day is neither a state or federal holiday and believes that, as a result, some people don’t vote. Warren said Vermonters should trust the election process. The safeguards in place ensure it would be very difficult to get away with voter fraud, especially in a town where, she said, she can recognize 90 percent of the people lining up to cast a ballot. “I know our president is saying differently,” she said, “but I don’t see it here in Craftsbury.” The town’s elections “are about as boring as you can get.” In Burlington, Vermont’s biggest city, more than 20,000 residents voted in the 2024 general election, according to Sarah Montgomery, the assistant city clerk. She said Burlington needs two vaults to store all the used ballots, where they are kept under seal until they are eligible to be recycled: three months for town elections; almost two years for state and federal ones. It takes 200 or so people to set up, oversee and tally results across the city’s eight polling stations, she said. While she’s only been on the job for about five years, Montgomery has already witnessed some major changes in the way elections are run. In 2021, Vermont implemented universal mail-in voting for general elections. Since 2023, Burlington has allowed noncitizen residents to vote for city and school officials. They cannot participate in state or federal elections. Montgomery believes that fewer Vermonters would worry about the integrity of elections if more people volunteered to help run them. “Anybody who’s worked an election has a good understanding of all the safeguards that are in place,” she said. A vault in the Brandon town offices Credit: Ian Curry Reflecting on her 23 years as town clerk, Tracy Borst of Thetford said it’s been mostly positive: “Here in Thetford, I have voters who are very grateful and appreciative, and every time they come into the town hall they say, ‘We appreciate you.’” She said allegations of voter fraud mirror a worrying national decline in respect for the democratic process. Borst, who is also the first vice president of the New England Association of City Town Clerks, said fewer people are willing to serve as a town clerk because of the divisive election scene. “That rhetoric is making it less attractive of a position,” she said. “We’re also seeing more people being threatened, and that certainly isn’t helping.” To minimize the risk, some Vermont town clerks have instituted “by-appointment-only” policies. Overall, participation in local government is declining, Borst said. Having spent decades organizing elections, she said she’s noticed that the number of candidates on the ballot has decreased. “The situation is, we don’t have contested races,” she said. “A lot of towns don’t even have people filling the elected positions.” All the more reason, she would argue, to participate in the process. Back in Brandon, Gage recently retrieved a black bag filled with ballots from March’s Town Meeting Day. They’re stored in a vault alongside Brandon’s vital records. With the 90-day storage period complete, she said it was time to make room for the upcoming primaries. Gage unsealed the bag and emptied the old ballots onto the table. She shredded documents containing identifiable information and said she’d recycle the rest — perhaps to be turned into new ballots. ➆ The original print version of this article was headlined “Under Lock and Key | Vermont clerks are obligated to store paper ballots for months to ensure electoral integrity” The post Vermont’s Town Clerks Keep a Watchful Eye on Election Ballots appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less