State of VermontOffice of the Secretary of State
State of VermontAs a member of the board of civil authority, you are responsible for acting on applications to and removing names from the checklist.
The board of civil authority consists of the municipal clerk, members of the select board and the justices of the peace residing in the municipality.
If the board of civil authority does not contain at least three members of each major political party, the party's town committee or three voters of the party may provide a list of six candidates and a request in writing to raise the number of party representatives on the board to three. The select board must then appoint a sufficient number to bring the party's representation to three. 17 V.S.A. § 2143.
All of these actions must be made at duly warned meetings of the board of civil authority. By law you should receive written notice, and a public notice should be posted in two places in each voting district and lodged in the town clerk's office, at least five days before every meeting of the board. 24 V.S.A. § 801 and 17 V.S.A. § 2143.
In acting on any matter related to elections, except actions taken on election day, those members of the board present and voting constitute a quorum, provided that official action is not taken without the concurrence of at least three members of the board.
On election day, any board members present may take action. If the clerk is the only member present, he or she may take action on election day for the board. 17 V.S.A. § 2103(5).
The board's actions at the meeting must be governed by the state's open meeting law. See 1 V.S.A. §§ 311-314, for details on executive session, minutes and other matters.
Applicants may submit application forms for addition to the checklist to the town clerk at any time, but to be added to the checklist for a given election, applicants must have submitted their forms by noon on the second Saturday before the date of an election. 17 V.S.A. § 2144(a).
Meetings of the board may be held at any time, after due notice, but one meeting must be held between the deadline for submitting applications to the checklist and the day of the election, if any applications have been received. 17 V.S.A. § 2142.
At that meeting the board must review each application and determine if that person is eligible to register. To be eligible, the applicant must be a citizen of the United States, a resident of the town, have reached the age of 18 on or before the day of election and have taken the voter's oath, found in Chapter II, Section 42 of the Vermont Constitution. 17 V.S.A. § 2121.
As a justice of the peace, you may administer the oath. 17 V.S.A. § 2124(a).
State law explains that a person may have his or her name on the checklist only in the town of residency. Questions of residency require perhaps the most difficult decisions a member of the board of civil authority must make. State law defines a resident as "a person who is domiciled in the town as evidenced by an intent to maintain a principal dwelling place in the town indefinitely and to return there if temporarily absent, coupled with an act or acts consistent with that intent." 17 V.S.A. § 2122(b).
The board is permitted to examine any applicant under oath concerning the facts stated in the application and may investigate to verify any statement made under oath by an applicant. 17 V.S.A. § 2146(a). On the other hand, the board may not require an applicant to complete any other form than the application, may not as a matter of policy require all applicants to appear personally before the board or to submit additional information on the application form. 17 V.S.A. § 2145(c).
Once the board has made its decision to add a person to the checklist, the board must send a copy of the completed application to the applicant and, before admitting the person to the checklist, also send a copy to the town where the applicant was last registered, if any. 17 V.S.A. § 2145(d).
If the decision is to deny the application, the board must notify the applicant in person or by first class mail, by using the form provided in 17 V.S.A. § 2146.
These names may be added at any time until the closing of the polls on election day.
Removing names from the checklist is another function of the board of civil authority that may be done at any duly warned meeting, including the mandatory pre-election day meeting. It may not be done, however, on the day of election. 17 V.S.A. § 2149.
Removal may be done by the town clerk, without a meeting of the board, upon receipt of a death certificate of a voter, of a written request from a voter that the voter's name be stricken, or of an official notice from another clerk in Vermont or election official in another state that a voter's name has been added to another checklist.
Thorough review and purging of the checklist is mandated by state law on a biennial basis by the board of civil authority, and that work must be completed by September 15 of each odd-numbered year. This requires the review of each name on the checklist and consideration of whether each person on the checklist is still qualified to vote. 17 V.S.A. § 2150(c).
As the law explains, "[t]he intent [of this section] is that when this process is completed there will have been some confirmation or indication of continued eligibility for each person whose name remains on the checklist."
Recent changes in the law on removing names from the checklist now make it easier for boards of civil authority to act, as long as the proper steps are taken in the process.
The first step is an initial inquiry. Is there any evidence that the voter is still eligible to vote? You may consider and rely on official and unofficial public records and documents, including telephone directories, city directories, newspapers, death certificates, tax records or any checklist showing whether the voter has voted in any election in the past four years. The board may even designate someone to contact the voter personally.
If there is any reason to conclude the voter is still qualified to vote, the board must leave that voter's name on the checklist. If there is reason to question eligibility, and if the board has been unable to contact the voter or the voter has not voted in the past four years, the board should send the voter written notice. The notice should be sent to the voter's most recent known address, with "address correction requested" on the envelope, and should explain that the voter's name may be removed from the checklist on or after a date at least 30 days after the notice is mailed, unless the voter demonstrates current eligibility to vote in the municipality.
Accompanying the notice, a form should be provided for the voter's reply, giving the voter an opportunity to cite his or her current place of residency and to request that his or her name be retained on the checklist, or to consent to removal of his or her name from the checklist. 17 V.S.A. § 2150(c)(3). Samples of the letter and form are available from our office.
If the voter has not returned the form within 30 days of the original notice, the board of civil authority should send a second notice and form to the voter's last known address. The notice and form should contain substantially the same language as the first, except that the voter should be notified that failure to return the form within 14 days shall result in removal of the voter's name from the checklist. 17 V.S.A. § 2150(c)(3). If the first notice is undeliverable, a second notice need not be sent.
Failure to return the second form within 14 days is a sufficient ground to remove a voter's name from the checklist. Although the law cites this as only one of the reasons to remove the voter's name from the checklist, the board of civil authority should send the second notice in every case, unless the voter has responded to the first notice by consenting to removal from the checklist.
The statute explains that the board of civil authority may remove a voter's name from the checklist if
Because all of these criteria depend on all the necessary steps mentioned above, and because of the potential liability of acting outside the statute in removing names, the best approach is to await the end of the second notice period of 14 days before the board acts to remove a name.
- The voter consents to removal of the voter's name from the checklist, or
- All diligent efforts to ascertain the current residence of a voter have failed, or
- The voter has not voted in any election within the past four years and has not demonstrated current eligibility to vote in the municipality, or
- The form sent to the voter as provided above is not returned within 30 days. 17 V.S.A. § 2150(c)(4).
Your checklist maintenance work is still not done once you have removed a voter's name. If at any subsequent time the board determines that the person was still qualified to vote when the name was removed from the checklist, the board should place the voter's name on the checklist at that time, even on the day of election.
The statute reminds us all that the "provisions of this chapter shall be liberally constructed, so that if there is any reasonable doubt whether a person's name should have been removed from the checklist, the person shall have the right to have the person's name immediately returned to the checklist." 17 V.S.A. § 2150(d)(4).
The law also mandates that detailed records of the board's activities be kept. Records should include a clear statement of the reasons for which each name has been removed from the checklist and also include a working copy of the checklist used for the biennial checklist review explained above. 17 V.S.A. § 2150(d)(5).