Election procedures a top issue as career center organizes

May 5, 2022  |  By David Delcore | Times Argus staff writer 

As the Central Vermont Career Center School District readies for its voter-approved July 1 launch, clerks of many of its 18-member towns are advocating to change the way ballots are counted in the future.

Barre City Clerk Carol Dawes is at the very front of that line and predicts the issue of whether to continue “commingling” ballots will come up during the new district’s May 9 organizational meeting at Spaulding High School scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. 

Voters in all of the towns in the new district may attend and participate in voting in person on 10 items to organize the district’s procedures for elections and management. 

It won’t be decided there. However, Dawes said she and others who run local elections would like to see the district’s articles of agreement amended to eliminate a provision that requires ballots from Cabot to Roxbury and the 16 towns in between be trucked to one polling place for counting as was the case in March when votes on Town Meeting Day were case in each of those towns regarding the formation of the new district.

That process took days to complete and ballots that were cast on March 1 — a Tuesday — were still being counted on Friday afternoon.

Due to pandemic-related concerns, the process was more protracted than it might have been, but Dawes, who quarterbacked the effort, said she doubted much time could be shaved off what turned into a 12-hour exercise.

It’s one that involved feeding nearly 10,000 ballots — 9,835 cast across 18 towns — into two tabulators in order to produce one reportable result.

As it turned out, by a vote of 7,493-1,688 voters approved creating the autonomous school district to operate Central Vermont Career Center. Since its inception under a different name several decades ago, the center has operated out of a wing at Spaulding High School and has been governed by the school board in Barre.

The new district will have a 10-member board that will have authority over any potential amendments to the district’s new articles of agreement.

The new board includes one appointed representative from each of the six school districts whose students attend the center — Barre, Cabot, Harwood, Montpelier-Roxbury, Twinfield and Washington Central. It also includes four members elected at large — one from each of the four largest sending districts. As a result, Barre, Harwood, Montpelier-Roxbury and Washington Central districts each have two seats on the new board; Twinfield and Cabot each have one.

Any changes to the articles of agreement will require seven votes — a two-thirds majority.

Dawes said she and other clerks want the board to consider altering the commingling requirement that poses a host of logistical issues including having poll workers transporting thousands of ballots on a mid-winter night to one location for counting.

“From a safety standpoint, if nothing else, it’s ridiculous,” Dawes said.

Wintry weather still is very much a factor on Town Meeting Day (the first Tuesday in March), the date the new district is expected to set its annual meeting and elections. That’s one item of business to be decided at the May 9 organizational meeting. 

Some of the school districts within the new career center district commingle their ballots for their elections, such as the Harwood Unified Union School District. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the Harwood district in 2021 and 2022 March elections had school ballots tabulated in each of its six towns with results reported separately and tallied by the school district. 

Pandemic-related modifications to Vermont election laws allowed for the career center votes in March to be counted over a period of several days. But Dawes noted that when regular circumstances are back in effect, the law requires ballots that are cast on Town Meeting Day to be counted that day. 

“It seems almost impossible that this could be done on election night,” said Waterbury Town Clerk Carla Lawrence, noting the logistics and time available after the polls close. “I would prefer either to feed the ballots through my tabulator and report the results to the clerk for the Career Center, or to be allowed time in the days following the election to commingle and count.”

The committee that recommended creating a separate school district for the career center was adamant about the provision to combine ballots. The practice results in one tally that doesn’t indicate how any individual towns voted.

The articles of agreement state: “The ballots shall be commingled before counting pursuant to a process to be developed by the elected clerk of the district in consultation with clerks of the member districts and the municipal clerks of the service region.”

The district doesn’t yet have a clerk. That position, along with the offices of moderator and treasurer will be filled by voters who attend the 6 p.m. organizational meeting on May 9 in the Spaulding auditorium.

Waterbury Roundabout reporter Lisa Scagliotti contributed to this report. This story was originally published by the Times Argus.  

The May 9 meeting includes public participation. Here is a link to the meeting warning. And to the meeting agenda and other documents for it on the Career Center School District’s website.