”Blue” voting towns take the lead

By Guy Page

42.31% of Vermont voters who were mailed ballots for today’s general election had returned their ballots as of Monday, November 4, according to data collected and published by the Center for Community News.

The UVM-based student journalism organization has kept daily track of mailed ballot returns this election season. “UVM Center for Community News data visualization engineer Ben Cooley pulled together figures from the Office of the Vermont Secretary of State to track the number and percent of registered voters in each town whose ballots have been received and tallied,” according to a Community News Service news report.

Yesterday’s totals show that suburban, southern Chittenden County has the highest rate of returned ballots.

The CNS data doesn’t tally how voters voted, only the status of their ballot. However, towns that typically vote ‘true Blue’ Democrat have the highest rate of returned, tallied ballots:

1. Charlotte, 58%
2. Williston, 57%
3. Shelburne, 55%

The rest of the “top 10” also typically vote heavily Democrat:

4. Jericho, in northeastern Chittenden County, 55%
5. Middlesex, in Washington County, 55%
6. Windham, in Windham County, 55%
7. Pomfret, in Windsor County, 54%
8. Dummerston, in Windham County, 54%
9. Calais, in Washington County, 54%
10. Norwich, in Windsor County, 53%

Mail-in ballots were championed in Vermont by a Democrat Secretary of State and passed by a Democrat Legislature, in part as a Covid-era voter safety measure. Vermont Republicans were slow to embrace the mailed-in or returned ballot in the 2020 and 2022 elections, although party leaders both statewide and nationally have encouraged voters to embrace the practice. 

Newsweek columnist Mollie Hemenway explained in 2021: “Republicans tend to vote in person. RNC surveys of voters showed that many of their voters had complete distrust of voting by mail. In some states, such as Georgia, some 80 percent of Republicans said they wouldn’t vote by mail. Democrats, on the other hand, strongly preferred to vote by mail, and the vote-by-mail system was becoming a major part of the Democratic Party’s get-out-the-vote operation.”