By Michael Bielawski
A fraud detection expert and web software developer claim that at least 13,000 voted ballots from the 2024 Vermont election were from addresses deemed “undeliverable,” and they call for further investigation.
This is among several concerns in their new report titled the Vermont Voter Roll Integrity Analysis, prompting a response from the Secretary of State’s Office, sent to VDC by its chief of staff Bryan Mills on Friday, November 14.
“There’s no question that Vermont’s elections are more secure and more accessible than ever before. Vermont’s voter checklist integrity is ensured through decentralized local control, centralized support, and partnerships,” the SOS Office wrote in an email to VDC in a response to the report.
Nonetheless, Vermont authors Ron Lawrence and Brian Christie insist that citizens need more clarity on these matters. Christie is a certified fraud examiner and computer specialist, and Lawrence works as a web application developer.
“Concerns over the integrity of Vermont’s voter rolls remain unresolved, despite official assurances that recent elections have been the ‘safest ever’,” they wrote. “By comparing official voter registration files from 2020, 2022, and 2024 with absentee ballot records, postal service change-of-address data, and field canvassing, we identified patterns that are difficult to dismiss as ordinary clerical error.”
Their primary find involved the undeliverable ballots. In all, 30,000 voter records in Vermont are at undeliverable addresses, yet more than a third were returned for votes.
“There are far too many addresses in our voter rolls that are considered ‘undeliverable’ by the U.S. Postal Service,” the report states. “Why would these remain in our voter data? Why would we mail ballots to them? Yet we received over 13 thousand ballots from these addresses.”
The SOS Office responded with a potential explanation for how this could be.
“Clerks report that addresses deemed erroneous by USPS systems can often be delivered, as local carriers understand the address as provided by the voter – even if it is officially an improper format,” they wrote.
“Ultimately, this means that someone cannot bounce a voter-provided address off the USPS system, be told that address is ‘undeliverable,’ and assume that the mail did not get to the recipient. …Undeliverable mail is returned to the local clerk and processed with follow-up outreach or challenges.”
Another concern is that thousands of voters who received and returned ballots were later absent from the rolls of a February post-election update. The report says, “This is a strong indicator of list manipulation.”
The SOS office suggested there is also an explanation for this.
“One reason is that the voter was active in the September prior to the election, was mailed a ballot, and then was challenged by local officials prior to February,” they wrote. “This is the system working, and the statewide mailing actually helps facilitate this process.”
The report claims that there is too much central control over the voter checklist. They wrote, “It may still be useful to maintain a central database of voters, but towns should have full authority to isolate and maintain their own voter checklists. Online or anonymous voter registrations should be strictly forbidden. This will eliminate the ‘target’.”
The SOS Office disputes the notion that there is too much central control.
“By leaving control and responsibility of voter rolls in the hands of local officials while centralizing and automating some aspects of voter registration and information access, these systems reduce the likelihood of human error and improve the efficiency of maintaining accurate voter lists,” they wrote.
The authors informed VDC that the SOS Office is continuing to work with them on addressing each matter. For example, the report highlights multiple voters who participated in recent elections despite not appearing on prior voter rolls. “This is a clear mark of records that do not belong,” the report states.
Other concerns from the report are that new voter IDs are out of sequence, with some assigned after 2020 yet having an older participation history. There are multiple registrations for voters over 100 years old who are still recorded as active. There are thousands of Vermont-registered voters registered in another state, and they found evidence that cross-state voting occurs. During canvassing in Chittenden County, volunteers confirmed that hundreds of registrants were no longer at their listed addresses, at a rate exceeding 170%.
“The results of this review raise serious questions about the accuracy and resilience of Vermont’s voter data. Across multiple tests, we found records that appear inconsistent, outdated, or improbable,” the report states.
It suggests that outsiders, not local election officials, are the suspects for potential manipulation.
“Their limited access, technical resources, and incentives make them unlikely sources of systemic irregularities. The far greater risk comes from unauthorized third parties — whether foreign governments, political organizations, or other actors with the skills and resources to exploit centralized systems.”
Mail-in ballots have been under public scrutiny. A 2023 poll by Rasmussen found that 21% of likely U.S. voters who used mail-in ballots in the 2020 election admitted to having fraudulently filled out a ballot for someone else and submitted it.
The author is a freelance writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle