by Seth Adam Manley

A Panel Discussion on Election Integrity was held on Friday, March 27 at the Hunt Middle School Auditorium, Burlington.  The event was sponsored by the Burlington GOP committee (Bill Oetgen, chair) and recorded by Town Meeting TV (Chittenden County Vermont’s regional government access TV channel, cctv.org).  

The panel was moderated by Dan Feliciano, a Braver Angel cross party discussion group and co-host of the WVMT Morning Show radio program.  Panelists included:

– Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State (second term, first elected in 2022)

– Rob Roper, Independent Journalist (“Behind the Lines,” substack), former President of the Ethan Allen Institute

– Ron Lawrence, Vice Chair Chittenden County GOP, software engineer by profession, business owner

– John Odum, City Clerk of Montpelier (serving for 14 years), Certified Municiple Clerk, Certified Ethical Hacker (cybersecurity professional)

The moderator posed this opening question: “When you say election integrity, what specific outcomes are you trying to guarantee? … What does election integrity look like and how would you define it?”

The panelists responded as follows (I’ve taken the liberty of slight editing for readability):

Roper: “I would say that in election integrity is is we we want to be able to ensure that we have one person, one vote and we want to make sure that we maintain the secret ballot. So we need to put systems in place where those things can be can can be guaranteed. So election integrity to me is that the count we get at the end of the day is actually reflective of the way people vote, one person, one vote through the secret ballot.”

Copeland Hanzas: “I think there’s an important thing to add to that [point made by Roper] and that is that in my definition, in order for us to have faith that the outcome of the election reflects the will of the people we need as many people as we can possibly get to vote.  I think we should be aiming for 100% participation…”

Lawrence: “First of all, I agree with the things that have been said so far.  I would add to the issue of getting more people out to vote: I fear that if there’s not much confidence in the vote, that’s where you wind up losing an awful lot of folks.  They simply don’t go out to vote because they don’t feel like it makes any difference.”

Odum: “I would say all the elements that that folks just mentioned are part of integrity. I mentioned that I think the components of integrity already are transparency and security, but I think really the ultimate judge of voting integrity is that we as a people can be confident that it’s being done right, that it’s been done well. It breaks my heart as an election administrator … that so many folks these days have such …  concerns over the democratic process but at the end of the day we should all be proud of it. It’s really you know this is a fundamental piece of what makes us American. This is something that folks have died for and we should be proud of our electoral process and I think that’s the ultimate reflection of integrity is if we can see that that pride among each other.”

For this brief recap of the event, that first question serves well as both the introduction and summary.  The panelists also responded to questions from the moderator and a few from the audience.  Many difficult questions were not entertained.  The moderator exclaimed afterwards that “There were just too many questions from the audience.”

If you would like to become informed, I encourage all concerned citizens to watch the full 1 hour and 44 minute discussion that can be found at

Stay Tuned, Stay Informed…