GOP chair notes shortfalls of universal mail-in ballots
By Michael Bielawski
Nearly all national political pundits agree that former President Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee for the 2024 presidential election. However, Vermont conservative leaders are choosing to support another candidate.
Also, Vermont GOP chair Paul Dame noted on the radio some key security shortfalls when it comes to doing universal mail-in ballots in the general election versus by-request mail-in ballots as is still used in the primaries.
Vermont GOP favoring Nikki Haley for GOP ticket
On the WVMT Morning Drive radio show on Tuesday Dame was a guest on the show, and the conversation first was about Trump’s last remaining rival for the GOP presidential ticket Nikki Haley will be coming to Vermont.
Dame noted that there is substantial support for Haley among Vermont’s leading Republican figures.
“I know there are a number of legislators who have endorsed Nikki Haley, I’m sure some of them will be there,” he said.
It was noted that she has the endorsement of both Republican Gov. Phil Scott and Rep. Pattie McCoy, R-Poultney, who is the House Minority leader.
Haley has failed to win a GOP primary so far. She will be at the Doubletree in South Burlington on Sunday, the event is free and starts at 1 p.m.
Caller defends Trump
A caller on the show disputed the notion that Trump doesn’t deserve the support of Vermont’s conservative leaders.
He said, “On the question about people don’t want to run or vote because of Donald Trump being on the top of the ticket, I’m just saying buying groceries and all that stuff, it’s very, very expensive right now… Donald Trump, we’ve seen what he did. We’ve seen how great everything is when he was at the White House.”
The caller blamed the current state of the economy on the current administration.
“This government, nothing. So we can’t blame Donald Trump for what’s going on right now. Everything is falling apart and we are still supporting [Trump],” he said.
Former state and city lawmaker Kurt Wright noted in Vermont Trump has had less support than he gets nationwide. They suggested the results of Vermont’s GOP primary – which is on Tuesday (Super Tuesday) – will be telling as to where that support stands today.
Mail-in ballot controversies
The conversation later turned to mail-in ballots after a caller asked Dame if he shared concerns with Trump about the security of using them.
Dame didn’t say outright whether he’s for or against the policy but he did list some reasons why having a mail-in ballot-by-request system has key security advantages over sending them to all registered voters automatically which is Vermont’s current policy for the general election.
One advantage is when voters have to request the ballot that means ballots aren’t going automatically to people they are not intended for.
Dame explained, “The current program we have in the primary which is you mail everyone a request is a good idea because first of all then you are mailing it and if you get mail returned that’s non-deliverable, you know you need to take those people off the roles. That’s number one.”
Dame noted that he once got a ballot sent to his house for someone who hadn’t lived there for at least a decade.
His next point was to have people request a ballot means there will be a record that this person still lives at their address and wants a ballot. They also must sign the request.
“The second thing is when we send out ballots we are not sending ballots to people, we send ballots to addresses. If you send out a request and people get a request and people say oh I do want to vote early, they sign it and then they send it back, we’ve got a record that a person requested it,” he said.
He concluded, “So I think that would be to me an improvement we could make in the general election rather than mailing out ballots [to everyone].”
Last year Rasmussen released a poll revealing that “One-in-Five Mail-In Voters Admit They Cheated in 2020 Election.”
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle