At the bottom of this story: how to check whether your town clerk has your ballot, what to do if your ballot never came, where to find the voter guide that was never mailed, and how to vote on local questions that weren’t on your mailed ballot.
Vermont’s Republican governor and Democratic secretary of state stood together Monday, a week before the Nov. 3 election, to tell voters the state’s voting systems are secure and that there are no specific threats to the vote.
“I’m not sure there are many other governors and secretaries of states from different parties willing to come together with a united message a week before Election Day,” Gov. Phil Scott said at the press conference in Montpelier with Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas.
Copeland Hanzas, who runs Vermont’s elections, said her office plans for trouble anyway. “At this time, there are no specific threats that we are concerned about, but rest assured we are looking at any potential disruptions to the voting process and making contingency plans for them,” she said.
Scott put it more simply: “The systems in place are secure. And we’ll make sure the voting process is protected.”
Ballots Are Coming In Slower, and the Mail Is Part of It
As of Monday morning, 101,406 Vermonters had returned their ballots. That’s about 12,000 fewer than at the same point before the 2022 midterm election (113,394), and about 40,000 fewer than before the 2024 presidential election (141,497), when turnout always runs higher.
Copeland Hanzas gave several reasons. Some voters waited for the high-profile debates before deciding. Some ballots are still in the mail. And with “a lot of chatter, a lot of rhetoric about mail-in ballots,” she said, some people may be holding onto their ballots to hand in or to vote in person.
The mail is the bigger concern for the final week. Oct. 20 was the last day the state could say a mailed ballot would reach a clerk in time, Copeland Hanzas said. Delays vary from town to town, she said, from staffing shortages and from procedural changes by U.S. Postal Service management. “We can’t be sure that letters can make it, you know, even just across town,” she said.
Scott said he heard from Vermonters over the weekend who still haven’t received their ballots. Some told him their post office sends mail out in batches, or closes during the noon hour so the postmaster can go out and deliver mail.
If your ballot never came, you can still vote. The box at the bottom explains how.
What Clerks Are Hearing
Copeland Hanzas said town and city clerks have heard from people who are “agitated” and “unsure of the process.” She blamed “a lot of misinformation that’s coming out of Washington, D.C.,” including the president’s social media posts about how elections work, and asked Vermonters to “take the temperature down.”
Asked whether her office is tracking misinformation about Vermont’s elections specifically, she said, “we haven’t seen direct misinformation to a great extent regarding Vermont’s elections.” Every state runs its elections a little differently, she said, so Vermonters should go by Vermont law, not by stories about what’s happening in other states.
A handful of town offices have switched to appointment-only, so a clerk working alone who feels unsafe doesn’t have to handle walk-in traffic, Copeland Hanzas said. She said there’s no geographic pattern, and that the towns she could think of made that change “over a year ago, many of them.”
What the State Is Planning For
Copeland Hanzas said her office and Scott’s team are preparing for:
Power outages
Internet outages and other communications disruptions
Physical threats to election workers
Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showing up at polling places
Weather
Clerks have a quick contact sheet for reaching local police or, in towns without a police department, the Vermont State Police. State Police and local officers have been briefed on what Vermont and federal law allow at polling places. Officials said they don’t expect advance notice from ICE or other federal agencies either way.
“Any local law enforcement knows the Vermont State Police are there to assist,” Scott said.
Scott said the state’s Agency of Digital Services has locked down the Secretary of State’s website for a week, with no updates or changes, to guard against hacking. Asked whether that was a first, he said, “as far as I know, yes.”
Federal Help Is Gone, and Federal Monitors Are an Unknown
Copeland Hanzas said the Trump administration in 2025 disbanded the federal network of election security advisers that helped states protect their voting systems, and fired its staff. Vermont is making up for it by sharing information directly with other states, she said.
The machines that count ballots, called tabulators, are not connected to the internet and can’t be changed from outside, she said.
Asked about the election monitors the Justice Department says it will send out on Election Day, Copeland Hanzas said monitors from the department’s Civil Rights Division aren’t unusual and have historically focused on making sure eligible voters aren’t turned away. But with a change in focus under this administration, she said, “we don’t know what to expect with respect to election monitors this time around.”
Under Vermont law, the town or city clerk decides where any observer stands. Observers can’t talk to voters, can’t see how anyone marks a ballot, and can’t affect the process.
Scott added: “The Constitution is clear on this. The elections are the responsibility of the states. We take that very seriously. So from our standpoint, we will do everything within our power to protect the process. And we will counter anything that comes up.”
How Vermont Keeps Its Voter Lists Clean
A member of Copeland Hanzas’s elections staff described the checks Vermont uses to take people off the voter list when they die or move:
Vermont belongs to ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center, a group of about half the states that compare encrypted voter data to catch people who died in another state or registered somewhere else.
The Vermont Department of Health sends death records to the Secretary of State’s office, which passes them to clerks. Clerks also read obituaries and death notices.
When a new Vermont voter says they were registered in another state, Vermont notifies that state. Other states, including some outside ERIC, notify Vermont the same way.
Every odd-numbered year, state law requires each town’s board of civil authority (the town clerk, selectboard members and justices of the peace) to go through the voter list name by name.
Local Questions Aren’t on Your Mailed Ballot
Some towns are also voting Nov. 3 on local questions, such as the Washington County bond vote Scott mentioned, which asks voters to approve borrowing for a career and technical education center. Those questions weren’t on the ballot the state mailed out.
“The governor and I have frequently talked about how we think more ballots should be universal vote by mail,” Copeland Hanzas said. For now, voters with a local question have to vote on it in person or ask their clerk for an early ballot.
Scott’s Message: Vote
Scott spent most of his prepared remarks on why voting matters. He said his mother, who just turned 90 and is a Republican, told him earlier this year she was concerned and frustrated by what she saw coming out of Washington. She has never attended a protest and wasn’t going to start, he said, but “understood why Americans were doing so.”
“And one way to make your voice heard is to vote in our elections,” Scott said. “It’s how we strengthen and protect our democracy.”
Copeland Hanzas closed on the same note. “For all of the things that are happening outside of Vermont and across this country, the one place where we can have an impact on how our state looks now and into the future is by voting,” she said.
Your Vote: What to Check Before Nov. 3
Here’s what you need to make your own plan and check on your own ballot.
Polls close at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 3. Your ballot has to be in your town or city clerk’s hands by then.
Don’t mail it now. Oct. 20 was the last safe day to mail a ballot. Instead:
Put it in your town’s secure ballot drop box
Hand it to your clerk at the town office
Bring it with you to the polls on Election Day. Bringing your mailed ballot lets you skip signing a statement that you didn’t already vote by mail.
Check that your clerk has it. Log in at vote.vermont.gov with your name, date of birth, and either your driver’s license number or the last four digits of your Social Security number. The portal shows when your ballot was mailed and when your clerk received it. If something is wrong, such as a missing signature on the inner envelope, your clerk marks it there, and you’ll need to go fix it.
Your ballot never came? Contact your town or city clerk. You’ll sign an affidavit, a sworn statement, that your mailed ballot never arrived, and the clerk will give you a new one.
Got someone else’s ballot? Return it to your town clerk. It helps clerks keep the voter list up to date.
Find the voter guide. The printed guide wasn’t mailed this year because the printer ran into problems; households got a postcard with instructions instead. Find your personal guide by logging in at vote.vermont.gov, or type your address into the map on the state’s Voter Guide page, which also links to a statewide guide you can search by candidate name. No internet at home? Your local library can help.
Local questions. If your town has a local vote on Nov. 3, it wasn’t on your mailed ballot. Call your clerk to ask. You can vote on it in person, request an early ballot, or vote on it at the clerk’s office when you drop off your general election ballot.
Not registered? You can register and vote the same day at your town or city clerk’s office, any day through Nov. 3.
Need help voting? Every polling place has an accessible voting machine, a tablet that marks the same paper ballot everyone else uses. You can also bring someone you choose into the booth (other than your employer or union representative), or ask an election worker to bring a ballot out to your car. More on the state’s accessible voting page.
Election night results post at electionresults.vermont.gov, which updates every five minutes.
What’s on the ballot: U.S. House, governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, secretary of state, auditor of accounts, attorney general, all 30 state senators, all 150 state representatives, county offices (probate judge, assistant judges, state’s attorney, sheriff, high bailiff), justices of the peace, and two proposed amendments to the Vermont Constitution.