The Vermont Statutes Online

Title 17 : Elections

Chapter 051 : Conduct of Elections

Subchapter 006 : Early or Absentee Voters

• § 2546b. Early voting in town clerk’s office; deposit into vote tabulator

  (a)(1) A board of civil authority may vote to permit its town’s registered early or absentee voters to vote in the town clerk’s office in the same manner as those voting on election day by marking their early voter absentee ballots and depositing them into a vote tabulator or secure ballot box.

  (2) If a board of civil authority votes to permit early voting as described in subdivision (1) of this subsection, the town’s process for conducting this early voting shall conform to the provisions of this section and to procedures that the Secretary of State shall adopt for this purpose.

  (b)(1) During business hours in the town clerk’s office, the secure ballot box or vote tabulator and ballot bin shall be in a secured area accessible only to election officials and voters. The vote tabulator unit shall be secured with an identifiable seal and the ballot box containing voted ballots shall remain locked at all times and secured with an identifiable seal. Neither seal shall be broken prior to the time of closing the polls on election day.

  (2) Once early voting has commenced in the town clerk’s office, the town clerk or designee shall certify each day in a record prepared for this purpose that the seals on the vote tabulator and secure ballot box are intact.

  (3) When an election official is not present or at times other than business hours, the secure ballot box or sealed vote tabulator and ballot bin shall be secured in the town clerk’s office vault.

  (4) The town clerk shall maintain a record of each early or absentee voter who voted in person in accordance with this section and shall mark these voters as having voted early in the clerk’s office in the online election management system.

  (c) On the day of the election:

  (1) The secure ballot box or sealed vote tabulator and ballot bin shall be transferred to the polling place on election day by two election officials and shall not be opened until the polls have closed on election day.

  (2) When the vote tabulator is turned on at the polling place, the town clerk shall verify that the number of ballots that the vote tabulator displays as having been counted matches the number of voters who deposited their early voter absentee ballots in the vote tabulator in accordance with this section and any early voter absentee ballots that were processed and deposited in the vote tabulator under section 2546a of this subchapter.

  (3) All early voter absentee ballots shall be commingled with those voted at the polls on election day prior to being examined for the purpose of identifying write-in votes. (Added 2019, No. 67, § 14, eff. July 1, 2020; amended 2021, No. 60, § 15, eff. June 7, 2021.)