LONDONDERRY — I spent a chunk of my day recently recounting ballots in a disputed Vermont primary election for governor, the culmination of an interesting conflict in the Progressive Party primary in which the party chairperson and designated candidate listed on the ballot (Martha Abbott), initially won by a single vote over write-in candidate Annette Smith.
The numbers were really small, just 371 votes to 370 votes, reflecting the openness and accessibility of Vermont politics, and demonstrating once again that a single vote really can make a difference.
I find the story interesting because Vermont has several “third parties,” with the dominant “extra” party being the Progressives.
The Progressives often align with Democrats, and in this case, Ms. Abbott had placed her name on the ballot with the intent of simply holding the line through the primary and then declining the nomination, so that the Democratic candidate (sitting Gov. Peter Shumlin) wouldn't be challenged by a Progressive.
The leadership of the Progressive Party is generally (but not completely) happy with Shumlin and wants to influence his policy without threatening his reelection as a spoiler. Thus, Abbott placed her name on the primary ballot to prevent a wild card challenge.
But politics isn't always simple.
Annette Smith is a crusader against commercial scale wind power and stepped forward as a last minute write-in seeking the Progressive ballot line to force Shumlin to address the wind issue, and perhaps a few others. It created quite a stir, and it's possible that Smith will ultimately add enough votes in the recount to claim the nomination, and the outcome is still unknown.
If she picks up just a couple of votes in the recount her name will appear on the ballot, and she will likely have a guaranteed invitation for at least some of the debates between Shumlin and Republican challenger, state Sen. Randy Brock.
Still, Smith is such a long shot that nobody in the state believes she will win the general election in November or even act as an effective spoiler. But if she secures the primary victory, there are expectations of a more interesting campaign season because she will have a platform from which to challenge the two main-party candidates.
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This was my third time assisting with a recount, and interestingly, the first was when Brock lost to Tom Salmon in a recounted election for state auditor.
My assignment took place at the Windham County Superior Courthouse, where a handful of representatives from each of the recognized major political parties reviewed the roughly 82 Progressive ballots cast in the county. The process was duplicated in the other 13 counties around the state as each of the roughly 900-plus Progressive ballots was hand-inspected.
Most of our towns in Vermont use machine-readable bubble ballots that are hand-colored by the voter. In the case of a write-in, the voter writes the name on the correct line and the associated bubble is colored in so the machine will flag the ballot for human scoring.
Many other towns bow to quirkiness and refuse to use the automated readers, opting to have groups of locals sit around a table and count the ballots by hand instead.
For the recount, each Progressive ballot was inspected at the county level by representatives of the three parties to determine the intent of the voter. It isn't a difficult assignment, and we all get along swimmingly, so there was none of the conflict that so many of us remember from watching the Florida recount in the year 2000 (hanging chads, etc.).
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Doing these recounts has helped me appreciate the value of using handwritten ballots, which leave an unmistakable paper trail, rather than electronic voting machines.
It's pretty easy to look at a bubble ballot and find the intent of the voter, and my experience in these recounts is that no matter which political party a top-tier reviewer represents, we all want every voter to be respected - and every vote to count.
In any event, I think it's pretty darn cool that an ordinary citizen can thwart party leadership and get on the ballot as a gubernatorial candidate with just a few hundred votes, and that a recount can be handled so amicably by neighbors who affiliate with conflicting political parties.
And it's pretty cool that small towns holding out for tradition can still influence how the voting is conducted, while leaving plenty of room for secondary review and assurance of the sanctity of the process.
Helping with a recount makes me wish Vermont could export its political sensibilities, along with our scrumptious maple syrup, ice cream, and cheese.