VERNON — Members of the Windham County Democrats allege that a poll watcher was improperly removed by Patricia O'Donnell, outgoing Republican state representative and county chairwoman of Brian Dubie's gubernatorial campaign.
But according to O'Donnell, a member of the town's board of civil authority who was working at the polls on Tuesday, the poll watcher, Carolyn Gregory, did not identify herself as such and said the volunteer “came into the polls with a clipboard and said she was doing an exit poll.”
She said the Democrats were making “a big screaming mess out of something that shouldn't have happened in the first place.”
Conflicting reports
Democrat Richard Davis, who lost to Republican Michael Hebert 949–812 for the state representative seat in the Windham-1 district Tuesday (see story, page 4), had requested that the Democrats monitor the elections in Vernon.
According to Ellen Tenney, of Saxtons River, Gregory attempted to monitor the voting process at the Vernon Town Hall on Tuesday, when O'Donnell and a town constable, Scott Lane, escorted her from the premises.
With many town officials, O'Donnell and Hebert supporting reconsideration of a state Senate bill that forbids the Public Service Board from issuing a Certificate of Public Good to Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee, Democratic anti-nuclear activists had decided to monitor the elections.
According to an e-mail from Tenney, Gregory had been “getting s- from” O'Donnell and others.
Tenney said O'Donnell claimed a town bylaw forbids the presence of nonresidents like Gregory, a resident of Brattleboro - an assertion that Vernon Police Sgt. Bruce Gauld confirmed Tuesday afternoon, when he identified the constable as Scott Lane. “[O'Donnell] said because the poll watcher was not from Vernon, she was not allowed to be there,” Gauld said.
According to the November issue of the Secretary of State's office's monthly newsletter, issued last week, “Poll watchers may observe the election. In Vermont, our elections are public proceedings, and so long as a person is not disruptive, he or she may observe the elections.”
The opinion continues: “Representatives of political parties, candidates and political committees have a right to be present and observe voters at the entrance checklist. The town clerk and presiding officers, if any, should either set out chairs, guardrails, or mark with tape where the poll watchers can be located to observe. They have a right to hear the name of each voter restated by the entrance checklist election official.”
On Tuesday night, O'Donnell said that wasn't the issue.
“She never identified herself as a poll watcher,” she said. “All she said to us [were questions like] how many people were voting and how they were voting.”
“It was the way she phrased things to us,” she said.
O'Donnell, who said approximately ten people witnessed the conflict, said that “everyone was very nice” to Gregory, but such questions are “against the law,” another point underscored in the Secretary of State's newsletter.
The newsletter reminded town officials that “the presiding officer is responsible for ensuring that no campaign literature, stickers, buttons, name stamps, information on candidates or other political materials are placed, handed out, displayed or allowed to remain,” and “The presiding officer is also responsible for ensuring that no candidate, election official or other person solicits voters or otherwise campaigns in the polling place.”
Gregory said she called a Democratic Party attorney and the Secretary of State's office and was assured that state law did not prohibit her objectives.
Once Gregory returned to the polls and identified herself as a poll watcher, she was given a chair and accommodated, O'Donnell said.
And the only reason she intervened at all, she added, was because Town Clerk Sandy Harris had left the room for the first break she had all day.
According to Gregory, she was sent outside because she was obstructing voting and asking people their parties. Gregory said she was not doing either.
“I'm totally confused. I feel a little traumatized, frankly,” said Gregory.
One of 'three or four things'
Kathy DeWolfe, the director of elections and campaign finance in the Secretary of State's office, said that after receiving complaints from the Democrats, her office investigated the matter.
“Very possibly, the constable represented himself as a police officer,” she said. “I talked to the police chief, who said, 'I can assure you that it was not a police officer,' so I talked to Sandy and she explained that she had been upstairs.”
Harris said that DeWolfe informed her of the contretemps and urged her to invite Gregory back in as a poll watcher. “Once that happened, everything quieted down,” she said. A second poll watcher later observed without incident, according to both Harris and DeWolfe.
DeWolfe described constables as “anachronisms,” noting that the state did away with laws requiring that those officials be present at elections to guard the ballot box. “Elections have evolved,” she said, dryly.
“I said, number one, the law was changed more than 10 years ago,” DeWolfe said. “There's no reason to have a constable.”
She then said the division instructed Vernon to “move Patty” so she was not seated at the front door and to tell the constables, “'thank you very much' and send them home,” DeWolfe said.
DeWolfe characterized the minor disturbance as one of “three or four things” in Vernon that could potentially give Davis, the Democratic challenger, grounds to contest the election results.
In one such example, last month Davis complained that a two-page advertisement for Hebert in the Vernon Newspaper wasn't identified as such, potentially leaving an impression that the town officially endorsed his opponent in the taxpayer-supported, town-published newsletter.
Davis could have grounds to contest the results “if anything happened that might have changed the outcome of the election,” DeWolfe said.
Rancor outside
A Democrat holding a Shumlin sign outside said the people holding signs endorsing Republican candidates kept “yelling” at her for standing on town land, but wouldn't allow her to stand on adjacent private property with them, per order of the landowner.
Lerna (who goes by the single name) said that a police officer also emerged from the town hall and “was yelling at me.”
Eventually, representatives of both parties learned no ordinances prevented them from holding the signs on town property. At that point, Lerna said, “their side” all came over to where she was standing and one man put his sign in the ground right in front of her Shumlin sign.
“The anger was oozing from them,” Lerna said.
Uneventful counting
Tenney and Nancy Braus, of Putney, monitored the last hour or so of polling and the final count of the record 912 votes cast, a process that Braus characterized as above board.
Tenney was disappointed that no one was checking the readers reading off the ballots but didn't think anyone was “trying to bull."
Inside the polling area after the polls closed, Harris and a team of 21 people started hand counting the votes.
Tenney and Braus asked the town clerk if there had been any kind of “shenanigans."
Never, Harris joked - as a former long-term bus driver, people were scared of her.