Vermont’s Secretary of State provided an Election Day update today and outlined her expectations for how quickly voters will know the results of state and federal races.
As of midday Tuesday, 220,000 Vermonters had already cast ballots and Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, a Democrat, says the trend is tracking towards a 60 to 75 percent turnout.
“Total voter turnout of course we don’t know what that’s going to be, but we expect it to be brisk because the reports that I’m hearing from clerks across the state are that traffic has been steady. They have not had a lot of downtimes during the polling today and there’s a great deal of energy out there among Vermonters wanting to cast their ballot,” Copeland Hanzas reported.
Copeland Hanzas says security has been a priority for election officials across the country and her office has been in continuous contact with federal law enforcement to plan for multiple scenarios.
“They have warned us of the types of incidents that we might expect and those are things that we have been planning and preparing and drilling for for weeks and weeks,” Copeland Hanzas said. “We could expect D-DOS attacks. That is a Distributed Denial of Service attack. It’s basically trying to overwhelm a computer system or a phone system, bomb threats, swatting of public officials. We are told that we should expect that foreign actors are attempting to infiltrate systems to cause delay or disruption. In every state in this country elections workers are prepared for these contingencies. They have backup plans in place.”
Copeland Hanzas noted that in Vermont the polls close at 7 and preliminary results should be available shortly afterwards.
“These results that you see on the election night reporting page on the Secretary of State’s website are preliminary results. The clerks have 48 hours after today to get us their final tallies,” noted Copeland Hanzas. “But just remember that what you see tonight is your preliminary results.”
While Copeland Hanzas expects Vermont races to be called quickly, she does not expect results of the presidential contest to be known for some time.
“I think it’s very important for Vermonters to understand that in other parts of the country elections workers, like they do here in Vermont, prioritize accuracy over speed. And we shouldn’t expect to have an outcome on the presidential race called this evening.” Copeland Hanzas explained, “There are a number of very important states that are going to be very close. Another reason why we may not see results tonight is because there are states that allow the tallying of ballots that were postmarked by today. For those postmark states, if it were a very close contest, it could not be called until they’ve given the adequate amount of time for those postmarked ballots to arrive.”
The Secretary of State’s office will officially certify the Vermont election results next Tuesday at the Statehouse.
