Republican Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said this week that he wants all of the state’s elections to be conducted entirely by mail.
During the 2020 election, Vermont was one of several states that switched to a vote-by-mail system because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Last year, Scott signed a bill to make that change permanent and automatically send absentee ballots to all registered voters for general elections.
This week, Scott urged state lawmakers to make that same change for local and primary elections.
“General elections already have the highest voter turnout,” Scott wrote in a letter, according to The Hill.
“What we need is increased voter participation for elections like those on Town Meeting Day or school budget votes, which experience a fraction of the turnout of general elections,”he added.
While Scott is pushing to expand mail-in voting in his state, most Republican states are focusing on closing the loopholes in pandemic-era regulations to make sure their elections remain secure.
In Georgia, for example, state Republicans passed a bill last year to require voter ID for in-person, absentee, and mail-in voting, shorten the time frame for returning absentee ballots, and require state election officials to report results faster.
Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to expand the mail-in voting system. Congressional Democrats introduced a bill last year called the “Vote at Home Act,” which would make permanent pandemic voting practices.
The bill would capitalize on “the successful expansion of voting at home and by mail in the November 2020 election” and “massively expand vote-at-home ballot access” by enacting automatic voter registration and providing voters with pre-paid ballot envelopes.”
Congressional Republicans then introduced their own bill, known as the Save Democracy Act, to clearly define when and how mail-in ballots can be accepted, and to increase voter-registration verifications for those who choose to vote by mail.
