What’s behind the high undeliverable ballot rates in some Vermont towns?

Click on this image to see the interactive map of undeliverable ballots.

Vermonters’ ballots have been mailed-in by the hundreds of thousands — but not everyone received a ballot to mail in the first place. 

For some, their ballot was unable to be delivered by mail. Those ballots are marked ‘undeliverable.’ Ballots are commonly undeliverable if residents have moved or if there is something wrong with the address listed in their town’s voter checklist, Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos told VTDigger. 

Barton has one of the higher rates of undeliverable ballots out of all Vermont towns, according to absentee ballot data provided by the Vermont Secretary of State. The data is updated daily, so figures will shift until election day. As of Oct. 29, over 9% of Barton’s 1,785 mailed ballots were undeliverable. 

Winooski as well has a high undeliverable rate. Over 14% of the Onion City’s 4527 ballots were undeliverable.

“We have had a hundred or so where there really just was no valid address. We don't know what's happened to these folks. They're generally not people who own their homes, but rather renters.” said Barton town clerk, Kristen Atwood.

Barton’s high population of renters is mainly responsible for the increased rate of undeliverables ballots, Atwood said.

“We have a lot of duplexes and small apartment buildings with four units or less here in Barton and in Orleans. When you have that, there's no real way to know when those people move.” said Atwood.

Changes of address in the senior living community could also contribute to the high undeliverable rate in the Northeast Kingdom town.

“Sometimes folks will move on to a nursing home, or another place because they need more care,”  Atwood said. “We're never given that communication, so that person would stay on our checklist and we wouldn't have their new address. And sometimes that person would have moved out of state or even passed away out of state and we wouldn't have been notified,”

Atwood was surprised to hear Barton’s undeliverable rate was high in comparison to other towns. Perhaps it is the way the town is tracking them, Atwood said. 

“I wonder if it's just that I report every ballot that was undeliverable as undeliverable and that even if I'm working to track them down, it sits as undeliverable for a little while before I before I get it back out,” said Atwood

Barton’s small population could also reflect a high rate, said Representative Samuel Young (Orleans-Caledonia).

“It’s easy for a small town to pop up statistically,” Young said. Brattleboro, for comparison, had 506 ballots marked undeliverable, however their rate was only 6.07% since they sent out 8336 total ballots.

In Winooski, similar problems exist in the city where there are a high number of renters. System errors misattributing numbers to apartments meant ballots were being returned undeliverable by the postal service. 

“If you had an apartment number, or a unit number, it didn’t pick up the entire address,” said Winooski clerk Carol Barrett. “For example, if the address was apartment 100, the ballot would go to apartment 10.” 

Some people may have moved and not updated their voter registration, Barrett said. Since the ballots were sent from the Secretary of State’s office, the city had no recourse to correct the issue. 

There are a number of people on Barton’s town clerk’s checklist who don’t vote in town because they don’t live in town, said Young.

Elizabeth Peart is no longer a Barton resident, and yet was on the town clerk’s checklist. Her ballot was marked undeliverable by Barton’s town clerk.

“I moved from Barton to Orleans to another place in Orleans to Coventry,” Peart said.

Peart has not received a ballot by mail at her new address in Coventry, but still intends to vote. 

“If I have to, I’ll go to the polls on polling day,” said Peart.

Chase McGuire contributed reporting.