All-resident voting in Winooski: City staff detail procedures, respond to community concerns
Language-accessible informational voting pamphlets at the O’Brien Community Center.
To prepare for Winooski’s first all-resident municipal election, the city held an informal voter information meeting Sunday at the O’Brien Community Center to answer questions and clarify election procedures.
The Vermont Legislature allowed a change to Winooski’s charter last year to allow any resident, including non-citizens to vote in the city’s municipal elections, according to a VTDigger article from March 2021.
Winooski is made up of 90% native or naturalized citizens and 10% non-US citizens, according to a report by the Winooski Charter Commission in 2019.
Population data from 2017 showed that there are over 600 people in Winooski who are not citizens and are over 18, making them eligible to vote in this election.
Eight newly eligible voters have been registered for the upcoming election as of Friday, Feb. 18, according to Winooski City Clerk Jenny Willingham.
Residents can register to vote online or at the city clerk’s office from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, as well as on Town Meeting Day. To register, voters may provide any one of the following, according to a pamphlet provided at the event:
a valid driver’s license
a valid residency document
a permanent resident card
proof of residency card
related paperwork.
Vermont state or local government provided ID or paperwork
school ID
utility or another bill with the voter’s name and address
Additionally, the city says while standard voter information will be public record, citizenship status will not.
Many foreign-born residents do not speak English as a first language, complicating the effort to inform voters before they go to the polls.
“Support for interpreting materials that need to be translated in their own language is lacking,” said Corali Cotrina, a Winooski community outreach coordinator.
She raised concern about votes being invalidated because new voters may not understand how to use the English-labeled ballots.
Mistakes made on absentee ballots more than five days prior to the election will be cured by the city clerk, according to the Winooski City Clerk’s office.
Though, any mistakes made on a ballot less than five days prior cannot be corrected.
The city provided laminated copies of the sample ballot in voters’ native languages at the event. Mayor Kristine Lott explained the individual ballot items up for vote on March 1st for interpreters in the room.
Sample ballots have been translated in Arabic, Burmese, English, French, Nepali, Pashto, Somali, Swahili, and Vietnamese, and can be found on the Winooski Town Meeting Day website.
While voters can identify from the samples where to say “yes” or “no” on election day, the city cannot offer the ballot in those languages according to Willingham.
“Our tabulators would not be able to read those ballots,” said Willingham.
But Cotrina expressed concern that non-English speaking voters would have difficulty reading the ballots.
One resident suggested the city distribute candidate information pamphlets, while another proposed prepping voter liaisons for private follow-up meetings to more clearly answer questions.
“Folks really want to learn more about candidates and the city has to be separate from that,” said Lott after the event. “They put themselves out there, they do their outreach.”
She also mentioned concerns about politicizing the council before an election.
Language-accessible informational voting pamphlets at the O’Brien Community Center.
She said the city is “more than happy” to prepare voter liaisons for private follow-up meetings, and plans to have interpreters at the polls on March 1.
In addition, voters can find more information about the town budget, city council and school board candidates on the Winooski Town Meeting Day website. There is a forum with each of the candidates on Town Meeting TV’s website or YouTube channel. The Winooski News has published Q&A interviews with all candidates for city council and school board.
Though, concerns about confusion at the polls persist.
“They know their own languages,” said Cotrina, but “some of them can read, some of them, no.”
While some voters have difficulty reading English ballots, many said they are having a hard time finding information about the election.
“I had to dig in to really find out which candidate is running,” said Jeetan Khadka who interpreted at the event, “I’ve seen people randomly, just, picking people without really knowing what the candidate[‘s] view is.”
Jeetan’s concerns mirror the sentiments of others in the crowd.
“We need to know about the vote,” one young person said after the event.
Two city council candidates, Aurora Hurd and Thomas Renner, attended and weighed in on information distribution.
“I know there are some languages that are hard to translate into written word(s). So I think it’s also getting some door-to-door outreach out there,” said Hurd when asked how to get information out to newly-franchised voters.
“That would be making sure that city staff have the resources they need,” Hurd said.
“The city needs to use as many platforms as it possibly can use, especially paper pamphlets” said Thomas Renner, “a lot of people in lower-income communities or non-English speaking communities aren’t on Instagram and Facebook as much. So sending original hardcopy information to people’s homes for those communities works really well.”
The city will hold a joint presentation of the city and school budget on Feb. 17, both online and in-person with interpretation services available.
O’Brien Community Center.
Additionally, the city will hold an informational meeting to discuss ballot items on Feb. 28.
All photos by Jack Pitblado.
CORRECTION: Winooski community outreach coordinator’s name previously written as “Corali Cortina” was changed to “Corali Cotrina” to reflect the correct spelling of her name.
Corrections made February 22, 2022.
