Ahead of the general election on Nov. 3, Vermont Public is interviewing candidates for statewide and federal office, as well as hosting debates.
In Vermont's secretary of state race, Democratic incumbent Sarah Copeland Hanzas faces challenges from Republican H. Brooke Paige and Progressive Rachel Shaw. Vermont Edition made multiple attempts to reach Shaw, but we did not receive a response. You can learn more about the candidates in Vermont Public's candidate guide.
The interviews with Copeland Hanzas and Paige that aired on Vermont Edition today were edited for length and clarity. In the interest of transparency, we are sharing transcripts of the original, unedited interviews.
Sarah Copeland Hanzas
Secretary of State Copeland Hanzas is running for her third term. Prior to first being elected secretary of state in 2022, she served in the Vermont House of Representatives for nearly two decades. She lives in Bradford.
Mikaela Lefrak: Now, you were first elected to this position in 2022. Why do you think you remain the best fit for the role?
Sarah Copeland-Hanzas: Well, we have a lot of really great accomplishments to run on, and you know, the first two years was really focused on replacing some aging IT systems. The second two years has been focused on implementing them and making sure that all of the various constituencies out there across Vermont understand how to use them. We're also really leaning into the work that we've been doing on civics and making sure that Vermonters understand how the levers of power work, so that they can tell their government what they think they should be working on. That has been really exciting. The Kid Governor program is off and running. We've got 70-something classrooms at 60 different schools across the state. All 14 counties are represented with Kid Governor classrooms this year, which I'm really excited about, and and we also launched Vermont Civic Connect, which is a partnership between businesses, nonprofits and our office, and we provide them with a toolkit of resources that they can use to make sure that all of their employees know how to vote, where to vote, when to vote. And then of course, post-election, we will shift gears into expanding those resources so that more Vermonters understand how to get connected in their local community as well. There's always a planning commission vacancy here or a library board vacancy there, and we want all Vermonters to understand that you know they can lean in and help do these important things in our communities.
Mikaela Lefrak: Well, I wanted to ask you about some news from earlier this month when a federal judge tossed out a lawsuit that the U.S. Department of Justice had filed against you. The department was demanding that your office turn over Vermont's voter registration data to the federal government, and this was all part of a larger effort led by the Trump administration to obtain voter rolls from dozens of states and address the president's claims of rampant voter fraud nationwide. A couple questions for you on this, Secretary. First, overall, how confident are you in the integrity of our elections here in Vermont?
Sarah Copeland-Hanzas: I'm very confident, Mikaela, and you know that that is due in part to the very dispersed nature of how we run elections in Vermont. We have 247 duly sworn town and city clerks. They are responsible for all of the election duties on the local level. Each one of them is the keeper of their own voter registration lists, and we work very closely to support them in the work that they're doing. We had really good participation in terms of clerks getting their biennial checklist review done in 2025, and we believe that our not only are our checklists as up-to-date as they can be, but our elections are run well, and we can all have confidence in the results being reported exactly as Vermont's ballots say they should be.
Mikaela Lefrak: So, if you feel so confident in our election process in Vermont, why not turn over the data to the federal government?
Sarah Copeland-Hanzas: Well, it's really very simple. Vermont passed a law that says that we do not share our full unredacted voter file with any foreign entity, with anyone using it for commercial purposes, or specifically with the federal government, and so it would have been in violation of Vermont law for us to do that. I think if you want to dive deeper into it, there's a couple of other issues, legal issues, with the requests that the DOJ made. Number one, the Constitution says that states determine the time, place and manner of elections, so that does not give a role for the Department of Justice or any federal agency in determining who in Vermont is eligible to vote. And there was no legal basis of congressional laws that were passed that would have given the DOJ a reason to request the full unredacted voter rolls. There was an absence of any federal law that gave them a right to it, and there was very clear constitutional language that says, this is the state's role and responsibility, and very clear state law that says, we don't do this.
Mikaela Lefrak: In August, you and Gov. Phil Scott announced that the state had removed nearly 900 people from its voter rolls who had been incorrectly registered. These people were basically registered automatically through the DMV over the past 25 years, and you said that you looked into this issue after something similar occurred in New Jersey. Why did it take another state announcing its error for your office to look into the possibility of something similar happening here in Vermont?
Sarah Copeland-Hanzas: Well, it was really two issues that coincided at the same time. Number one, we heard directly from a Vermonter who could very clearly articulate to us and said, "In fact, I am an attorney and I know the consequences of registering to vote. I did not register to vote, and yet I got on the voter registration list.” We've heard anecdotally from clerks and from folks, you know, sort of on the wind, but it was that person calling us and saying, this happened, and then just wondering, you know, is this a systemic problem? Should we look deeper into it? And I'm really glad that we did because I think it's really important for Vermonters to have that information and to know that when government makes a mistake, such as inadvertently registering people to vote who had no intention of registering, that we, number one, correct that mistake, and number two, be very public about it.
Mikaela Lefrak: Are you investigating other possible sources of incorrect registrations in the state?
Sarah Copeland-Hanzas: Well, I wouldn't say incorrect registrations in that category of people who said, ‘no, don't register me,’ but got registered anyway. But we are launching a closer collaboration with the Department of Motor Vehicles. This voter registration duty that they have in Vermont law is really secondary to what their focus is. Their focus is in making sure that drivers are credentialed and that they can move people through the DMV line as smoothly and quickly as possible. But we've heard a lot of frustration from clerks over the years and from Vermonters about issues with the data transfer that comes from the Department of Motor vehicles, and this is really an ideal time for us to launch this collaboration because not only have we recently upgraded our election management system with with new functionality and new tools, but the DMV has also launched a new license and registration platform, and that allows us to tell our new IT systems how they need to communicate and how they need to transfer this data. We can begin to work on some of the other issues that we have identified, such as, you know, Vermont addresses are odd and quirky, and they don't always come through from the DMV correctly. The DMV doesn't necessarily verify that an address is a legal USPS address. So, somebody's driver's license address doesn't necessarily have to comply with USPS formatting. But when we are mailing ballots and we need our voter registration list to reflect people's legal USPS address, we need to fix that. We need to upgrade it. So, in the end of the day, as much of a hassle as this was, it is actually the beginning of some really important progress that we're going to make in terms of making sure that our data coming over from them is as accurate as possible.
Mikaela Lefrak: And last question on that front, Secretary. You said that none of those nearly 900 voters actually voted. Considering the quirks of Vermont addresses that you just mentioned, and the fact that these registrations occurred over 25 years, how did you reach that conclusion?
Sarah Copeland-Hanzas: It was really a painstaking process. You know, we can look back through the election management system and see people's participation and the interactions that they've had around voter registration. For instance, if I checked no, I don't want to register to vote, but I had previously filled out a paper voter registration form and had actually been voting, that is all contained within the election management system. And so we really wanted to make sure that we were capturing only those people who had declined to register to vote and indeed had not done any other action consistent with wanting to be a registered voter.
Mikaela Lefrak: Let's talk mail-in ballots for a moment here. On September 14, the Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump's effort to restrict mail-in ballots for this year's general election. So, that means that states can still send out mail ballots, which account for nearly a third of votes nationwide, 64 percent of votes in the 2024 general election here in Vermont. What is your position on mail-in voting?
Sarah Copeland-Hanzas: I know from participation rates as well as from conversations that I've had with Vermonters and with the clerks, treasurers and municipal officials across the state, that they're hearing Vermonters really appreciate being able to have their ballot on their kitchen table to be able to look at who's running for what offices, to be able to do a little bit of research about those candidates. I feel that, you know, you shouldn't be denied your right to vote because you are working two jobs or because you live in a teeny tiny town and have to drive an hour to get to work. The convenience of being able to vote by mail, receive your ballot, fill it out over the course of days or weeks is really empowering. And in a democracy, we want voters to be empowered to cast their ballot with knowledge and with the time to reflect on who they would like to support.
Mikaela Lefrak: This year, the Trump administration lobbied for the SAVE Act, which would have required voters to present physical proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and then a photo ID when they were voting. This act stalled in Congress, but a dozen states or so have passed SAVE Act-like laws in the past couple of years. Vermont has not. Do you think there would be any benefit in Vermont from a state law like that?
Sarah Copeland-Hanzas: I don't see that there would be, and the reason that I think that is because it would have the effect of making it harder for a lot of people who have been voters their whole life to be able to vote. You know, if you were born 80 years ago in a teeny tiny town in Iowa or Nebraska or Texas, and you no longer have a copy of your birth certificate, and maybe you don't have an easy way to jump on a computer and request a copy of your birth certificate, that is going to be a hindrance. If you changed your name when you got married again, you would need to be able to access that additional piece of documentation in order to be able to exercise your right to vote, and I don't think that we should be putting unnecessary barriers in front of people's right to vote. As I've said all along, this is a solution in search of a problem. We do not have non-citizens voting in our elections in any significant numbers. I think statistically it's 0.0001 percent of votes cast. For the vast number, in the tens of thousands in Vermont, maybe even as many as 100,000, would have real difficulty and would have to take a lot of time and expense to be able to prove their citizenship. I just don't think that it is the solution for now. Now, if the federal government feels that it's important for people to be able to demonstrate their citizenship, they should provide proof of citizenship to every American free of charge, and the fact of the matter is, they don't have a way to do that. They do not have accurate records of people who were born in and naturalized or naturalized in the United States that go back, you know, the one hundred years of potential lifetime of voters in this country. So, if they wanted to spend the time and energy that they have spent trying to wrestle us into this on actually creating a solution, then maybe we could have a conversation about people showing that documentation when they register to vote.
Mikaela Lefrak: Sarah Copeland-Hanzas is running for re-election for her third term to the role of Secretary of State in Vermont. Secretary Copeland-Hanzas, thank you so much for joining us today.
Sarah Copeland-Hanzas: Thank you, Mikaela.
H. Brooke Paige
H. Brooke Paige first ran for statewide office in 2012, when he entered the Republican primary for U.S. Senate. In the 2026 primaries he ran for four positions — attorney general, state auditor, treasurer and secretary of state. He lives in the town of Washington.
Mikaela Lefrak: This primary, you ran uncontested for the GOP nomination for attorney general, state auditor, treasurer and secretary of state. After the primary, you withdrew from the first three of those races. The state’s Republican committee has selected replacement candidates for the general. You remain in the running for secretary of state, that’s why we’re talking to you today. Why did you choose this position out of the four?
H. Brooke Paige: Secretary of State's always been my objective because one of the major responsibilities of the Secretary of State is overseeing and assisting with elections. Contrary to popular belief, the Secretary of State is not the chief election officer of the state. The Constitution specifically assigns that responsibility to the collective boards of civil authority in each town, and once they've conducted the election and finished the results, then they're supposed to transmit the results immediately to the General Assembly. Now, nobody's saying they have to count them themselves. My suggestion would be, if we went back to the Constitutional model, that they'd hire a reputable public accounting firm to add up all the results. But we've gone far astray. One of the things we do today, and the reason why I have to run for all these offices, is because we have open primaries, which is not a good thing.
Mikaela Lefrak: Why not?
H. Brooke Paige: Well, because the the other party who will remain nameless–
Mikaela Lefrak: The Democratic Party.
H. Brooke Paige: Oh, there you go. [laughs] Good guess. Have a bad habit, about a thousand of them statewide, each primary season, in an organized fashion, grab Republican ballots instead of Democratic ballots, and then write in all of their published candidates on the Democratic ballot. Now, if the Republicans don't have a candidate for each office, then– until it's too late, and even if they attempt a write-in campaign for these offices in the primary— generally, a published candidate easily overcomes a write-in candidate. So, what would happen in prior years– and the last time this happened was in 2016, and it had happened many times before– but in 2016, the Republicans failed to field candidates for Secretary of State, Treasurer and one other office in a statewide election, but also failed to get a candidate on the ballot for U.S. House of Representatives. And so, in all of these races, the Democratic write-in from the organized campaign by the Democrats won the primary, and so the Republicans had no opportunity to field a candidate for the general election. Worst of all, Peter Welch, who was the Democratic U.S. House candidate at the time, went out the day after the election, having won not only the Democratic primary but also the Republican primary through the right effort. Went out and announced, either out of arrogance or ignorance, he said, "I must be doing such a wonderful job. Even the Republicans have made me their candidate.” I immediately went to the party elders at the time and said, "We have got to stop doing this. This is so—
Mikaela Lefrak: You took that statement quite literally, not as a joke.
H. Brooke Paige: He didn't look like he was joking to me, and it seemed like an ill-placed joke, even if he had, you know. I went to the party elders, who at the time was David Sunderland and Jeff Bartley, who was the executive director, David Sunderland was the chair at the time. I said, "We can't let this happen anymore. This is crazy. What are you guys doing? And they said, "Well, you know, what are we going to do?” I said, "You have to get anybody. Just get a warm body on the ballot.” And they said, "Well, if you want to take care of that.” [laughs] I'm looking, going like, not my job. Since that time, I've had to go out, and in various ways, get petitions signed, 500 for each opportunity, and get on the ballot for all these positions that didn't have any candidates.
Mikaela Lefrak: So, I see what you're trying to do in order to make sure that there are Republican candidates on the ballot for the general election for all these seats. But to go back to my original question, I wonder what about your personal background and your work experience prepares you for the role that you have decided to run for in the general, which is Secretary of State?
H. Brooke Paige: Well, given that I've run, this will be, I think, my fifth effort to run for Secretary of State. [laughs] Experience in running and several lawsuits I've filed against the Secretary of State over misconduct during the election have given me a fairly good depth of understanding of what the law is and what the constitutional requirements are. Understand that the Secretary of State's office is just barely a constitutional office. The only mention is in chapter two, section 48, which says the Secretary of State shall be elected on the same ballot with the governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer. That's all it says. There's no any-and-all-duties and obligations and responsibilities are all statutory, not constitutional. But the Constitution clearly describes how the statewide elections are to be conducted in Chapter Two, Section 47.
Mikaela Lefrak: What exactly would you do differently than the current Secretary of State, or what we've had in the last decade or so, if elected to this role?
H. Brooke Paige: I would follow the Constitution. [laughs]
Mikaela Lefrak: What does that mean? Say more.
H. Brooke Paige: Well, the Constitution, section 47 of chapter two, says that statewide elections— now, we're not talking about the state house or state senate because the Constitution elsewhere says those bodies are responsible for setting the rules for the conduct of their elections— so, we're talking about statewide offices mentioned in the Constitution, plus the Attorney General office, which the Attorney General actually isn't even a constitutional office, but the Constitution says that on election day, a single day, that the members of each, the citizens of each town, shall gather at the usual place, generally the town hall or city hall, and submit their selections for the candidates that they want to serve for those for the five offices, governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer.
Mikaela Lefrak: Mmhm.
H. Brooke Paige: And at the end of the day, once those offices have been voted on, the boards of civil authority are then who are the ones assigned to conduct the election shall then turn the ballot box, count up all the ballots, record the results, and in exact words, it says, We shall seal up the results and transmit them by the town representative, House of Representatives, to the General Assembly, which is the House and Senate together, where on on I just want to call it return day—
Mikaela Lefrak: I just want to make sure I'm understanding. So you're quoting the state constitution here because you're saying that the secretary of state of Vermont should be doing much less than they are doing right now. They should simply be doing this very specific function of making sure statewide races are carried out, and that’s it.
H. Brooke Paige: The Secretary of State should not be involved in the counting of the ballots because the Secretary of State is a commissioned officer— also elected, I got that— of the governor, and it's the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state that are all being elected. There is an irreconcilable conflict of interest in [the] secretary of state being responsible for conducting the election or counting the ballots for a race where he or she has been in. Just as I'm also a justice of peace in my town, I serve on the board of civil authority, I'm not allowed by statute to help with the election on general election day because I'm on the ballot. Over a period of years, we've kind of drifted into this other model of how we're doing elections, and it's a problem, it's a big problem, and the biggest problem.
Mikaela Lefrak: I want to understand why, if there is a problem here, what harm is being caused? Has there been major voter fraud? Do you think somebody has been elected to the role of Secretary of State that shouldn't have been? What's the harm here?
H. Brooke Paige: All good questions, but understand that the Secretary of State has no authority — not only no authority but has no resources — to investigate any irregularities in the election process. So who knows? And this is the biggest problem. The biggest problem with having diverted from the Constitution, which is not a good thing on its own, is that by doing these other things — and now we're talking about mail and vote-by-mail and vote harvesting and all of these other ills that we have — the biggest problem is that people have lost confidence. A lot of people have lost confidence in the process. They think that something's up now because there's nobody to investigate. And recently, we just had a good—
Mikaela Lefrak: I question your statement that there's nobody to investigate the validity of our elections.
H. Brooke Paige: Oh, there is. It's the attorney general's office.
Mikaela Lefrak: Right.
H. Brooke Paige: But when was the last time you saw an investigation? A good example of that is—
Mikaela Lefrak: People are able to submit concerns about the elections to the attorney general's office, and they will investigate them if and when it's appropriate. I believe the attorney general has investigated—
H. Brooke Paige: — not a whole lot that I’m aware of.
Mikaela Lefrak: — in the past —
H. Brooke Paige: — most interestingly—
Mikaela Lefrak: But that mechanism is there.
H. Brooke Paige: Well, and nobody knows about it. I mean, to the extent that it's assigned to the attorney general, that's understood. But people don't really know. There's also— I'm trying to get to the most recent incident we had of somebody reporting a problem with the election process and the fact that the secretary of state just ignored it back in January. One and eventually three people came and complained that they had been registered through Motor Voter to be on the ballot, and the Secretary of State— this was in January— and that office paid no attention to this until New Jersey suddenly came out. All of a sudden, that they had 6000 people that had been improperly registered through Motor Voter, and then within a few weeks, the Secretary of State says, "Oh well, we we were concerned with this, and we used AI and coordinated our efforts with the DMV, and we found that 900 people were improperly registered to vote when they didn't want to.” Well, the interesting part about the number they came up with was not 900; it was 20,000, and so this was…
Mikaela Lefrak: I’m sorry, what was 20,000?
H. Brooke Paige: Twenty thousand people in Vermont now are motor voter registration. When you go to register your car or you get your driver's license.
Mikaela Lefrak: Sure, you can register to vote.
H. Brooke Paige: Well, no, no, no. You have to check the box to opt out, so you aren't automatically registered, okay. So 20,000 people checked the box, made the affirmative act of checking the box, and so the Secretary of State's office decided, well, this was, 20,000 was an untenable number, so they said, well, let's apply some logic to this. Let's say the people really didn't understand what was going on with the checking the box. So we're now going to decide that anybody that subsequently went their their town clerk's office and registered to vote independent of this, or if someone subsequently actually voted, and there was some third affirmative act that I can never seem to remember for some reason, that then they didn't really mean to check the box. Okay, and that's how they whittled this down to 900.
Mikaela Lefrak: I do want to note though that none of those 900 voted according to both the Secretary of State and our governor, Phil Scott.
H. Brooke Paige: Well, Phil Scott says taking it on faith that they didn't. I'm sure his office didn't do any real investigation, and the Secretary of State had no real way of telling. Don't forget, they never released a list of the names of these people, either the 20,000 or the 900, and have been very, you know, unwilling to. So, I don't think they really double check to find out. I think the 900 was there, the 20,000 was there. I saw in the Burlington Free Press they suggested the number might have been 40,000, for Lord's sake, although I don't know how they got to that point. But my point is, things like this are creating a lot of consternation amongst people. And don't forget also the Secretary of State, when a follow-up question was asked, well, were any illegal aliens or undocumented, however, saying that today, and she said, "Well, I'm sure there were a few that were registered.” And previously, she said, "Oh no, we're pure as the driven snow. There's not a single illegal alien or undocumented individual.”
Mikaela Lefrak: We'll look into that, and just for our listeners' awareness, we're going to be fact checking all of these interviews.
H. Brooke Paige: [laugh] Please!
Mikaela Lefrak: And if there's anything to add or clarify, we'll share that at the end of the interview. But we're trying to keep each of these interviews with candidates the same amount of time. So, if you don't mind, I'd like to shift to one other topic we haven't hit on today, which is mail-in ballots. So, on September 14, the Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump's effort to restrict mail-in ballots for this year's general election. That means states can still send out mail-in ballots, which account for nearly a third of votes nationwide, 64% of votes in Vermont in the 2024 election. I listened back today to an interview that you did that same year with Vermont Public, where you said mail-in voting, quote, “completely disturbed the entire premise of the election because people who vote early don't have time to hear from the candidates or watch debates before they cast their ballots.” What is your position today on mail-in voting?
H. Brooke Paige: Now, you've asked me two questions here, so I'm going to take the first one.
Mikaela Lefrak: Just the one. What's your position today on mail-in voting?
H. Brooke Paige: First of all, the premise you've said that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that everything's hunky-dory. That's not what was ruled on.
Mikaela Lefrak: Well, I said they rejected the president's efforts to restrict mail-in ballots for this year's elections.
H. Brooke Paige: Only sort of kind of. The only thing that they ruled on was they failed to reject the lower courts' hold sustaining the…
Mikaela Lefrak: They voted not to reject it.
H. Brooke Paige: They voted not to reject the motion that was made to proceed, okay?
Mikaela Lefrak: Okay.
H. Brooke Paige: If you read carefully the decision, especially the dissent by, I think it was Alito, it specifically says the case…
Mikaela Lefrak: We don't have too much time, so I really want to get to your position on mail-in voting today.
H. Brooke Paige: The case is, but the thing is, the underlying case has a very low degree of probability of being found in the favor of the litigants.
Mikaela Lefrak: Okay.
H. Brooke Paige: Okay.
Mikaela Lefrak: What’s in the news right now, which is why I'm asking you about it. So I'm just looking to hear your opinion on it in Vermont.
H. Brooke Paige: The news is being misread, okay? As far as this term, the ballots are already going out, and to try to reverse that somehow would have overwhelming consequences as far as confusion, okay. I have a problem with mail out, mail out, vote by mail, mail out, mailing ballots out all over the countryside to every person that's possible. Okay, and once again, I get back to my thing about voter confidence. This is another thing a lot of people have no confidence in the process because they have no confidence that those ballots are winding up with the individuals they're supposed to. More importantly, that those ballots that are being mailed back in are being mailed back in by the actual individual who's identified on the envelope. Now, whether that's true or not, separate issue. But the fact that so many people are concerned about this and have no confidence in the process or in the Secretary of State, to be real honest, that many people, and I would suggest as many as 20 percent of eligible voters have given up.
Mikaela Lefrak: Where did you get that number from?
H. Brooke Paige: By personal experience.
Mikaela Lefrak: Okay.
H. Brooke Paige: Okay. Don't forget, nobody's doing any research. Nobody has any money, you know. So, whether you hear me say it or you hear somebody else say it, there's no real documented facts to back it up. But I know when I'm out and about collecting my 2,000 signatures on my petitions, I am constantly amazed by the number of people go, ‘No, Brooke, I'd love to sign it. I'm not registered.’ Immediately, I pull out a voter registration form. They go, ‘No, no, you don't understand. I don't want to be involved because I don't think the thing's honest anymore.’ My wife, for heaven's sake, doesn't believe the whole thing's rigged in some way or another, and if it wasn't for me being so heavily involved, I doubt she would even bother to vote.
Mikaela Lefrak: H. Brooke Page is running for Secretary of State with the Republican Party. Brooke, thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
H. Brooke Paige: Absolutely, it was my pleasure, and don't forget Brooke Page for Secretary of State on the November 3 election.
Mikaela Lefrak: Thank you.
Broadcast live on Monday, Oct. 5, 2026, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
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