By james art 
This story of Aaron Calvin has been published for the first time by News & Citizen on February 20.
The first legislative act, signed in the law by the government, Phil Scott last week, cleared uncertainty after the opening of decades of technically illegitimate elections in Hyde Park. The law was mostly inspired by the city’s difficulties.
The law, known as H.78, updates Vermont’s laws surrounding the vote of the Australian vote, which allows the process to be used for “all and all” officer elections. The previous law is only allowed to choose all the city officers from Australian voting or not at all.
The most important for Hyde Park the law also explains that “the validity of the vote by the municipality to choose some, but not all municipal officials before the date of entry into force of this law are not subject to dispute to non -compliance” with previous law and ” Any municipality that votes to choose some, but not all, municipal officials before the date of entry into force of this law, the election of a municipal employee is not subject to challenge for non -compliance with a previous law.
The law is sponsored by the Chamber of the House of Government Operations and Military Affairs, which includes two members of Lamoi County: Lucy Boydon, D-Cambridge and Mark Higli, R-Lowell, which is also Eden.
Boydon said the law was drafted by the committee following the testimony of Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert after the realization of Hyde Park that their Australian voting elections were not in line with state legislation. This revelation also caused an unspecified number of other cities in Vermont to contact the Secretary of State with fears that they also held such incompatible elections.
Hyde Park officials discovered at the end of last year that the city was holding an officer election beyond the observance of the 1994 Vermont Act, choosing some of its city officers from Australian voting, but not all of them, as required by the previous law.
Although the Secretary of State initially recommended that a special meeting of the city be held to confirm the legitimacy of the greater part of the Selectboard, it was ultimately agreeing that Selectboard could confirm its own legitimacy it made in December.
By accepting this new law, the state ratified for three decades in the elections in Hyde Park and legitimized the process through which they were being held.
“Section two in the law waved the legislative magic wand and said:” If you did not obey the law without worrying. Everything is fine, you will not fall into any problems or something, but just to move forward, this is the way to follow it more clearly, “Boydon said.
Boydon said the Commission found that a major problem behind the Australian voting process for many cities in Vermont was the lack of an urban charter and therefore the lack of a legal document outlining how the vote was held, which led to a non -compliance in the implementation of voting with Vote. Many cities use a mixture of voting in Australian voting, as Hyde Park did, but they have a language in the city charter that legitimizes it.
Despite the adoption of the law, it returns to the drawing board for Hyde Park, where residents will choose all officers on the floor floor of the city this year and decide whether the Australian newsletter should be restored for some city officers, all urban officers or yes They replace the granting tradition for the day of the city meeting entirely.