elected and i would be grateful to return to the senate or go to mass thank you very much we move on to our next opening statement from debbie ingram from willesden thank you matt and thanks very much to channel seventeen for sponsoring this forum i'm r for reelection because i want to work hard to try to improve the lives of my constituents and all vermonters i feel that i've made a great contribution in my first term to the senate's work in doing just that and i very much appreciate the voters giving me the opportunity to do that again for the next two years i along with being a senator i am also the lead organizer for a faith based community organizing projects and have been doing that for the last eleven years  and that gives me the opportunity to use grassroots methodology to talk to every day vermonters about the issues that are affecting them and their families and through that i've been able to not only understand what those issues but do research on how to change them and how to fix this to make change which i think is extremely important for for a legislators understand and those issues have been around affordable housing and homelessness around economic dignity health care reform criminal justice reform education and transportation and i bring all of that experience and knowledge to my role in the senate and i have been very privileged to be on the help them well for committee and the education committee  this passed by am and have introduced legislation in both those arenas but also been part of the democratic team that has passed the legislation that him refer to it has really been a progressive agenda and has  for and county state senator well my name is finished abby i am a junior now at mt mansfield high school i'm running to show people especially young people that what goes on over town what goes on in their county what goes on in their state is is accessible to them in a way that they might not have thought it was we have on presidential elections fifty percent turnout on average and on off year elections like this one much lower than that and i think that's because people feel very separated from the system and i think that by running and by talking to people i know you know eighteen year olds to thirty year old young people we can build voters who are engaged in who feel that they can take what happens in their community into their own hands and i want to show people especially by running people might already be more involved people who do vote that you can take it a step further you don't need to be a career politician to gather some signatures and to get up on a forum like this and talk about the issues that matter to you i want to expand the number of voices that people here and i'm just very proud to be one of those voices for good from jericho thank you very much we'll move now into a question and answer period here with our candidates we ha list of questions that we formulated however we do invite you the viewer to dial and ask questions directly of these candidates the number again is eight six two three nine six six tim will begin with you as president pro tem of the senate you've had what you term a very successful by any i'm looking ahead what are your priorities for the upcoming by any well i think it's always hard when you're someone who's a generalist and have so many interests to limit it limit the numbers but i think the first  order of business in my opinion is to raise the minimum wage this past year we proposed and passed through the legislature a minimum wage increase of four dollars and fifty cents over six years it would have improved the economic well being of tens of thousands of my honors who are doing everything society asked of them going to work unfortunately our governor is philosophically opposed to that increase and effectively has made life less affordable for those tens of thousands of people we have great strides still to make on fighting climate change i think we have put a lot of emphasis on renewable energies in the past and we need to continue to do that and now we really need to shift focus to the transportation sector where roughly half of our emission contributions are happening and i don't think we've spent enough time and energy focused on that and then one last piece and this might seem a little strange to describe as a priority this is a personal priority in the sense that i believe we should have four year terms for the vermont governor and i believe that when we have governors who have a two year term by the time they've got their first year under their belt there are ready campaigning for the second year in witnessing governor phil scott in his proposals many of them really had the hallmark of someone who already had to go into campaign mode to start thinking about a reelection if someone has four years they can propose bold solutions to whatever the problem is and then it gives them enough time to ride out the early bumps and then see if the policies make sense to the people of vermont when you have only two year terms you get very incremental approaches and it's bipartisan this is not a to pick just on governor scott governors of both major political parties have suffered i believe by two year terms and i think in some way a four year term for governor might be the single most important policy we can do to affect all the other policies that people care so much about it for your term for governor debbie renewable energy and minimum wage to me as said those are his priorities what about yours well my top priority would also be raising the minimum wage agree that that is the single most important thing that we can do to make vermont more affordable the governor claims that he wants to you know that's his top issue but the best way to do that is to try to give some relief to so many of our vermont for you have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet and they are not sure our economy has been growing that they are not really sharing in that growth and also even for our businesses i know there's a lot of concern about our small businesses but for one thing the increase in the wage would be gradual over time so it would give businesses time to adjust but would also create new consumers for those businesses if people are have enough money to be able to buy vermont goods and services then it's also good for the businesses and our joint physical office estimated that two hundred forty million dollars would be infused into the vermont economy if we raise the wage so i agree with that as a priority my interest is also in in health care and i particularly interested in making sure that we continue to move towards a universal primary care system which we passed legislation that would study that and try to get the parties together to come up with ideas about how we can move that forward and also the importation of prescription drugs which actually senator ash let on as well i think we need to make sure that that moves forward because that would lower our prescription and do they dovetail with what you've heard here this evening yeah i'd like to start by commending a lot of what they talked about the rage the rather raise of the minimum wage i think is a huge step forward in working towards importing those drugs and  making it so everyone is health care is incredibly important if i could bring attention to probably the first piece of legislation i would like to see worked on i think people are all over the country are looking for electoral reform and that comes with removing money from politics but i think people are frustrated in general with a perceived lack of listening that goes on in the two parties we have and the solution that i would propose to that is switching from a voting system of first past the post to an instant runoff voting system like they're pursuing in maine right now and what that will do is that will allow more local candidates candidates perhaps without as much name recognition to get onto the ballot really to offer their ideas for those not familiar with instant runoff voting you look at your slate of candidates you rank them in order of how much you like them and then all the votes are tallied the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and all of the votes they got go to their voters second choices and that way you can't you're not worried about voting for i like this person more but this person has more of a chance of winning and i don't want this other person to win a vote for who you like trying to eliminate strategic voting and i think that will alleviate a lot of what people think is an undue amount of control that parties have that's my wedge issue of course i'm going to actually just throw to these two sitting senators what are your thoughts on a instant runoff voting well i've supported instant runoff voting historically and in burlington we actually had the experience of insert run of voting into mary's races and the first one went very smoothly and i think people enjoyed the fact that they eliminated the strategic voting that finn describes and they felt they could vote for the person they wanted to win the most and rather than thinking about which candidates going to spoil the outcome of events and maybe elect the person i like the least the second time around with instant runoff voting there was some dissatisfaction in burlington and as a result burlington voters decided to do away with it and so in some ways it was a setback for instant runoff voting in vermont but i think as finn points out in the state of maine where it is now been put in place i think if we see maine voters enjoy instant runoff voting after several cycles i think that it will really raise the issue here in vermont so that we can increase the diversity of candidates without fear of you know choosing the least we're candidate which has been a problem in the past having your thoughts on the instant runoff voting yes i agree that it's a good idea i also remember when it was  also in just making it kind of a fairer process if you have a have a runoff at all because what often happens is you know a lot of people come out for the first vote and then second time around for if there is a runoff and you know front office necessary you have about you might have a whole different set of people so i think you know what motivates everyone to try to come out the first time and i think would help increase voter participation as well great issues and thanks for bringing it up  had talked about health care as being one of your main priorities here and i want to kind of come back to that you're very much in favor of all payer how do we move forward as a state trying to contain costs with an elderly population i magine it's not an easy fix when you're grappling how to how to solve it across all economic spectrum so talk about your commitment to this   one of the key things the reason i brought up primary care is that if we could invest more there's been evidence in other states and other countries the if you can increase the percentage of health care spending from right now in vermont it's about six or seven percent on primary care if you can increase the percentage of the pie to about twenty percent and you can actually save costs over the long and long term and then of course also the idea is for us to p our resources and to provide primary care through an assessment or a kind of tax or fee that can be levelled more equitably than having people's pay premiums through a variety of different ways it's  burden on our businesses that they try to provide health insurance for their employees and so i think it would be a great incentive to for businesses to come to the state if we could help to figure this out and  prime you know increasing spending in primary care has a lot of advantages and i think it's also a step towards universal care in general you know the bernie sanders idea of medicare for all is really where the where we should be heading whether one state can do that by itself is still the jury story still out on that i would like to see that at the national level but i do think that vermont can lead the way and we can continue to to move in that direction does it have to happen on such a small state first in order for it to be rolled out on a national level i mean we often hear that when it works in a small microcosm then  program can come from that as an example romney care for the state of massachusetts and how that was rolled out as obamacare is that what has to happen here well i think that it is a good it's a fertile ground we've seen that historically that works well in canada for instance they started incest catch one which has a smaller population than many of the other provinces and then it spread spread from there we have a good relationship with our physicians and we also have the advantage in a small place like vermont a being able to bring all the players to the table you know as a as i sat on the health and welfare committee we routinely had people from the insurance both insurance companies from you know from our administration of medicaid medicare from polarization that they do in larger places right feeling in your at the younger end of the insurance spectrum health care spectrum if you were just entering into the marketplace so to speak what are your thoughts about the challenges that are facing lawmakers to try to address affordable health care for all of us i mean i think there are plenty of challenges that are faced in terms of just uncertainty or just trying to think of what solution works the best person personally i'm most partial to a single payer system i'm of the philosophy that if you're you're working with companies at some point along the line you're paying somebody to make a profit and i don't think there needs to be for profit business and the the process of trying to keep people healthy i think vermont absolutely can be a leader to try to bring this to the national level but i also think that in that there's the question of do we want to wait do we want to keep having all the problems that we see from people not having access to health care being afraid to to get health care and that's not what i want for our state i want as soon as possible people when they have health issues to be able to go to their doctor and to try to resolve those and to to make our state healthier i think if we spend proactively and make sure that people are are healthy before hand and are not obviously all pear model was a big push for your party do you personally feel that unshackling business from providing health care to its employees dissolution in a sense well it's proven to be the solution in every other major nation on earth the us is an outlier amongst sophisticated countries in that it does not provide a public universal health care program of some type there are many different shades and gradations of a universal health care platform from country to country i think many businesses would love to get out of the health care business  most people don't go into manufacturing or into some type of service so that they can also spend a quarter of their time working on health care benefits and each year negotiating with health insurers trying to get the best deal when it's more like a casino situation where the house always wins and you're always forking over more money in just to put it in perspective from the early two thousand to today total health care spending in from out one up from two billion dollars to six billion dollars so we're talking a huge growth in health care spending that it warps the amount of growth in spending on general government the university of vermont medical centers total budget and this includes some federal funds i should be clear about that is about one point three billion dollars in the states entire general fund is one point six billion dollars so we're starting to get on the the place where health care spending is literally consuming everything in its path the earlier attempt at single payer and governor shumlin deserves a lot of credit for pushing as far as he could to see if that could work in a small state like vermont with the challenges we would face has now been replaced by the so called all payer model and the all pair model i'm guessing if i polled one hundred normal people like maybe one would know what that means but basically it's trying to get all the people who administer health insurance in the state of vermont public and private payers meaning medicaid medicare blue cross and b p to pay for outcomes rather than a fee for service so that it removes the incentive to keep treating people over and over and over again and keep billing one by one instead they would get a block payment and be told to manage the health of that population if this effort is successful that really could slow the growth in health care spending that we've seen the jury is still out these are new models they have not been tested before we're not the only state pursuing such a initiative so we will be able to borrow ideas from others but it really is the budgetary challenge of our time from a public sector point of view because when people worry about how much we've had to cut from schools the fort ability of higher education cleaning up the environment you name the area that people feel we do not have enough resources being committed health care is the reason it is consumed i call it the blob it's consuming everything in its path so we have to have to do better it will move on to a questions from you you're very involved in trying to motivate a certain population to get out  and be involved can you speak a little bit more about that the challenge that you face and sort of the it just seems this it just continues i mean it's something that when i was in high school at your age i was facing the same  issue apathy among voters yeah apas apathy among voters is a big thing a lot of people see it as they see all of the fighting that goes on in the litigation that goes on and they think it's  so much easier to be someone who is neutral on this someone who doesn't take a position someone who's a political and what i what i want to show people is that being a political is a position it's saying that you agree with the status quo and that it doesn't need changing and what i want to show people is that if you look at the problems that you seen you're commuting in society it's all politics everything is politics politics is a business of solving problems and if you you do your research and you pay attention and you talk to people you can be part of solving those problems and that's what i want people to be i want people to be problem solvers and i want people to get out and time in one on a on a personal level you know i just don't know as an example you know or the school system in the state of vermont do you feel that they are actively supporting young people to find a voice to be engaged in politics and what's going on around them i absolutely do i'm incredibly proud of the school that i go to when i first decided to run and i was in the middle of platen two and i brought it up with my teacher mr knox is to shout out if he's watching and and he didn't say oh that's dumb or whatever he actually said you know look it up maybe you could and and when i did he was the first signature on my my petition of candidacy and i've had encouragement from him and i've had that encouragement from other staff members we have a group at my school called class we meet during lunch and we really hash out issues and we we talk about it there are so many it least m m u there are so many opportunities to be engaged and there's so much encouragement from the school to to being engaged and to really think of yourself as an actor within your community and i just and so proud of my school for that very good tim i want to bring that to you and and kind of turned it into education talk about the state of education currently and what you see the challenges are facing the state and students  well i think since a highlight something that is often overlooked which is that we have fantastic public schools there is frequently a frustration people feel with the way we pay for schools property tax based largely they mistake that for disfavoring the public education that's actually being delivered in the great teachers we have been in the engage students so it's very heartening to hear the positivity that's being expressed about him you know and i know that's also true of many of the schools not only ranch and county but around the state but one of the things that we've we'll we often hear about is we there's this emphasis on the way schools are paid for but not what's driving the costs in our schools and i think if we were to step back into the late ninety's early two thousand when the way we pay for our schools was first developed would see that virtually all the spending was on teachers books computers lab equipment things that you consider direct instructional costs now fast forward to two thousand and eighteen in many super tendence of supervisory unions will say that there instructional spending has actually been going down even though their budgets going up and you say well ok what explains that well what explains it is that school districts are being forced to meet the need the human needs the human services needs of so many kids coming from very challenged households and that costs money so the growth of psychologists social workers behavioral intervention is these positions which may have been in the schools in the old days but not in the numbers they are today and so that human service spending has been on the backs of property tax payers and our public school system and so one of the things i am determined to do is really make clear to the public that when they send in that education payment they're really paying for two things they're paying for the direct education of the k through twelve system and they're paying for all of these human services needs the opi a challenge all these problems that are in communities that the student brings into the schools and the districts rightfully know that if they don't try and meet the kids needs right where they are they're not going to learn anything while they're there so that to me is the next frontier is really getting a handle on how we meet these human service needs so that it's not all falling on the back of property tax payers so to that debbie i'm going to kind of extrapolate a little bit further on this how does immigration impact the cost of education here in the state burlington isn't a sanctuary city bringing in immigrants trying to seek a better life how does that directly impact then the bottom line when tim is said here we're having to provide all these human services outside of just general k through twelve book learning education well it is true that our immigrants have contributed to the wealth of languages that are spoken that and it with the burlington schools and my other job  so there are there are new positions like homeschool liaison's that to people who don't speak english as their first language and there are some additional costs but but i think that it's important to remember that our immigrants pay their taxes like everybody else does and so they're paying also for the services that they get and their presence and their their culture and their work ethic a point as you said with property taxes being on the hook for so much of it nobody's going to be happy it doesn't seem like anyone is happy with any solutions can you sort of give us an overview of what you'd like to see change in the funding of education well and what you've proposed and perhaps how you've been stymied well the for i think the best way to make as many people happy as possible is to manage the expenses more effectively and we have passed several bills and debbie's been instrumental  in the most recent one which is reforming the way our special education services are paid for that is a fast growing line item in many school district budgets we passed act forty six which has been somewhat controversial throughout the state but is bringing school districts together in a larger organization so they can better manage their facilities and personnel and if you can continue to deliver high quality public education but you're able to spend in a more efficient manner it means that everyone receives the tax relief and tax benefit that comes with it so that's in my opinion the most important thing in terms of how the funding system works i think there are really two things one is that as i like to say sometimes the more you screw with something the more screwed up it  gets we have an education funding system which every year some legislators prevail at the end of the legislative session and makes like tweaks each time you do a slight tweak on a one point six billion dollar endeavor it causes lots of problems downstream and we've got so many patches  funding system now that each time you do one it's sort of disrupts the whole system so i think in the future if we can find a way to move to another source of revenue more towards income versus property would be one path and we've made some progress in that front and we hope in fact that some of the recent legislation i'm amazed to say this that the supreme court one that has not been issuing rulings i'm very happy with in one regard has done something positive with online sales allowing states to collect the sales tax that would be due but most people don't pay that money flows right into our education fund and therefore would reduce the pressure on other sources of revenue her well one of the things i have learned in serving on the education committee is that previous legislative bleachers have done a good job i think in just what tim was talking about trying to make delivery more efficient and encouraging our local school districts to consolidate and that's what ak forty six did and we made some changes to it since i was service last by any of as well to and we went around actually visited different school districts and listened to school board members and administrators and made some tweaks and based on what they told us to be as responsive as possible but i think over time that we've already seen that there has been savings of dollars we've gone from over two hundred fifty school districts down to around one hundred now so we've definitely made a lot of consolidation and that will over time can contribute even more savings but also it preserves something i think is very important and that's local control and we need to keep that in mind as well which you know with people you know people i understand i take are pretty taxes too you know we all do it's it can be frustrating sometimes when you see or your taxes go up but but we also want to be able to have that control locally we want to be able to go to our town meetings and hear from our administrators and our school boards and then decide make decisions based on you know our kids and that's something that the legislature is really committed to which we are not seeing from from the governor or man you know we've been we've been continuing to be at loggerheads about that but you know you have all you were interested in was you know just cutting the bottom line and not worrying about who makes the decisions or really necessarily maybe the quality of the education for the kids you could just you know we could just have four school districts or one school is recently like that just cut it for you know top down but we're trying the legislature is trying really hard  i think the what's important to start off conversations about school funding and trying to make sure that we save money is that i i don't believe that the we should cut costs at the student level that the money that we spend on like tim said the individual resources the teachers the computers that's an investment and we reap the benefits of that as a society students finish going through that i think that consolidating counties and trying to eliminate some of the administrative costs that we we have associated with smaller school address school districts is a good step that we could take i think it's important to retain local control but i don't think that should come at the expense of red tape and of costs related to that but i think the most important i think what we are we have to reimagine what school means school is schools should be the center of communities it should be more than just a place that you send your kids to be a facility that you're able to use a place that feeds people who are able to be fed especially  kids making sure that we're not that we're viewing it as something as part of a larger system to make sure that kids stay supported and as long as i think we're transparent about how we spend that money and we view it as an investment rather than something that we just have to get it out of the way then we can be we can be honest with how we're doing it or i can just jump in on it as well i mean he spoke a little bit to loggerheads with the governor and fins talking about the on the ground experience and the richness that comes with having teachers who were happy to be working there and invested in their students and we face proposals this year which are were were kind of shocking proposals to do mandatory teacher and staff cuts at every school in the state virtually the governor floated that for about two days and it was very unpopular he walked that back but then he still said we're going to magically save the same amount of money but it wouldn't be mandatory anymore so he never really backed off of the mandatory headcount cut at every school the problem is at m m u that might mean that for no good reason it's a social studies teacher who everyone really likes that's the first one to go at another school it might be the science teacher that everyone thinks is the best teacher in the school it might be a support staff person who is really a tremendous added value to the student experience and on issue after issue what we found was there was a lot of red meat throwing about property taxes and we all get the frustration about property taxes but what we started to really pick up on was really that the goal was really it wasn't really a discussion about property taxes at a certain point it was based a appeared to be a strategy to cut deeply into our public schools for reasons best explained by those who are making the proposals but one of the things you know the legislature you often come back at the end of the session and say you know what do we achieve this year and you think about positive things things that passed that didn't exist before new policies well this year one of the most important things we did was stopped many of the governors and the public education proposals in passing we're going to just do one more question before we wrap up with final closing statements and i want to ask each of you if you think the citizens of the state of vermont are well served by its government is the state meeting the needs of its of its constituent jim well that's a small question you know i think it's a hard question to answer because every vermonter is experience something unique to him or herself and i think that there are things that government does well it educates our kids very well we're one of the top ranked public school systems in america and hopefully we keep it that way we have provided health insurance coverage to more a greater percentage of our population than virtually any other state in america barring maybe massachusetts and one or two others that doesn't mean it's affordable to all those people who have coverage but we've done a good job having at least basic coverage for burton ninety six or so percent of vermonters which i think is a big accomplishment and we have attempted to address childhood poverty in a whole variety of ways which i think are very commendable are we doing enough to deal with issues of poverty the answer is no and i think that's why we both spoke highly of increasing the minimum wage and other economic strategies on the opiate front where we have seen just a devastating crisis throughout the state a crisis throughout america and as much as we wish we had done even more faster and had more tools on the table to meet more people's needs what's what's remarkable and sad is that other states consider us one of the two or three shining examples nationally for comprehensive strategies to fight the opi of crisis so i don't think any of us should be satisfied at any point that we're meeting the needs of vermonters because it's essentially a never ending journey to keep doing a better job meeting people's needs i am most worried at this time about young people from poor families young people who have no job connections they're not learning some of the skills that they'll need either in education or the workforce they're not learning it at home they don't have the resources to get it from other people their families are afflicted sometimes by substance or mental health crises and that population is the future of vermont and so to me that's one of the read something to reemphasize when we go back among people or those of us who are lucky enough to get elected is we need to really revisit that population and make sure we're doing right by them but the short story is we do a lot of great things in vermont through the public sector working with the private and nonprofit sectors but of course there's a just so much more to do are we meeting the needs of vermonters well in the materials the actually sent us beforehand public assets in city was was mentioned and examining the the state budget numbers making that whole process more transparent and actually the organization that i direct we partnered with public assets institute about this it's a kind of wanky thing called the current services budget which the legislature has been trying to encourage the administration to to really present those numbers that it would be the numbers that would represent what it what if we fully met all of the commitments that we have made in statute to certain programs and what would those numbers be not just the numbers that the administration sort of passes along you know us during budget season so we we're still trying to get a little better information about where we're where there are gaps in some of our programs our social service programs especially so i mean the answer to that is you know where are you there's always more to be we're not we're not meeting the needs completely but i do want to say that i think you know other states look to vermont as a leader in so many areas  d you know we're we're very frequently named as you know one of the best places to live and that's not for a reason and i also think it's important for us to really face and face who actually lives here and not wish that other people lived here i get a little frustrated with the political rhetoric you know always wanting to bring in different kinds of people and not governing the people who actually live here and being satisfied with the reminders that we have i love the  have and i think that we need to keep working to meet their needs and listening to them on the ground but not have this kind of pie in the sky thing about being some other state we're running short on time so i'll ask you to keep your response brief before we do closing comments but your thoughts on are we meeting the needs reminders from you well i am on a personal level i'm constantly struck by how proud i am to live in vermont to be in vermont and to go to school here and i think education wise we are in so many ways a leader on how we handle that and i think we're a leader on how we handle so many issues but i never want to be content being a leader on an issue that i don't think is solved yet so i think vermont does a very good job of serving the people who live here but we always need to strive to serve them better we need to handle the opioid epidemic better even if we already if we're leading on that we can continue to lead better on it we need to solve health care we need to solve poverty and it's i'm listing off a laundry list of items but you we never can rest on what we've accomplished we always have to push forward and i think we're doing a good job of that for me and thank you so much at this time alas for closing statements we are running short on time so if we could ask for a thirty to forty five second closing statement from you each of the candidates that would be fun tim will start with you well thank you again for having us and thank you for viewing this at home and running for reelection to th date senate largely because on issue after issue there is so much more progress to make whether it's bringing down health care costs delivering a great public education meeting the challenge of the opiate crisis throughout the state making college more affordable protecting the environment fighting climate change just on issue after issue there's so much more work to be done i'm someone who does not find it acceptable for people to just trash the government the government is here to work with the private and nonprofit sectors and i believe in vermont we do that well and as the leader of the senate i feel especially proud we've passed budgets that grew very reasonably within our means made major investments in workforce development cleaning up the environment meeting human needs and so many other things so i would be particularly grateful to return to the senate and keep keep making progress on all those areas thank you debbie in your closing statement i like to ask folks to vote for me actually in the primary on the fourteenth you can go to the polls now i have felt a great honor and privilege to to serve my first term and i would ask that you given the opportunity to continue to work on the issues that vermonters care about and that i care about very deeply i am a people person and i have a heart for justice and have worked on that for for many years now and i would love to be able to go back to the state house and continue to work for my constituents good and finian your closing comments and closing statements ok well of course i'm going to ask people to vote for me because that's i'm up here but more than that i want to ask people to vote in general vote in this election vote next election vote every single election if i've encouraged people to think more deeply about the issues to maybe think about running and to vote then if one person has do that then i think i've succeeded in what i set out to do and i just want to say thank you so much for the opportunity and look out for me and i'm always i mean trying to make change very good cindy and it's a pleasure i was sharing the stage with you thank you so much and thank you to both our candidates as well running for reelection we wish them all best of luck a reminder that the primary is tuesday august fourteenth general election is less than a month away four months away  rather tuesday so november sixth is our date of election so a reminder if you have not registered to vote in the state of vermont you can register all the way up to including election day matt kelly for all of us here at channel seventeen we thank you for watching