Vermont’s secretary of state says it could get more difficult to keep elections secure because of recent federal funding cuts and other policy changes backed by the Trump administration that have limited cybersecurity information-sharing between states.
From 2022 to 2024, Vermont received a $1 million grant each year under decades-old federal legislation called the Help America Vote Act. That money helped pay for long overdue upgrades to the software the state uses to run elections and keep voter data safe, according to Sarah Copeland Hanzas, the secretary, among other initiatives.
But for 2025, Congress reduced Vermont’s award to $272,000. That left a gap the secretary’s office worries the state won’t be able to fill going forward, if federal support continues to waver.
“It appears that we are on our own for now,” Copeland Hanzas, who’s a Democrat, told Vermont’s House Appropriations Committee last week.
The secretary wasn’t sure, as of Wednesday, how much Vermont would receive for election security under this year’s slate of Help America Vote Act grants. She said a larger award is more important for 2026 than 2025 because it’s an election year.
Still, the uncertainty has led her office to ask Vermont legislators, who control its budget, to allocate more state money for election security this year in the feds’ place. (The state already has to provide some matching funds to “draw down” federal grant dollars.) In its budget request for the 2027 fiscal year, which starts in July, the office is asking for a $650,000 infusion from the state’s general fund to make up for most, though not all, of the roughly $725,000 drop in federal grant support between 2024 and 2025.
It’s far from certain state lawmakers will approve that money in a year when numerous other state-run programs are facing existing or planned federal cuts. For instance, the state already spent about $6.5 million last fall to make sure tens of thousands of people did not lose access to nutritional benefits during the federal government shutdown.
Rep. Robin Scheu, D-Middlebury, chairs the state budget-writing House Appropriations Committee. She said on Wednesday it was too early to say whether her committee would approve the secretary of state’s request. But she acknowledged that security is a critical need.
“Election security is one of the most important things that we can do, and we should be doing, in government,” Scheu said in an interview. “So, we’ll certainly be looking for ways to see what we can do to help them out.”
The secretary’s office has had other reasons to be concerned about slouching federal support for longstanding election security efforts since President Donald Trump took office a second time.
Last year, Copeland Hanzas noted, the Trump administration halted funding for a nationwide system that helps state and local governments share details with one another on cyberattacks against their voting systems. The system is called the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. At the time, an administration spokesperson told Votebeat that the system, and others like it, “no longer supports” the federal government’s priorities.
In the absence of federal support, states now have to pay for access to the center’s information, Copeland Hanzas said, similar to a subscription model. That’s an additional cost on her office’s bottom line, she said. But she also noted there have been far fewer state and local governments participating, likely because of that cost — so there is less information being shared overall.
“We are no longer protected to the extent that we were before,” she said in an interview. “Now, it’s catch-as-catch-can.”
She also pointed to how the Trump administration has wound down many of the election integrity initiatives led, for the better part of the past decade, by the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. For instance, it’s been unclear whether the agency is continuing to offer — or fund — physical security assessments at polling stations around Vermont and other states, Copeland Hanzas said.
To be sure, Trump and his allies in Congress are pushing for other changes they’ve argued will make the country’s elections safer. Trump issued a sweeping executive order on elections near the start of his term last year, and a number of its provisions are included in a bill, called the SAVE America Act, that has since passed the U.S. House.
The House approved an updated version of the legislation Wednesday, though it’s unlikely to advance in the U.S. Senate, where it currently lacks enough support from Republicans to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Among other measures, the bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and require photo ID at the ballot box. Trump and his GOP allies argue that these changes would help combat voter fraud.
Democrats have charged that the bill would make it harder for many Americans to vote, however, because many people do not have easy access to documents that prove their citizenship. For Vermont’s top election officials, the provisions in the bill are “just non-starters,” Copeland Hanzas said.
The secretary described what she sees as a growing distinction between political leaders who want as many people to vote as possible and those who want to restrict voting access.
She noted that last year’s Help America Vote Act grant came with a new stipulation attached, at the Trump administration’s direction, stating Vermont could not use the funding for any election integrity work that included, she said, “illegal DEI activities.”
Copeland Hanzas said her office complies with “all state and federal laws” — including those designed to promote diversity, equity or inclusion — and wrote back to the administration saying as much. But she said she sees “inclusion,” specifically, as a key part of her office’s work.
“So, I would argue that we should be required to have DEI as a part of our election system,” she said. “Because every eligible American should be able to cast a ballot.”
This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.