MIDDLESEX, Vt. (WCAX) – With a week left until Election Day, top officials say everyone should make a plan to vote. More than 150,000 Vermonters — or about a third of registered voters — have already cast their ballots.

At Middlesex City Hall, City Clerk Sarah Merriman has been collecting ballots from about 1,400 registered voters in the city for weeks.

“It needs to be completed with your signature, your name on it and the date,” she explained, showing one of the ballots that had been returned early in a sealed envelope.

Merriman then enters voters’ ballots into a statewide system, which prevents them from also voting in person on Election Day. “Then I take the ballot – still in the signature envelope, still sealed – and take it to our safe and deposit it in a locked ballot box,” she said.

The ballots will remain there until they are tabulated and reported. “That will print a complete report with the zero report, starting as zero, and then we have the counts for all the races,” Merriman said.

If you haven’t mailed your ballot, it’s too late to mail it in. Instead, you should put it in a mailbox at your local town hall or take it to the polls on election day.

“If you vote on Election Day, bring your own ballot,” said Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas. And if you don’t bring it, you’ll have to sign an affidavit promising that you haven’t voted yet.

State election officials are also raising concerns about a growing trend of threatening behavior and violence toward poll workers and election officials that they say even Vermont is not immune to. In an effort to lower the political temperature, Republican Gov. Phil Scott and Democrat Copeland Hanzas on Tuesday urged Vermonters to put aside partisan politics and engage with each other and their communities.

“By giving back, we can turn the tide, rebuild our sense of community, feel more connected to our neighbors and feel part of something bigger than ourselves,” said Scott. He says state police are preparing for a number of possible scenarios on Election Day, from power outages to violence at the polls.

Back in Middlesex, Merriman says they will go through absentee ballots on Monday before a busy day begins on Tuesday. “Your neighbors and elected officials are leading this process. Nobody has an agenda, we just want efficient and accurate elections,” she said.

Voters can also track the progress of their voting rounds on the My Voters page of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

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