Vermont political candidates are flouting campaign finance laws, report finds
Vermont Public |
By
Peter Hirschfeld
Published July 23, 2026 at 5:00 AM EDT
Abagael Giles
/
Vermont Public
One in five candidates seeking public office this year have failed to comply with Vermont’s campaign finance laws, according to a first-of-its-kind report issued by the Vermont Secretary of State
Vermont law requires candidates for state, county and municipal offices to disclose theying they’ve raised or spent less than $500
Of the 422 candidates expected to appear on a ballot in the August primary or November general election, 337 have fulfilled that requirement
Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas compiled those findings, as well as the names of the offenders, in the recently released Campaign Finance Transparency Report. She said this week that campaign finance laws exist “so that Vermonters can understand where money is factoring into political races.”
“People have a sense that there’s a difference between a candidate who is funded by a wide array of small-dollar donors versus a candidate who may raise the same amount through one or two donors,” Copeland Hanzas said. “And I think there’s a sense from voters that if you funded your campaign on a large amount of money from a particular entity or a handful of entities that you might be beholden to them, as opposed to being beholden to the voters that elected you.”
Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said voters are right to assume that political contributions influence decisions made by elected officials
“I think that’s particularly true with corporations or out-of-state donors that don’t have necessarily the direct stake in just kind of good government here in Vermont,” he said. “They probably want something for that contribution, and it’s important for voters to have access to information about who’s seeking to have access to that kind of influence.”
Campaign finance compliance rates vary across the types of office candidates are seeking this year — 97% of candidates for the Vermont Senate, for example, have filed their required reports, while fewer than 70% of people seeking county offices have done so
“I think that we have made it about as easy as it could possibly be for people to do what is required of them.”
Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont secretary of state
Copeland Hanzas said her office has contacted every candidate who failed to report by the July 1 deadline. She said her staff hosts regular office hours for candidates who need help registering in the system or understanding what they need to file
“I think that we have made it about as easy as it could possibly be for people to do what is required of them,” Copeland Hanzas said
Enforcing Vermont’s civil campaign finance laws, which carry a maximum fine of $10,000 per violation, falls to the office of the Vermont Attorney General. Leslie Welts, chief of the general counsel of the Administrative Law Division, said the office initiates an investigation only after a member of the public files a complaint
In most instances of noncompliance, she said, candidates are eager to fix the violation voluntarily. The state has conducted 94 campaign finance investigations since 2023, eight of which resulted in financial sanctions
“We never jump to the conclusion that it’s malicious. We always give someone a chance to explain what happened and typically find that people are trying to comply with the law,” Welts said. “Other times they don’t want to cooperate with us, and if that happens we have some investigative tools we can use.”
Burns said voters can also impose a “political price” for candidates that refuse to comply with the law
“The voters may look unkindly on somebody who’s just ignoring a state requirement like this,” he said
