Vermont

Vermont has a plural executive of six statewide elected officials: the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the State Treasurer, and the State Auditor. The Governor and Lieutenant Governor are elected separately rather than as a ticket, so the two can come from different parties — a frequent occurrence in Vermont — and the Lieutenant Governor presides over the State Senate.

All of these officers serve two-year terms, matching the Governor’s, so the entire elected executive faces voters every two years. The Governor appoints the heads of the executive agencies that aren’t separately elected. One historical curiosity: if no candidate for governor wins an outright majority of the vote, the Legislature — not a runoff — chooses the winner, a holdover that has occasionally decided close races.

The Vermont General Assembly is bicameral: a 30-seat State Senate and a 150-seat House of Representatives, with all members serving two-year terms and no term limits. It is a part-time, citizen legislature — members are paid a weekly rate only while in session — so legislators are farmers, teachers, retirees, and small-business owners who go home when the session ends.

The General Assembly convenes each January and typically adjourns by spring, with no hard constitutional cap on length. Vermont’s civic life is famously rooted below the state level in the town meeting, where on "Town Meeting Day" each March residents gather in person to vote directly on local budgets and questions — a form of pure participatory democracy that predates the state and still functions today.

A bill is introduced, referred to committee, and — if it advances — voted on the floor of each chamber, with differences reconciled before final passage. The Governor can sign a bill, veto it, or let it become law. Vermont’s governor has no line-item veto, so a bill — including the budget — must be accepted or rejected whole, and because the Governor serves only two years, the veto and the two-thirds override are recurring features of a fast-moving political cycle.

Vermont is distinctive for what its constitution leaves out: it is the only state with no formal requirement to balance the budget. In practice Vermont balances its budget through statute and long-standing political norms rather than a constitutional command, making it the lone exception to a rule every other state writes into its fundamental law. Vermont also has no statewide citizen initiative — direct lawmaking by citizens happens at town meetings, not on a statewide ballot.

The Governor appoints the heads of the non-elected agencies, proposes the budget, can call special sessions, holds emergency powers, and holds the clemency power. But the office is constrained in distinctive ways: the two-year term means a governor is almost always campaigning, there is no line-item veto, and the separately elected Lieutenant Governor and other officers can be political rivals from another party.

The defining structural feature is less about a single power than about pace and restraint: short terms, a part-time citizen Legislature, town-meeting democracy below the state, and a budget kept balanced by norm rather than by constitutional mandate. The main internal checks are the five other independently elected statewide officers and the two-thirds legislative override.

Vermont uses a blend of appointment and legislative retention. The Governor appoints judges from a nominating board’s slate, the State Senate confirms, and then — distinctively — the General Assembly itself votes periodically on whether to retain each judge, rather than sending retention to the voters. The Vermont Supreme Court sits at the top, above the trial-level Superior Court and its divisions. Having the Legislature decide judicial retention is unusual and reflects Vermont’s tradition of legislative involvement across the branches.