Election day

No fraud here

I had the privilege on Tuesday of spending 14 hours as an Election Judge for the St. Louis County municipal election. St. Louis County has an incredible voting system that allows any resident to vote at any polling place and there were over 200 of them across the county. Each voter presents an ID or the sample ballot that every registered voter receives, has the bar code scanned or their address manually inputted and gets a uniquely printed and coded ballot specific to their place of residence. After filling out the ballot in a private area, the voter inserts it into a scanner that reads and records the vote and then drops the ballot into a locked receptacle. At no time does any poll worker see the voter’s choices and, because the scanner record is internal to the equipment, the totals are sealed until the entire polling place’s set of equipment is picked up after the polls close. My partner and I processed voters from 8 different precincts and there were no issues at all. The system allows voters whose address has changed to update the information on the spot and then vote and, if anyone has already voted, either absentee or in another polling place, the system tells us that too. While any system can be hacked somehow, it’s difficult to see how this could be more secure. The attitude of the County Clerk’s office team is “find a way to let them vote” including the use of provisional ballots if needed that are then verified by teams of election officials.

It's easy to become jaded after all the discussion of vote fraud, election stealing, and other shenanigans but, if you have doubts about the system where you are, I strongly recommend that you invest a few days in training and working at a polling place to see just how dedicated the people involved are and all the steps that would have to be taken in order to change even one person’s vote, let alone enough to alter the outcome of a county or city election, let alone a state or national ballot. It’s time we all, in both parties, left off the grandstanding and hate mongering and got back to the business of maintaining and strengthening our system of government so that we can continue the quest for equality under the law, freedom to live and pursue happiness and the general welfare of everyone who lives here. I’d be very surprised to find out that any of the politicos or media actors who’ve spent so much time talking about stolen elections even have a clue about how the system works; if they did, they wouldn’t talk that way or they’d be so embarrassed they’d go find another occupation.