I just want to send a shout out to Cris Watkins and our Louisa Elections Office. I attended the informative presentation there on September19 entitled “Election Law and Guidelines for Promoting a Smooth Election Season.”
I wish all voters could hear what she told us. About all the checks and balances used to ensure that everyone can vote who should and that no one votes who shouldn’t. That it is hard to circumvent the ways they work to prevent voter fraud. And to her credit, she admitted that rarely, someone is able to break the rules. But it was very clear to me that widespread voter fraud would be impossible.
They have double checks on EVERYTHING! There are tamper-proof locks on the machines at all times. They test the accuracy of every machine before every election. I was there when they did that in the spring as an observer. Its was impressive how thorough and professional they were. They count, check tallies, and recheck everything. They cross reference with voter rolls throughout the state to make sure no one can vote in 2 places. When your vote is tallied, your name is immediately marked as voted and you can’t vote again. They even check records of deaths in the county to be able to remove those people from the voter rolls. They check with the post office about mail returned so that people who no longer live at the address used to register don’t stay on the rolls as living there!
People were there who were nervous about voting integrity asked great questions to clarify how fraud is prevented. I hope that they felt reassured.
When you don’t know, (as I didn’t), how thorough the process is and how hard it would be to cheat, it is easy to believe our elections could be rigged enough to question the results.
But after hearing Cris Watkins explain the process, I believe we can trust the results. Not just here in Louisa, but across our nation.
Thanks to Cris Watkins and her crew, and all those election officials in every state for doing everything they can to ensure free and fair elections in our Democratic Republic.
Joanne Hoyle