As a longtime poll worker in Greenfield elections, I would like to correct an impression that Bruce Plante’s cartoon, published in the Oct. 29 Recorder, may have given. The cartoon shows a man inserting his ballot into a voting machine and asking if he should be worried about Russian hackers. The voting machine responds in Russian, saying “Nyet” or “No.”
Greenfield voters need to know that our voting machines are in no way connected to the any electronic media. Locked in the morning and unlocked at the end of the day, they are simply ballot counters, reading each voter’s marks for whatever candidate or question, and recording them. The machines recognize if a person has given two answers to a single question and reject the ballot, returning it to the voter for correction or confirmation. And that is all that our machines do. They are not connected to any form of media and cannot be manipulated by outside interests, not Washington nor Moscow nor, for that matter, Greenfield!
Early voting and mail-in ballots are entered into those same machines by us poll workers during the day on Election Day so that all the ballots cast are tallied at the same time as those cast in person.
I can truthfully say that our election process is as safe and transparent as any I could imagine and I invite anyone to come and observe what we do. At the end of the day, poll workers tally the number of ballots, counting and recounting them manually to ensure that every ballot the machines counted, and every ballot we were given at the start of the day, is accounted for. After the polls close, we have to stay on the job until everything is accurate. A team of non-partisan monitors then verifies our numbers before we can leave for the day.
Given the number of questions on the ballot this November, poll workers can expect to be on the job from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. or later. We will be exhausted! But we will go home knowing that we did our part to sustain our democracy in the most honest, consistent and unbiased way possible.
Voters can rest easy knowing that no outside party, not Putin, not Trump, no one, will have messed with their votes and their voices will have been heard.
Please remember to vote. It matters so much!
Louise Amyot, poll worker
Greenfield