In Bernalillo County there are 77 different ballots. The ballots account for all the district boundaries \u2013 legislative and county commission districts and bond issues for special districts like a flood control district .<\/p>\n
This is not a problem.\u00a0 The system is designed to handle it.\u00a0 The process is the same in other counties, except most counties have fewer districts and so fewer different ballots<\/p>\n
As you probably recall, when you vote in person you give your name and few details, and the correct ballot for your address is printed.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a miracle of modern election systems.<\/p>\n
Testing the voting machines is an exhaustive process. It\u2019s open to the public, and it probably is open in your county also.<\/p>\n
Every machine has to be capable of reading all the possible combinations.\u00a0 So each machine is tested 77 times four, or 308 times. Specially prepared packets of sample ballots are used.\u00a0 An employee inserts a ballot into the first machine, then passes it to another employee who inserts it into the second machine, and so on.\u00a0 The first employee flips some of the ballots around, to make sure they can be read whether they are fed in right side up or upside down.<\/p>\n
A row of 10 employees stands in front of 10 voting machines.\u00a0 They pass ballots along until all 308 have been fed through every machine. \u00a0This might take half a day. Then there will be a tally to make sure the results are perfectly accurate.\u00a0 Any imperfections will be addressed and if necessary the faulty machine will be culled out of the herd.<\/p>\n
This will go on until all voting machines, about 340, have been tested.\u00a0 It takes a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n
The machines detect certain errors.\u00a0 For example, if you accidentally mark both candidates for the same position, the machine will detect that and spit the ballot out.\u00a0 Then you can receive a new ballot, and your spoiled ballot will be saved because every ballot must be accounted for.<\/p>\n
The deputy county clerk who explained this to me mentioned that the county paid extra for good quality rubber mats for those employees, who are standing on the concrete floor all that time.<\/p>\n
Similar activities have been happening in every county.\u00a0 All of our counties use Dominion voting machines.\u00a0 That\u2019s the brand that was maligned by election deniers and now is pursuing billions of dollars in lawsuits.<\/p>\n
I went to watch hoping to see the inside of the voting machines so I could confirm to readers that there is no transmitter inside those machines. They cannot communicate with extraterrestrials, international satellites or anyone else. These machines do not communicate.<\/p>\n
I cannot prove this because, theoretically,\u00a0 someone could claim that any tiny little gear could be a transmitter.\u00a0 But that would be nonsense, so let\u2019s not dwell on it. That is why our system has paper ballots. The machine cannot erase the mark you make in ink, replace it with a different mark and make the alteration undetectable.<\/p>\n
(The deputy clerk advised that if you vote in person, it is best to use the pen provided.\u00a0 These pens have ink that dries quickly, so your ballot will not smear the inside of the machine.)<\/p>\n
Elsewhere I have written about the security measures in our voter registration system that prevent anyone from voting who is not legally registered.\u00a0 I have also looked at of the double checks and audits that follow the election.\u00a0 Anyone who is concerned has the same access to the information.<\/p>\n
If you are nervous about the integrity of our elections, and you want to start from scratch designing an end-to-end election system that would be secure and honest, I suspect you would eventually design something very close to what New Mexico already has in place.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2022 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Bernalillo County there are 77 different ballots. The ballots account for all the district boundaries \u2013 legislative and county commission districts and bond issues for special districts like a flood control district . This is not a problem.\u00a0 The … Continue reading