by Margaret Gorski, Stevensville
Senator Theresa Manzella, there you go again! For the umpteenth time you are urging the Ravalli County Commissioners to pass a resolution to hand count ballots in our upcoming election. Despite the lack of any evidence that points to problems in Ravalli County, you insist on repeating lies and misinformation spread by out of state propagandists. These self-proclaimed experts have an agenda to create doubt about the integrity of our elections.
If you really want to get to the bottom of why people have come to distrust our elections, you should just look in the mirror. Anyone with half a brain who is forced to listen to television advertising for prescription drugs or insurance knows that when repeated over and over claims become facts. Enough already. How many times are you going to beat this dead horse? If you really care about the integrity of our elections, you should use the power of your elected position and put it to good use. Why don’t you tackle solving existing and real problems instead of inventing problems by throwing spaghetti on the wall to see if anything sticks?
Based on my personal experience, hand counting ballots is a misdirected exercise and won’t make anyone more confident in election results. I have assisted in auditing two of our county’s elections. It involves hand counting randomly selected precincts in randomly selected districts and comparing the results to those produced by our voting machines. I can assure you that it doesn’t take long before your eyes glaze over reading the multiple marks on ballots. Counting every single vote for every single race would create far more mistakes, potential for fraud and opportunity for individual mischief than using automated machines ever would. Should every registered voter in the county vote in a major election, we would have to check and double check over 900,000 votes cast for all the positions that are on the ballot. It would require a large number of people, significantly increase costs, and take much more time. Most importantly, I doubt that it would make people trust the election results any more than they do now. Considering the lack of evidence for need, potential costs, and the added risk of mistakes and fraud, our County Commissioners would be crazy to agree to the ill-informed and unnecessary resolution that you advocate.
Please stop wasting our tax dollars and start spending your time on problems that actually affect all Montanans: problems like fixing our property tax debacle; making sure there is sufficient maintenance funding to repair our roads; addressing impacts to water quality and quantity; addressing problems that are caused by uncontrolled development; helping the poor in Ravalli County; strengthening our school system; and dealing with the drug problem in our valley. Senator Manzella, I and other valley residents would like to know how these problems stack up in priority when compared to your fabricated need to hand count ballots?
We need a Senator who works for all of the residents of Ravalli County, not just the Ultra MAGAs, the Freedom Caucus and those who wish to tear down our democracy. How you choose to spend your time will reveal a great deal about your priorities and help voters decide who we should elect as our Senator in the upcoming election.
Bill LaCroix says
Right on, Margaret. Our billionaire guv is on the verge of unconstitutionally-sending National Guard troops (read: our kids) to the Texas border to help string razor wire and torture 4 year olds (“Stand with Texas” my back jean pockets) which, if we let these billionaires get away with it, will precipitate an actual civil war, and this conspiracy-crazed woman prattles on about how putting John Birchers in charge of our elections will also help “stop the invasion”. Please do connect the dots, folks. I’m guessing Manzella and some of her compadres may be true believers (sad enuff) but you don’t have to swallow this bait-and-switch. Nobody should be in the business of “influencing” our elections except us voters. That’s called democracy. John Birchers in charge of “counting” our votes and billionaires precipitating civil war? That’s called fascism.
HSABIN says
BILL – I was at the same counting event as Margaret Gorski and none of us had eyes glaze over at least at the table where I sat where we counted one precinct THREE TIMES to make sure we were correct. We were off by ONE vote from what the machine had counted but each time we counted we came up with the same number. So the machine was at fault if you can think of a machine doing that. I think doing machine counting and then counting a couple of precincts is the PERFECT way to go – it helps satisfy both sides of the issue. Then neither side can complain about the voting process. Plettenberg does a superb job of the voting process and I trust her 100% – THOSE THAT DON’T ARE AFTER HER JOB!
Philip Tummarello says
BORING.