by Wayne Adair, Hamilton
Anyone blessed with the ability to read and comprehend a newspaper or has the intellectual capacity to understand a news broadcast knows the 2020 presidential election was fair and decisive. More than 60 failed lawsuits filed on behalf of the former president challenging the results of that contest as well as repeated recounts and ballot audits, some conducted by Republican groups, prove Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States.
Enter Sen. Theresa Manzella, R – Dist. 44, and the Ravalli County Central Committee. They ignore all the evidence cited here and want to institute a legally questionable hand-count of votes in our county. They have drafted a ballot initiative to that end and want to get the measure before voters in time for the June primary election. Trouble is, there is not enough time for legally required procedures to make a tight mid-March deadline for printing the ballots.
Hoping to streamline the process, they met Jan. 25 with the Ravalli County Commissioners. Turns out, commissioners have no authority to take such action, but the three-person board politely heard them out for two hours. The comments came from Manzella and several other self-identified Republicans.
Regina Plettenberg, the county’s highest ranking elections officer, known for her expertise and honesty by Republicans and Democrats alike, summarized her opposition to the effort to require hand counts: inaccurate results.
She described earlier elections that were hand counted and the outcomes were deeply flawed. These manual counts are slow, demanding and boring. Volunteer counters get tired and distracted and the accuracy of their tallies suffer. Machine counts remove that human element.
The experience of elections officials in other states support Plettenberg’s position.
Early in her comments, Manzella described a recent trial hand-count in Mariposa County, Ariz., that she said proved the feasibility of hand counts. She cited no source to back-up her information.
I decided to check her claim. I could find no mention of this experimental test in Maricopa County, not even on “alternative media” sites Manzella loves so much. I did find news articles about an effort in Mohave County, Ariz., that reported, “Arizona Republicans wanted to hand-count ballots. Then they saw the price tag – and the errors. Elections workers spent three days counting 850 ballots in Mohave County. They made errors in 46 races.” The article further reports that the all-Republican Board of Supervisors there voted 3-2 to abandon hand counting. Source: NBC News, Aug. 2, 2023, reported by Jane C. Timm.
Please consider these facts when volunteers approach you to sign the petition. If passed, the initiative will further burden Ravalli County taxpayers, add to the already excessive workload of election workers and is a deeply flawed solution in search of a nonexistent problem.
If you doubt the account offered here, listen to the archived streaming on the county’s website, Jan. 25 session. Here is the link:
Bill LaCroix says
“…Early in her comments, Manzella described a recent trial hand-count in Mariposa County, Ariz., that she said proved the feasibility of hand counts. She cited no source to back-up her information.
I decided to check her claim. I could find no mention of this experimental test in Maricopa County, not even on “alternative media” sites Manzella loves so much. I did find news articles about an effort in Mohave County, Ariz., that reported, “Arizona Republicans wanted to hand-count ballots. Then they saw the price tag – and the errors. Elections workers spent three days counting 850 ballots in Mohave County. They made errors in 46 races….”
Thanks Wayne and Ould like to add a little historical perspective: the commissioners did indeed make the correct decision this time, but Burrows and Chilcott have made plenty of bad ones to appease the same far-right crowd that’s plagued our county this last 1/4 century or so. Remember the family planning clinic they axed the same week they gifted the exact amount of $$ “saved” from helping low-income women to Valery Stamey? Remember that debacle of a crook, a protege of the then-emerging wing-nut superstar, Theresa Manzella? Remember Jan Wisneiwski (sp?) the former planning board chair who, during a meeting with SKT tribal members about commissioner fears that the tribes might decide to build a casino on the cliffs between the Medicine Tree and the East Fork (??!) claimed he had been on a “fact-finding” mission to the high line where county officials complained of “drunken Indians” filling up their jail?
Christian nationalism has been a plague here for decades. We should have woken up to it a long time ago, and thanks, commissioners, this time. But you got a long way to go to win back credibility lost.
hsabin says
Hand counting is effective and accurate as my husband and I used to do it when we lived in another state. But it is time consuming, requires many people – volunteers, but it can be fun as well as being patriotic. After being on the counting committee for the last election, doing the ballots by machine first and then selecting a couple of precincts to count by hand to verify those machine totals makes the most sense and gives a nod to each side of this emotional chaos that pits folks against each other. Doing like Regina did each side gets a win win. That is the way it should be. How about we do that and stop the emotion, anger, angst, and also get rid of mail in ballots which are RIPE for fraud? and lets again make folks register 30 days before an election, show PROOF of citizenship, and an ID -no not an electric bill, but a driver license or other proof, and then show ID when they come to the polls. IF folks are too lazy to get out and go vote, they should lose the privilege. The elderly, handicapped and military definitely should get the mail in ballots but the rest of the population at large…STOP BEING LAZY! GET OUT and VOTE! Say HI to friends, neighbor and VOLUNTEER to be election judges. YES? No?
Wayne M Adair says
Mike, you are correct. I wrote the darned thing. I would like to think the letter was so good that they wanted to print it twice, but I am pretty sure it was an honest mistake.
Mike Miller says
Thanks for the response, Wayne.
Editor?
Mike Miller says
This seems to be an exact repeat LTE from one week ago.
Editors, Is this really necessary?