On Tuesday, Aug. 2, the PDN published an article “Auditor addresses observer concerns.”
As trained election observers this year, my husband and I were very impressed with the way Ms. Shoona Riggs responded to these concerns.
The training we received was thorough and very informative.
It is very clear that the elections process has multiple cross checks, is very transparent and unbiased.
During our training session, we were surprised at the accusatory questions from the trainees.
During observation time, I was shocked when another observer produced her binoculars to try and read information on signature verification data screens.
During the training and our four observation sessions, I heard concerns from some observers about drop boxes and pick up security, ballot location, illegal ballots, over voting and hacking of the system.
You name it, there was a conspiracy mentioned.
I am not naive, humans are human, that is why there are procedures and observers.
After participating in this process, two things stood out to us.
First, we were very impressed with our elections process, redundancy, transparency, security and staff members.
They are doing a thankless, and often criticized, job and deserve our thanks.
The second thing was how judgmental and accusatory many of the observers were about every aspect of the process.
It was very sad and disappointing to see how many folks feel that our democratic voting system is corrupt. Very, very sad and eye opening.
Sharon DelaBarre
Sequim