Defending the election process [View all]

[no_hypocrisy]

You may (or may not) know that I live in a very small town in NJ, and we're in the middle of a water crisis.

And our mayor and the water commission have been giving updates on the progress on fixing the problem, via Facebook. (The town has its own page.)

And there is a resident who took this situation and attempted to apply a red herring to the issue, a non-sequitor to the original topic. Namely, she tried to commandeer the topic from water to blaming the local government and how corrupt she believes it is. Specifically and without evidence, she stated that non-residents are allowed to vote in our elections, and that is why the so-called "corruption" can't be rooted out. (Yeah, I know. Nothing to do with having no water townwide.)

I have been a poll worker in town for more than a decade. And I had to address that series of falsehoods. From the time we arrive at 5:00 a.m. at least twice a year until we leave after 8:30 p.m., ALL poll workers, the municipal clerk, and representatives from the county Board of Elections assiduously adhere (excuse the alliteration) to the rules to ensure that the elections are fair and legal. While we do screen voters who are questionable and bar them from voting on the machines, we also provide paper provisional ballots and let the Board of Elections decide whether to count them. No voter is turned away.

I suggested to the above-referenced critic that she take her complaints to the county Board of Elections, to which she replied it would be a waste of time as she expected nothing would be done. And I hammered back that she had no evidence, was making defamatory comments about the poll workers and the Board, and was falsely impugning the voting process.

You just don't let accusations like that go unanswered. The people reading those posts don't do their own research and can't be persuaded that they can't trust the voting system without proof.

I write this in case you must defend our democracy when someone tries to attack the integrity of your voting system, even if it's no more than the district within your town. Or better: train to become a poll worker and defend democracy twice a year for 19+ hours a day.