Elections extremely secure

The article about election questions in last weeks' Ledger brought to mind the work of our district clerks/election administrators when the election process was evaluated several years back (following the “hanging chad” election, perhaps?). What I recall is how impressed I was at the work they did to make sure that any changes to the election process at the state level actually translated to the local level.

The efforts of the clerks were accompanied by a legislature that paid attention to the information “boots on the ground” brought to them. As a result, the state of Montana has an extremely secure process, using paper ballots, and election machinery not connected to the internet. Our forward thinking clerks recognized value in a paper trail, and saw potential digital risks long before ransomware became a household word.

I've watched the care our local officials take to test the tabulators prior to the election, and been impressed by how accurate the counts have been on the rare occasions a hand count was necessary.

Can there be improvements? Probably. But any changes need to involve people who are involved in the process and understand everything involved, start to finish.

Pat Crowder,

Thompson Falls