Back in 2020, the Wayne County Board of Elections decided at last minute it would switch to all mail-in voting for its primary to protect people from COVID-19 transmission.
Director Julie Leathers Stahl remembers voters calling at all hours concerned about absentee ballot fraud.
“I used to have to put earbuds in my ears so I could go to sleep, because I heard the phone ringing in my head, because it rang all day,” she recalled.
Then came the conspiracy theories about ballots being cast in the names of dead people and groups hired to drop fake ballots in boxes in swing states.
Leathers Stahl was used to wild theories, but the sheer volume was new to her. The largely rural county in Northeast Ohio has had 100% accurate audits over five years.
Answering voters’ questions
In the wake of cyber security threats and social media-fueled misinformation, some voters around the country are worried about the security of the upcoming election.
A survey conducted by Baldwin Wallace University and commissioned in part by Ideastream Public Media found 23% of Northeast Ohioans are not confident the state could run a fair and accurate election this year.
That mistrust means election officials not only have to secure another big national election—but convince the public of it.
Since those 2020 calls, Leathers Stahl and deputy director Bryon Bell have made it their mission to restore their community’s faith in the electoral process.
They spent this last year answering voters’ questions, speaking at civic organizations and holding classes explaining election administration.
“In my experience, a lot of the concerns that people raise come from just not understanding the work we do, and not understanding the process, which is why we're so focused on public communication and transparency,” Bell said. “We feel the more people that understand what we really do, the more reassured they will be.”
Bell said he hears two main types of concerns: the first is voter registration-related – who is allowed to vote, and when people are removed from the rolls. Bell explains to them the state and federal legal regulations and the process for how the BOE verifies voters.
The other thing he commonly hears: people don’t trust the electronic voting machines.
That includes Tom Sheehy, a 70-year-old Kidron resident, who voted early in October, and said he still has doubts about electronic voting.
“You hear all the noise about voting machines and how easily they can be hacked and about how lawsuits are then presented to change methods. I wish we'd go back to the paper ballot,” he said. “There’s always concern of fraud.”
Increasing security measures
Wayne County uses Dominion voting machines and election software. During the 2020 presidential election, some people claimed without evidence that Dominion machines were unsecure and able to be hacked.
The claims were investigated by nonpartisan groups and found to be untrue, but the controversy left many still doubting the security of voting machines.
Leathers Stahl said the county has had a robust cybersecurity regimen in place since 2019.
“Our election management system is in a room all by itself, never connected to the internet,” she said. “It's totally segregated from everything. That's where we tally the ballots on election night.”
There are other checks too. There’s 24-hour video surveillance in every room. Each voting device has multiple locks on it to prevent tampering. Any time a machine is set up, or a ballot box opened, both a Democrat and a Republican must observe.
“We joke that the only thing we can do without a bipartisan buddy is to go to the restroom,” Leathers Stahl said.
Bell said when they explain their process, community members typically leave feeling more confident in the system.
“From somebody who really has a strong ideology around elections, what we'll hear a lot is, ‘Well, I know you guys do it right in Wayne County. I just wish everybody else did,’” he said.
The president of the Ohio Association of Elected Officials Paul Adams said county boards across the state take election security just as seriously as Wayne.
“There's certainly a certain level of local control, but when it comes to security procedures, it is very standard across the state of Ohio, whether you happen to be in Vinton county, or you're in Cuyahoga County.”
For his part, Bell is happy to answer questions about election procedure. He once had concerns, too, during the election of 2000, and he knows the difference that voter education can make first-hand.
The idea for this story came from an Ideastream Public Media listener.
