State officials hold election presentation

In an effort to address concerns that North Dakota’s elections aren’t secure, state officials have been holding a series of demonstrations throughout the state, allowing citizens to see exactly how the voting process works in North Dakota.

On Friday, May 24, one of those demonstrations was held in Fessenden.

Presenting in front of an audience of about two dozen at the KTL Building was North Dakota’s Secretary of State, Michael Howe, alongside State Election Director Erica White.

For about 90 minutes they touched on a variety of subjects pertaining to the state’s election processes and security measures, and demonstrated how each voting machine functions.

In attendance were local county commissioners and auditors, as well as several candidates running in next week’s primary election, including District 14’s three incumbent legislators – Jerry Klein, Jon Nelson and Robin Weisz – and one of the challengers trying to replace them – Larry Danduran, who’s running for N.D. House.

The demonstration on Friday comes as some have cast doubt on the security of North Dakota’s elections.

“The climate of the election has been in the news, and we’ve had a lot of questions,” said Howe when asked why they started doing these demonstrations. “There’s a lot of information out there, and we said we need to play in that space, that we want to be the trusted source of election information.”

Howe began the event in Fessenden by explaining a few features that set North Dakota’s elections apart from other states, namely a voter ID requirement, the use of paper ballots, and that absentee ballots for voting by mail must be applied for.

However, many of the questions around secure elections goes beyond voter ID laws and paper ballots, appearing instead to center around the machines North Dakota and most other states use for voting.

There is currently a petition circulating that would ban the use of any electronic voting machines in the state’s elections, along with any electronic processes for ballot tabulation.

Regarding the voting machines, Howe and White addressed the common misconception that voting machines used by North Dakota can access the internet, and could therefore be hacked.

They made it clear that no machine which processes or tabulates paper ballots is connected to the internet.

Two voting machines utilized in North Dakota’s elections were demonstrated in person on Friday: the DS450, which is used to count absentee ballots; and the DS200, which counts paper ballots filled out on election day.

Both machines are widely utilized throughout the country, and neither is physically capable of connecting to the internet, they explained.

White demonstrated how they work by running a mock election through each one.

She went step-by-step through both machines, demonstrating the various processes and security measures that every county’s election judges and workers must go through to ensure they’re secure and ready to operate when it comes time to count ballots.

The event concluded with a few questions asked by those in attendance, and before ending the event, Howe encouraged anyone with further questions to reach out to the Secretary of State’s Office.

“I can’t stress this enough. We want to be the trusted source of election information,” said Howe. “If you saw something online that didn’t seem quite right, don’t then go spreading that information to somebody else. Go straight to the source and ask questions.”