Ready for November says: we are ready

As early in-person voting becomes available, the Ready For November task force showed how secure and accurate Ohio elections are heading into the Nov. 2 election.

The task force is made up of members of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, including Auglaize Board of Elections Director Michelle Wilcox and Ohio Secretary of State Frank Larose.

Wilcox said election security has been a top priority for Ohio since 2019, when they were issued a security directive by the Secretary of State.

“We were talking a little bit about physical security before then, but not like they are now,” Wilcox said.

The security directive issued in 2019 updated network security and email address security, and surveillance among other initiatives. Wilcox said they worked with the Department of Homeland Security and other stakeholders to make sure daily operations were safe and secure.

Wilcox said every day a Democrat and Republican unlock the board of elections office together and last week Auglaize county BOE staff audited physical security and practiced for scenarios including power failure.

“It’s that preparedness where we practice things that may just seem simple, but you need to go over them and revisit them,” Wilcox said.

Everything in the board of elections is done as a team.

“Our equipment is stored under double lock. I can’t get down to where it is stored without my bipartisan team member. It is stored under 24hour surveillance,” Wilcox said. Double locked cupboards store ballots as well.

Sherry Poland, second vice president to the Ohio Association of Election Officials, explained logic and accuracy testing of voting equipment

She said election officials hand count test ballots, feed them through scanners, tabulate the electronic results and compare the counts to make sure it’s a match.

Poland said that before every election every piece of election equipment is tested.

Wilcox stressed they even test the back-up equipment as it has the potential to be used in the election.

Poland said the reason election results are immediately available is because ballots are physically delivered to the board of the elections and that information isn’t transmitted over the internet, a common misconception.

Wilcox said she sees misinformation it’s an opportunity to educate.

“What an opportunity to turn negatives into positives,” Wilcox said.

Larose said they also work on de-escalation training with pollworkers, in case voters come into their office upset by misinformation.

OAEO First Vice President Brian Sleeth said 2020 changed the demographics of poll workers, and they have started getting more of the younger people involved. This helped when some people didn’t want to be poll workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. About 56,000 ohioans trained to be poilworkers for the 2020 election.

OAEO President Lisa Welch discussed the ways you can vote. Early in-person voting started Tuesday. Absentee voting by mail also started Tuesday and Election Day is November 2.

Larose said they had double the number of absentee ballot requests in 2020 as in similar elections but that Ohio was ready for the logistical strain. They had dropboxes ready and started processing absentee ballots before Election Day to have results ready on time.