This story was originally published on Minnesota Reformer. [1]
   Published here under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
   --------------------------------------------------------------

A voter protection lawyer writes on the balderdash in Arizona
By:   ['Sarah Lewerenz Is A Retired Labor Lawyer', 'Former Member Of The Democratic National Committee Minnesota.', 'Sarah Lewerenz']
Date: 2021-05-20 00:00:00

Former U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota was killed in a plane crash near Eveleth, Minnesota 11 days before the 2002 November election in which he was seeking a third term in the Senate. It is hard to overstate the political chaos that ensued in Minnesota.

The week after the crash there were multiple funerals and a meeting of the DFL State Central Committee to nominate Walter Mondale to run for Wellstone’s Senate seat. At the same time, the DFL also had to quickly put together a voter protection program to ensure the complicated laws governing the death of a candidate just days before the election were followed so Minnesotans could vote for the candidate of their choice for U.S. Senate.

DFL lawyers around the state volunteered to quickly become election law lawyers, train poll watchers and then answer phone calls from those poll watchers on Election Day. I served as the DFL’s lawyer in Duluth.

On Election Day, we braced ourselves for the problems that we thought likely to occur, but the problems never came. In just 11 days, those running Minnesota’s elections had managed to prepare for all major possible problems, and the election went off without a hitch. Yes, I got calls from poll watchers about problems, but they were of the minor and easily resolved sort.

I learned from the 2002 election how terrific and dedicated those who put on our elections are. They believe in our democracy. They believe in letting every eligible voter vote. Most toil long hours for very low pay to run our elections and ensure that our democracy works.

I worked as a DFL voter protection lawyer for six elections. I never saw any fraud or heard any allegations of fraud in those six elections. The biggest problem I dealt with in those six elections was a city clerk who didn’t provide enough pens, voter registration cards and ballots to every precinct. This meant the city clerk’s office would have to run extra supplies out to precincts on Election Day, which often delayed voting.

I couldn’t do much about ballot shortages, but I finally decided to stock up on extra voter registration cards and pens for Election Day. I then instructed our poll watchers to let us know when the polling place they were working at was getting close to being short on supplies, and then I would have DFL volunteers run pens and voter registration cards out to precincts.

We did have a problem in Duluth one year with Republican poll watchers. The Republicans had flown in three lawyers from Texas, Washington, D.C. and North Dakota and put them up at the best and most expensive hotel in town the night before the election. Unfortunately, the lawyers were not thoroughly familiar with Minnesota’s election laws and one of them attempted to prevent some women from the local battered women’s shelter from voting.

The women from the shelter had been brought to the polling place by a man who volunteered at the shelter, so he knew all the women. He also happened to live in the same precinct as the shelter. The plan was for the shelter volunteer to vouch that the women lived at the shelter so they could register and vote. That was perfectly legal under Minnesota’s Election Day registration law, but one of the out-of-state lawyers just couldn’t believe that complied with the law and it took two-and-a-half hours to straighten the mess out. The Minnesota Legislature passed a law the following legislative session requiring poll watchers to be Minnesota residents.

I was also a DFL lawyer in two recounts, in Lake County for the U.S. Senate race recount in 2008 and in Itasca County for the governor’s race recount in 2010. The county auditors running those recounts took very good care of the ballots and everything was observed by someone from each major campaign. And, there were eyes on each ballot from each campaign as it was counted.

In Lake County the ballots had been kept locked up on a different floor from where the recount was taking place. So the county auditor even took someone from each campaign with him to get the ballots. My recount experiences only reinforced my belief in the excellence and commitment of those who run our elections.

Republicans have lodged multiple charges against our election systems regarding the 2020 election, but courts have rejected everyone of their allegations. A close look at our election systems reveals some of the details of why their charges have been rejected.

All states have some type of requirement for testing voting machines before they can be used for elections in that state. Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia require following federal testing requirements, and the remaining states have their own testing requirements, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Additionally, Minnesota requires every local government which runs elections to test voting machines before each election. And, the law requires public notice of the testing and that the testing be open to the public.

The decentralized nature of U.S. elections also contributes to their security. Our elections are not run by the federal or state governments. They are run at the local level. Minnesota has over 4,000 precincts where people vote. The elections in those 4,000 precincts are run by 87 counties and numerous cities and townships. Those 87 counties and the cities and townships each purchase their own state tested and approved voting machines, hire their own election workers and print and count their own ballots.

If there are problems or corruption in the election in one precinct, city or county, it doesn’t carry over into multiple jurisdictions because the elections are run by different people and different local governments. Thus, a conspiracy to steal a presidential election would quite literally have to involve tens or even hundreds of thousands of election workers in different counties, cities and townships across the country.

Also, the machines that count Minnesota’s and many other states’ ballots are not connected to the internet, thus the vote totals can’t be hacked.

I have watched the ongoing “audit” in Arizona’s Maricopa County with dismay. I can only imagine how the dedicated, hard working people who run elections there feel about being charged with corruption.

It is obvious former President Donald Trump has never known a precinct election judge or a city or county official who ran elections and knows nothing about how elections are run or how votes are counted. It is appalling that people who know nothing about elections have convinced millions of Americans that the presidential election was stolen.

The people who run our elections deserve better than to be trashed and charged with corruption by our former president and his minions.

[1] Url: https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/05/20/a-voter-protection-lawyer-writes-on-the-balderdash-in-arizona-column/