Our elections are secure, not stolen

In 2019, Bucks County selected an excellent voting system that was recommended by Secure Accurate Verifiable Elections (SAVE) Bucks County. Voter hand-marked paper ballots are at the heart of the system.

In some of the Commissioner’s public meetings there were public comments that disparaged our system, comments designed to sow distrust in our elections. As employed since 2016 by some candidates for high office, these were preemptive complaints in case elections results were not to the satisfaction of those raising the doubts.

We know that false claims about the 2020 election have prompted anti-voter laws and mistrust in the process in many parts of the country. We all need to work to make sure that that mistrust does not take root here in Bucks County.

Election officials, civic groups, and the media must act against the threat of election misinformation. We must ensure that our community is educa­ted about how our voting system works and understands that it is safe, secure, and verifiable.

Hand-marked paper ballots provide the best record of the voter’s intent and can be hand counted if necessary.

It’s as simple as this: tabulation is done by scanning the paper ballots to give us faster results. With more patience, we could just count the paper ballots as is done in the case of a hand recount. The accuracy of the tabulation is confirmed by risk-limiting audits. If the audit fails then we know we need to hand count paper ballots.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, elec­tion denial was a highly visible issue for many GOP candidates in Pennsylvania in the 2022 midterm elections and it looks like efforts will be made to continue this vicious attempt to destroy our democracy. We must be clear that our voting system is *not* compromised and that we should have complete confidence in it.