Officials: Election process secure

COEUR d'ALENE — Brandon Clifton, senior vice president of government affairs with Election Systems & Software, stood before a group of Kootenai County residents Tuesday night and said he is not a traitor.

He said Chris Wlaschin, ES&S senior vice president and chief information systems officer, is not a spy.

Both are servants, Americans, and there to answer questions and ease skepticism about election integrity, he said.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty out there,” Clifton acknowledged.

ES&S is the supplier of Kootenai County’s DS-850 tabulators, which cost “north of $100,000 each.”

A team of officials with the company flew in to take part in two presentations at the Elections Office organized by Kootenai County Clerk Jim Brannon and Jennifer Locke, chief deputy clerk, to talk about election security and “assure all residents of the county that their vote will be counted and not nullified by illegal votes.”

About 40 people attended the first session.

Brannon said the county is committed to fair elections and has many security measures. He said residents can be confident in the election process.

Ballot boxes are sealed at each precinct before being delivered to the elections office. At least two people are with every ballot at all times. The tabulator used to tally votes is not connected to the internet. County personnel monitor every step.

Anyone is welcome to be a poll watcher on election night and watch everything the county does, Brannon said.

Wlaschin said residents can consider the county Elections Office “the source of truth.”

“Idaho is doing it right,” he said.

But many expressed doubts.

Some said computers could be hacked or accessed physically and ballots could be compromised in a number of ways. Some said there were many vulnerabilities in the process.

Brent Regan asked what area of the process had the greatest vulnerability for fraud — what would be the easiest way to cheat the system?

“Absentee ballots,” Wlaschin said.

He said the process of mailing ballots, having them filled out and mailed back, is not a secure process.

“That is probably the biggest area of potential of fraud,” he said.

He said the “incredible increase in both mail-in and absentee ballots, and expansion of drop boxes that in some states were not monitored as good as they could be, allowed for the opportunity to create fraud."

But he said there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

"That would be the biggest secret kept by anybody,” he said. “There's not a single instance, provable instance, of a piece of voting equipment made by ES&S that was hacked in the 2020 election.”

Clifton said the combination of COVID-19 leading to higher absentee ballot use and more mail-in voting led to “opportunities to learn lessons.

“Do those opportunities result in a presidential election that we should not have confidence in? No, I don't think so. I don't think so at all," Clifton said.

ES&S, based in Omaha, Neb., employs about 450 people, all background checked. It has a “footprint” in 40 states. Over half of the ballots cast in the last general election were done on ES&S equipment.

“That's a huge responsibility, a huge responsibility, to make sure the counting of those ballots is safe, secure and accurate,” Wlaschin said. “If I thought for a minute that ES&S was doing something illegal or unethical, I would report it to the attorney general myself.”

Wlaschin, who has a background in security and served 30 years in the Navy, said “anything is hackable, from airplanes to X-ray machines,” but tight security measures make it very difficult.

One woman said she believed him, but said, “Somehow, something is happening that is out of balance.”

Another woman said she believes “there is criminality and fraud going on.”

“Follow the money,” she said.

Another spoke of fraud in local elections, but could not provide a specific example when asked for one.

“If there is something you hear, bring it forward,” Brannon said. “We can’t investigate what we don’t know.”