WE’VE CAST OUR BALLOTS, THEN WHAT?

Article #4 in a series of articles about the 2022 Midterm Elections, brought to you by the League of Women Voters Minneapolis.

We’ve thought hard about the candidates and slipped our ballots into the voting machine on election day. We’ve done our part. Now it’s up to others to make sure our votes are safe.

The first persons we encounter at the polls are the election judges, there to help us through the voting process – from registering and verifying eligibility to actually depositing the ballots. They are usually citizens from the neighborhood, chosen based on their experience and sometimes language skills. Judges are affiliated with a variety of major parties, or they may be unaffiliated. Certain tasks at the polls need to be performed by two people of different parties. All judges receive specific training to do their jobs and are sworn in to be impartial.

When voting at the polls ends at 8 pm on election night, the election judges at each of Minneapolis’ 137 precincts bring materials to the city clerk staff at two receiving sites. It’s a meticulous process, as election judges there check and re-check that the precinct judges have signed off on every item returned, such as envelopes containing election day registrations, number of spoiled ballots, and ballots themselves.… Read the rest “WE’VE CAST OUR BALLOTS, THEN WHAT?”