To the editor:

Our government exists only to serve us-per our founders. It serves us through agents chosen by voters every few years, acting on our behalf. So, an election, by definition, is an act of the people through which the sovereignty and power which originates with them, is loaned to the government for convenience’s sake. 

Old stuff, I know.

In RI, this maxim has been turned on its head. The government, via the Secretary of State and the Board of Elections (BoE), has taken control of the systems that comprise both our voter-rolls, and the system for creating, distributing, collecting and counting ballots. Shockingly, citizen election-workers are not even allowed to review ballots cast in their own precincts. And no citizen or local canvasser ever lays eyes on mailed-in ballots that could very well be outcome determinative.

In this way, our government controls our ability to control it. And the power we delegate to the state is used against us. The consequences of this inversion are enormous.  

In 2020-2022, we saw losses of liberty across the nation. Here in Barrington, our kids experienced some of the most draconian policies, with extended mask mandates enacted by officials who seemed drunk on power and who ignored parental pleas to reason.

What’s at stake in elections is not an abstract 1776 notion- it’s a huge quality of life issue. 

That’s why we cannot let mere faith justify reliance on our elections systems, no matter how many times the officials repeat they are “safe and secure”. 

That we are never ALLOWED to compare our ballots, collected in a tabulator’s bin, to the receipt-like tape the computerized tabulator produces, is unacceptable and leaves us vulnerable. Verification needs to be done in our precincts, when all the ballots are cast and there has not yet been opportunity for tampering. Once our polling places are broken down, our ability to verify and KNOW, not just believe, that the printed totals match the ballots, is forever lost.

Most assume that election processes have been scrupulously reviewed by certified and reputable experts. But if the reviewers are government-adjacent, or belong to a partisan funded organization, they are motivated to support the status quo of unverifiable results. The only entity motivated to guarantee election outcomes that match the interest of the voters, are the voters themselves.

The state goes to great lengths to see that elections go according to their prescriptions. But the voters, and the state, are at cross purposes. For this reason, vote counts should be manually verified by teams of citizens in the localities where the ballots are cast, and not left to black-box tabulators maintained by the state.

Re: Mr. Marion’s July 10 Letter:  

Mr. Marion has said nothing to refute my assertion that tabulators can produce disparate date-dependent functionality. He points to “risk limiting audits”, conducted by the BoE, to assert due diligence. But the significant time-gap between election and audit dates, would allow for creation or destruction of ballots as needed to match machine tapes. 

Janine Wolf

Barrington