By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A St. Joseph resident who has worked with election technology for more than 20 years assures voters they can be confident in the election process.
Ed Smith is now Vice President for Election Solutions for MTX. He once worked with Dominion Voting, which became infamous among supporters of former President Donald Trump who disputed the 2020 presidential election. Smith had left Dominion before the 2020 election.
Smith says though electronic counting machines and computers process election returns, the key is the paper ballot used to verify the outcome.
“Whether it’s adversarial nations trying to come in from outside our borders and change the results of the election or whether your concern is about an insider threat. You’re not going to change million and millions of ovals and pieces of paper,” Smith tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline.
That includes the controversies arising from the 2020 election.
Smith has worked with election authorities in more than 30 states. He has read anywhere from 800 to 900 affidavits filed in the presidential battleground states, claiming voter fraud.
“And they’re oftentimes well-meaning people,” Smith says. “They saw what they saw with their own eyes and they thought that something nefarious was going on, but what they saw was actually normal, legal, ethical election practices. They just didn’t have the context to put those in place and understand what they were seeing.”
Smith says paper ballots confirm the results given by electronic machines. Smith adds no one contesting election results in the 2020 presidential election has been able to withstand judicial scrutiny.
“No matter how voluminous it seems, no matter how frequently people publicize what they believe is proof, it’s just not there,” according to Smith. “When it comes to an adversarial setting where they can make their claims and someone has an opportunity to rebut them and a neutral judge listens, they just fall apart completely.”
Smith urges skeptical voters to get involved. He suggests working as a poll worker or asking the local election authority, the county clerk, to give them a demonstration of how they process election results.
You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.