Great Falls-Prior to the November 2nd municipal election, the Cascade County Electoral Office conducted a public test and demonstration of its ticket counter at the fair on Wednesday.

Election staff sampled ballots through their vote counting machines and spent more than an hour explaining the process and answering questions from citizens and citizen leaders about safety and security.

As the nationwide scrutiny of elections becomes more stringent, the test provides an opportunity to provide transparency and clarity, and alleviate public concerns about how votes are counted.

“Everything we do will not be hidden from the public, and the more the public knows about it, the more confident they will be in the process,” said clerk and recorder Rina Fontana Moore. "Because you have to prove that your equipment is operating normally, the game has not been reversed, and everything went well on election day."

Montana state representative Lola Sheldon-Galloway, a Republican from Great Falls, was one of the elected legislators who attended. She and other attendees thanked the staff for answering questions, but some people still worried about safety.

Sheldon-Galloway said: "We don't trust machines right now. We think this is what caused people to question the election. So we want to see how the machines work. We have questions about its functions and the information they use."

She added that there was a movement to promote legislation to replace machines with manual counting.

"I don't think people have confidence in our election, and I don't think it has anything to do with our employees," she said. "I just think it has something to do with external sources coming in and using our machine to do something."

Fontana Moore countered that Montana has some of the safest elections and strict laws to counter any external influence.

"There are layers of security measures. What I know is that the laws in Montana are very, very good. I can't think of how we can make them better for the rest of my life," Moore said. "So anyone who wants to get down has any questions, please don't refer to Facebook, just go to the election office to ask questions. We will guide you through the whole process. We have nothing to hide."

From the election office website

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