Record Early Voting in Ascension as election fraud delusions subside

Clerk of Court Bridget Hanna

Published in anticipation of the 2023 election, amidst baseless allegations unfettered by any actual proof of fraudulent voting, Ascension’s Clerk of Court Bridget Hanna felt compelled to address the noise.  With one side of the presidential campaign setting up a fraud claim should it lose, Ascension seems to have ignored the stolen election nonsense (due, we suspect, to Louisiana’s non “battleground state” status).  Hopefully past the shameful, ridiculous rhetoric purveyed by some of the most ignorant local yokels we’ve encountered, Ascension continues to set Early Voting records.

34,905 votes had been cast by the close of business yesterday (462 more than the COVID-induced early voting explosion of 2020.  That would account for 55.3% of the ultimate total, 62,325 votes cast in Ascension, easily the most ever).  It seems the parish is on track to break that record on November 5.

First Published October 12, 2023:

“Untruths are being spread about our election system,” a diplomatic Clerk of Court Bridget Hanna said during a recent interview. “As an election official who has worked in this field for over 39 years, I am offended by the accusations leveled against all of us who have been, and will be committed to the integrity of our Louisiana elections.”

While unsubstantiated rumors of election fraud circulate every now and then, nothing like the unproven claims over the 2020 presidential election has gained so much traction. A percentage of the population, nationwide and in Louisiana, persist in their disbelief no matter that zero credible evidence of actual fraud has been presented.

Public servants like Bridget Hanna cannot help but be frustrated, even while conceding that ongoing improvements are necessary.

“All of our Clerks will agree that our current machines are antiquated, and it is a challenge in finding replacement parts. We are all in favor of an auditable paper trail,” she said.  “But to say that there is no paper trail with our current machines would be incorrect. The machines print out the results, the vote simulations, audit logs, etc. They hold a record of every button pressed on the machine per election that can also be printed. There is not a paper trail that the voter can see to verify their selections, but there is a review page on the early voting machines which allows voters to verify their selections before casting their ballot. The machines used on election day display a full-face ballot and voters can clearly see all their selections before pressing the cast vote button. Audits are completed at the end of every election and there are other checks and balances in place to verify the votes.”

So much goes into the voting process, with 9600 voting machines employed on Election Day statewide and 800 for early voting, it is impractical to address every issue in one piece. Clerk of Court Hanna’s assessment of Election Security in general is the topic for today.

• We are a top-down system in administration, preparation, and execution of our elections. Everything starts with the Secretary of State (SOS) and trickles down to parish Clerks of Court and Registrars of Voters.
• Programming and program testing is done only by certified staff of the Secretary of State’s office.
• Programming is hand-delivered to the Secretary of State’s election machine warehouses and Registrar of Voters offices.
• SOS staff loads election files onto equipment.
• SOS staff tests and seals equipment in a process open to the public.
• SOS staff and Parish Board of Election Supervisors (Clerk, Registrar, Democrat Member, Republican Member, and gubernatorial appointee) verify the public and protective counters on each machine before and after the election.
• SOS warehouse employees load the election files and test each machine prior to every election. This equipment is air-gapped, i.e., not connected to the internet.
• On election morning, trained commissioners verify the public count is at zero on each machine in their precinct and run a zero-proof report before voting begins. This report is posted for the public to view.
• At the conclusion of the election, the result reports are run on each machine by the commissioners and are posted on the outside door at each polling place for the public. A second copy of the results tape is delivered to the Clerk of Court on election night.
• Results are transferred from the Clerk of Court to the Secretary of State over a secure, private, monitored network and that is where the vote results stop. They are not sent to Serbia, Canada or any of the other places mentioned by conspiracy theorists.
• After each batch of results are transferred, the Clerk of Court verifies that the results were posted to the SOS website.
• The unofficial results posted to the SOS website is replicated to prevent manipulation of the original, unofficial results.
• At the end of each election, an audit is performed. The number of signatures in each poll book at each polling location is compared with the public and protective counters in each precinct.
• Louisiana owns and operates its voting machines. The machines go through pre-election testing for accuracy in the SOS office, in the field and in front of each parish board of election supervisors. That process is open to public inspection.
• The machines are NOT connected to the internet. The only thing that plugs into the machine is electrical power. The machines are not capable of having internet access.

“No verifiable evidence has been presented to me as the Clerk, nor in my time serving on the Louisiana Legislature’s Voting System Commission, that voting machine fraud has ever actually occurred in the State of Louisiana. While one person testified that voting machines were susceptible to fraud, no factual evidence was produced,” Clerk of Court Hanna addressed wholly unsubstantiated claims.

In fact, this person was only able to “hack” into a voting machine when he had access to it for three months, with the keys and passwords. How is this going to happen on a voting day when the only persons that have access to the machines are employees of the Secretary of State, Clerks of Court, and Registrars? Pure speculation aside, there is no credible evidence to support the claim that any election outcome has been altered through a technical compromise.”

None of which means that Bridget Hanna and her counterparts in 63 parishes are not continually working to enhance election security in all areas.  No one takes it more seriously.

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