Whitetail Deer in the Meadow

The first election of the year will be in April and we are getting ready for it.  Our town clerk is new and I sometimes forget that she hasn't been through all of this before.  Got an e-mail from her asking when we would be doing the public test of the tabulator machine which counts the ballots.  Tests can't be conducting more than a week before the election date but should be done early enough that we can resolve any problems we might encounter so I e-mailed back we would do it March 25th.  Also reminded her not to rent out the town hall between that date and the election since we set up tables, voting booths, and the tabulator machine on the test date.  Poor clerk almost had a heart attack.  She had already rented out the town hall for that Saturday and Sunday to families that wanted to have Easter celebrations.  Not to worry - the other Chief Inspector Barb and I agreed the machine could be tested on the March 25th date and we would lock it in the town hall's office.  We would do the room setup on the Monday before the election.  Doing it that way meant we would need to unplug the tabulator -or- use a long extention cord on election day.  So added a stop in at the County Clerk's office to my morning errands.  Figured she would have either done it or know other clerks that have unplugged their tabulators.  Suprisingly she didn't know the answer but she did know the answer to my second question.  The Town Board had bolted a locked box to the outside of the Town Hall to facilitate tax payments.  The Town Clerk wondered if she could use it as a drop box for absentee ballots.  Local mail is even slower now that it has to travel into the Big City and back.  She thought this might be a faster way for local people to return their absentee ballots and wouldn't require a stamp.  The County Clerk said drop boxes were illegal unless manned.  Curious about the reasoning to not allow drop boxes I did some digging and found it was from a 2022 state Supreme Court ruling.  I read various articles plus the court's decision and to me it seems the decision was fallout from the whole 'stolen election' machination.   I truly believe there are a fair amount of people that have never met a conspiracy theory they didn't like.