Autumn Color

 The county clerk held two election training sessions today.  I opted for the first one that started at 9 a.m. and went for two hours.   Good choice - less than 50 people so everyone had a seat.   First a sheriff's deputy gave a presentation in general safety measures (fire alarms, multiple exits, Narcan,  AED usage).  Then he covered bomb threats, active shooter, and hostage situations.  Training we haven't had before.  The county clerk said all of the election sites were already registered w/ the sheriff's department.   The County Clerk made an announcement that one of the villages didn't have enough poll workers nor did they have an Election Inspector.  Anyone in the county could help but they did need someone who already had election training.   The Clerk then spent quite a bit of time on absentee ballots and early voting (which here is better described as "in-person absentee voting").   There is also a new ballot allowing people who don't meet residency requirements (28 days) to vote only on the presidential candidates.  There is a secure bin built into the tabulator just for ballots that have to be hand-counted though the county clerk seemed fuzzy on how a person who has been here less than a month could use the usual ways of proving residency.  She said she'd ask the state and get back to us.  She went over new registrations too - change your name or move within the municipality and you have to fill out a new registration.  Making a note of a change like that in the poll book wasn't going to work.   She also went through how death notifications work.  Death Certificates go to the Register of Deed's office which, in our state, automatically sends it to the County Clerk's office which automatically removes it from the voter list.  The County Clerk went over the difference between a 'spoiled ballot' and a 'defective ballot' (something that most poll workers have to stop and think about since they are treated a bit differently).  In these type of training sessions the County Clerk doesn't go over every aspect of an election but instead tries to hit the things that have changed or that she's seen some municipalities struggle with.   There is a lot of paper work involved in every election  - every vote has proof behind it that someone cast a ballot and everyone that cast a ballot has their registration documentation on file at that municipality.   Don't tell me any foolishness about 'stolen elections'.