I have attended some of the County Commissioner meetings, and at each one, people have presented information on the problems that we had in the 2020 and 2021 elections here in Butler County. Although no one is perfect, the number of errors that happened leads one to wonder about the competence of those in charge.

Just a few of the “mistakes” that have been identified, including those listed in a report done by the County Commissioners themselves in 2021, show that we had some serious problems. For example, in 2016 the county found that we had a lot of deceased voters still on the election rolls. These dead “voters” were removed before the 2018 election. But, oddly enough, they were all added back just prior to the 2020 election.

And then there was confusion over what to do with a mail-in ballot when a voter came to vote in person at their precinct instead of mailing it in. At some precincts, if the voter surrendered their mail-in ballot, they could vote on a regular ballot, but at others they were given a provisional ballot which may or may not have been counted in the end.

It gets even worse because some precincts ran out of ballots and people had to wait while arrangements were made to borrow them from another precinct. Each precinct has their own voter rolls; how did they not make sure they had enough ballots?

But worst of all was that the total vote counts did not make sense and calls had to be made to ES&S, the voting machine manufacturer, to find out why votes were subtracted during the election according to emails sent by the commissioners themselves.

This should raise the eyebrows of every legal voter; did your vote count? And when will those responsible be held accountable?

Pam Smith, Evans City