Stearns County is happy with how the elections were handled leading up to election day , on election day and after.  That according to Stearns County Division Director for Service Centers and Elections, Dave Walz.  Walz says 67 precincts report election results on election day and his staff had the majority of the in-person votes and absentee votes counted by the day after the election.  He says they've had just a few ballots that were postmarked on or before election day come in after the election and those have been counted and set aside.  He says the process is completely transparent with a representative from each party available to watch the process if they'd like.

 

Walz says the State of Minnesota allowed for absentee votes that arrived prior to 8pm on election day to be counted which helped speed the counting process.  Walz says absentee votes take longer to count because of the checking process that needs to take place and just taking the ballots out of the envelopes takes some time.  Walz says Stearns County had 83 percent of eligible voters turn out for the election this year which is up 2 percent from 2016.

I asked Walz about how they handle voter fraud prevention.  He says they have a substantial checklist to verify that a voter is eligible and then they check the validity of each ballot.

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