To the Editor:
The Osage County Clerk “can confidently say,” as quoted in the Feb. 28th issue of the UD, that the estimated election cost savings I presented at the recent Lincoln Day Dinner (at least $412,000 over a 15-year period) are “a spread of misinformation and irrelevant calculations.” Osage County taxpayers can give their opinion on the relevancy of that much money, but I am most surprised that our Republican County Clerk uses the term, “misinformation,” which is one of the mainstays of woke media.
In any case, I believe some fact-checking would have been helpful before the Clerk publicly expressed her confidence. The primary argument is that the information needed for my calculations would have only been obtainable by Sunshine Request (open records) to her office. There are concerned citizens all over the state who are obtaining open records and sharing them with others. Additionally, last year the Clerk was required to submit certain information to the Secretary of State in response to a complaint. A Sunshine Request to the SOS resulted in Osage documents being provided, indirectly from the Clerk, but proving that all the information did come from her office at some point.
Suffice it to say that I am in possession of the documentation needed to make these calculations and happy to share it with anyone interested in reviewing them (http://HandCounting.com/OsageSunshine).
A better way to prove calculations are incorrect is to provide your own calculations with documentation. The Clerk published an opinion piece in the UD on May 20, 2023, in which she stated that the hand-counted election of April 2023 cost over $21,000 and did not save very much money. A Sunshine Request asking for the financial report supporting that claim was returned with the reply that no such report exists. So where did the $21,000 number come from?
My Lincoln Day presentation was about cost-savings, but the Clerk expresses frustration with “certain people who make a big media stink” about voting machines and “yet they do not come to the public testing.” I did go to a public testing in 2022. I asked these questions (Clerk’s answers are in the parentheses): How many ballots are tested? (25); Who marked the ballots? (The vendor); Who programmed the USB drive that counts the test ballots? (The vendor); Who counted or gave the results the machine should tally? (The vendor). This “public testing” is called the “Logic & Accuracy” test. Cyber and computer experts refer to it as a “dog & pony” show and I have come to agree with them.
I strongly recommend everyone make use of the Sunshine Law. It is a tool for citizens to keep “tabs” on their elected officials. The requests are easy to make – helpful information is available on the Attorney General’s website.
You can request just about anything – from financial records to emails. Emails, especially, are a great way to find out what your elected officials might be saying about you or your efforts and with whom!
Linda Rantz
