To the editor:

I was honored to be one of the election judges this year for my precinct.

On the election day, all the head judges, head judge in training (I and one more lady), and early shift election judges showed up a bit before 6 a.m. when we were expected to be there.

All the tables, voting machine, poll pads, tapes/stickers on the floor, and voting stations were all ready to go. The county folks must have been set them up on the night before. Thank you, county staff!

Our jobs starts with, surprise, surprise, counting blank ballots and receipts, and also making sure the voting scanner started with zero, and nothing in the vote scanner. Then on, throughout the day, we count, re-count, and verify the numbers. And at the end of day, again we count, re-count, verify, and repeat. By the time we went to the Brown County Court house with all the items we needed to return, it was past 9:30 p.m. Then, guess what county staff had to do? Yep! Verify the numbers! I am afraid to think about what time those county folks were able to go home or were they able to go home on 11/3/20??

We, election judges, took our jobs/tasks very seriously. Throughout the day, county staff stopped by checking in with us to make sure everything was ok. One poll watcher who was there throughout the day was respectful and made sure that he was not interfering with voters’ privacy. Thankfully, no obnoxious voters who interfered this voting at our site.

I want to thank county and other election workers. Your job is often a thankless job, but very patriotic job. I appreciate your sacrifice by working very hard. Because of you, democracy exists and continues. Thank you!!

Naoko Meyer

New Ulm