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BACKUS-Auditor-Treasurer Sharon Anderson presented a report on the 2016 election process and outlined her proposals for future election equipment replacement.

She also announced she plans to retire by 2019, and her deputy who specializes in elections, Shari Splichal, also intends to retire in the next five years.

She suggested the board might begin looking for someone who has college training in election oversight management as a replacement for one or both of their positions.

Cass now has 45 of its 73 precinct using mail balloting instead of going to a polling place to vote in person. Mail balloting generally has been well received, with good voter turnout, she said.

However, there seems to be a learning curve when new districts are added or a new resident moves into a mail ballot district, Anderson said. She blamed this in part on general information overload-online from many devices in addition to junk mail.

Some people are throwing out their mail ballots with the junk mail, then having to come to the courthouse or one of the limited number of other approved sites to vote on election day.

This situation caused Cass to be the last in the state to turn in its vote tally to the state last November, because they were waiting for ballots to be brought to Walker from Pillager, she said.

There needs to be better voter education in her view, and there needs to be a designated person to drive ballots to Walker.

Online voter registration apparently was a hit, she reported. New voter registration was up overall, but election day registrations were down.

Cass had a typical 80 percent voter turnout in 2016. Its residents cast 6,638 ballots by absentee or mail balloting for 41 percent of the total cast in the county, Anderson said.

While she hopes there will be some state cost sharing to purchase new voter equipment to replace the county's 15-year-old vote tabulators, she told the board she plans to buy new equipment before the 2018 elections with or without state money.

The current equipment is becoming too undependable, she said.

Town halls will need to be heated while the voting machines are in them, she added.

Anderson would like to see the Legislature allow counties to post sample ballots on their websites rather than in newspapers.

She plans to offer election judge training online by the 2018 election cycle.

On the topic of election fraud, she said it is very difficult to do here, because Minnesota's voter registration system cross-checks electronically every person as they register to vote. In addition, Minnesota is one of about 25 states who share their voter registration records and voter ineligibility records.

If someone had previously registered to vote in one of those states, it will show up when they try to register to vote here, she said. It also checks all participating states' records for people who are ineligible to vote.

She would like to see more states participate in this program.

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