Big thanks to election dept.

I want to give a big public thanks to the Flathead County Election Department. After being sequestered for 12 hours as a volunteer ballot-counting monitor with this incredibly hardworking and diligent group of people, I was nothing but amazed.

This includes everyone verifying signatures, opening envelopes and organizing ballots by precinct (42), those working as election judges, all the poll runners who were kept busy making sure each precinct had electricity, supplies and was running as smoothly as possible in the face of record turnout, and the seven-member Resolution Board, which pores over individual ballots not counted by the machines to ensure every vote that can be counted is in fact counted.

In particular though, I have to thank the four women who stood on a concrete floor in a basement for 20 hours, almost without a break, running more than 18,000 absentee ballots through the machine and meticulously verifying the total ballot numbers the machine was counting was the same as the total ballot numbers counted by the people opening the envelopes — truly a heroic feat.

Everyone should be so lucky as to have the opportunity to witness how hard other people work to make sure your vote counts.

Thank you.

Amy Eddy

Whitefish