Missoula Elections Center Offers Public Tours

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - With some members of the public and the media questioning the elections process recently, Missoula County Elections Administrator Bradley Seaman is once again inviting everyone for tours of the election center.

“We started this process a few years ago, but we are holding public tours to come and see this process,” began Seaman. “So we're inviting our elected officials; we're inviting our current candidates; we're inviting members of central committees, our advisory committee, and everybody in the community to see how elections work. We'll have tours coming up over the next couple of weeks with our equipment testing, ballot processing, ballot tabulation, and some of our post-election processes.”

Tours of the Missoula County Elections Center are Available

Seaman said those most concerned with election integrity simply don’t understand the security process.

“As we went through this process, we're really the tip of the spear when it comes to election security and election integrity, we did have quite a few people who didn't understand the process or didn't necessarily have a process they were using with their own individual records requests,” he said. “That's one of the reasons that we like to show people the detailed steps we take to check, double check, triple check, and quadruple check our work here. Coming in here, even our strongest critics have seen one of these tours and left feeling more confident in the process.”

Seaman wants Anyone Concerned about the Election Process to Take a Tour

Seaman carefully detailed what visitors would see during a tour of the Elections Center.

“We'll have tours where we go through and show you the process we use to test our equipment, make sure it's functioning,” he said. “We will show you our checks and double checks and how we verify signatures, and then we'll also show you how we count those ballots and then confirm that our counts were accurate after the election, all of these things are critical parts that happen on every election, which helps us ensure that our elections are run correctly. Coming and learning about this can make people who may have heard news stories about confusing things feel more comfortable with how the process goes.”

For those who can’t attend a personal tour, Seaman said more information can be found on their website.

There are many Online Sources to get the Most Accurate Voting Information

“There are a couple of great resources out there,” he said. “You can go to Missoula votes.com, and there's an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) right at the very front page, which should answer your most common questions. From there, you can also check My Voter Page MT.com. That's going to be our Secretary of State's voter page website that lets you check to see if you vote at the polling place or if you vote by mail, and if you vote by mail, it'll let you see where it was sent and if it was accepted by our office.”

Click here to find out more about the upcoming tours of the Elections Center.