Candidates and campaign activists express faith in local election integrity

SanJuans.Today reached out to all four candidates for County Council representatives, as well as leaders in the campaigns for and against the Conservation Land Bank REET reauthorization, and the Fire District #3 levy lid lift.

We asked these leaders the following question: How would you personally describe your degree of confidence in the integrity of our local elections in San Juan County?

Here’s what they said, presented in the order we received their comments.

Kari McVeigh: “I have absolute confidence in the integrity of our local San Juan County elections.”

Justin Paulsen: “Not only do I have full confidence in the integrity of our elections process in our County, I have sincere respect for the work that our elections staff does in the execution of their work – year round.  Having either been on the ballot or worked on initiatives on the ballot multiple times over the last decade, I have always found Camolyn (Armstrong, San Juan County Elections Manager) to be beyond responsive to needs, questions and concerns. Our Auditors office has systems in place to assure that San Juan County will have a free and fair election that we can all have confidence in.”

Rick Hughes: “I have 100% level of confidence in San Juan County’s election integrity and ability to conduct a fair, honest and open election.  Furthermore I believe every county in WA state will hold fair, open and honest elections.  When I was Chair, I would sit on the canvas board, which included The Prosecuting Attorney, Auditor, Election Director and another election official. We looked at and either approved or rejected any ballot that was not counted by election staff. San Juan County has a good, fair and safe process for the entire election process from start to finish.”

Ron Whalen (opponent of Land Bank REET reauthorization): “I am confident in the integrity of our local elections.”

Readers are welcome to write their own statements regarding local election integrity in the section at the bottom of this page. CNL2 Media policy prevents us from publishing comments which do not include the writer’s real name.