Joel Miller responds to critical letter

Response to Gary Thompson's June 30 letter 'Joel Miller should focus on doing his job”:

Did some precinct election officials, or PEOs, make mistakes on Election Day? Yes. Did they correct their mistakes? Yes. Am I responsible for their mistakes? Yes.

Did any of the mistakes affect the election results? No. I encourage you to become a PEO and work a 16-hour Election Day along with Supervisor John Harris, who recently signed up to work an election. You can apply online.

I do not subscribe to the premise that unless you are perfect, you cannot question another person or another elected official. No one is perfect.

Do I question other elected officials? Yes. For example, I am questioning the Iowa Secretary of State on why the elections infrastructure in 20 to 30 of Iowa's counties is not being monitored for hackers.

Did our new electronic pollbooks work as planned in the June primary? No. Since the election, I met with the vendor, and I have no doubt the pollbooks will operate flawlessly in November. Unlike the Linn County Board of Supervisors, which paid for the property tax system software before it worked, I have not paid the pollbook vendor one cent.

Last week, I gave supervisors a chance to buy cellular modems for our voting machines so our election results could be reported as soon as other counties. They declined to give me the money.

And finally, my office never has released nine-digit Social Security numbers on anyone. I am doing my job.

Joel D. Miller

Linn County Auditor