Whatever the results of Tuesday’s elections, it is all but certain that they will accurately reflect the wishes of Maine voters. That’s a testament to the hard work of the many people who help operate the hundreds of polling locations across the state, and to the safety of a process with so many checks and balances that infiltrating it seems laughable, despite what you may have heard from Gov. Paul LePage and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president.

Trump has been particularly unrelenting in making this bogus claim, using an appearance in Maine to call the nation’s voting system “rigged.” LePage followed that up by saying, without any proof, that some counties in the U.S. have more voters than residents, and that Maine elections aren’t “clean,” because voters don’t need identification to cast a ballot. Noncitizens and even the dead vote can vote here, he said, again without any evidence.

That’s an affront to the municipal clerks and their staff, as well as to the Secretary of State’s Office, who together on Tuesday at sites around the state will conduct elections in a way that we should proud of, producing high turnout with few problems.

In fact, any issues are usually the result of honest human error, and those are rare, and easily fixed.

The secretary of state maintains a statewide master voter list connected to databases from the Social Security Administration and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, to catch voters who die or move. All absentee ballots are tracked, so people cannot vote more than once.

In fact, the ballots are guarded from beginning to end, mailed to clerks in each municipality sealed with a receipt. They are then counted, verified and placed in a container with a tamper-proof seal. They are opened on Election Day in front of a witness from each party — poll watchers who oversee the entire process, from when the polls open to when the official winner is certified, assuring that all the rules are followed.

All Maine voting is done on paper ballots, then counted by hand or by a standalone machine that is password protected and not connected to the internet, so hacking is not a possibility.

And after the election, an audit accounts for each ballot issued.

Gaming that system is highly unlikely, though any kind of election fraud is rare.

One nationwide study found 31 credible instances of fraud out of more than 1 billion votes cast 2000-14. Another, covering all elections 2009-11, found just 150 cases of alleged double-voting, 56 cases of non-citizen voting, and 10 cases of voter impersonation.

More prevalent than voter fraud is voter intimidation or purposeful vote suppression. In North Carolina, for instance, Republican lawmakers worked to close early voting sites during hours used heavily by minority and Democratic voters.

Anyone who witnesses or experiences voter fraud, harassment or other issues can contact the Secretary of State’s Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Maine, or ACLU of Maine.

But if patterns hold, nothing beyond the exercise of franchise will happen on Tuesday.

The last time a possible case of election shenanigans surfaced in a significant way was two years ago, when 21 uncounted ballots in an extremely close state Senate race were found days after the election, prompting people to forward all manner of conspiracy theories.

After an investigation that lasted a month, it became clear that the ballots were counted twice. The cause? Human error, detected just as it should have been by a series of checks and balances. It took four weeks, but the right outcome was reached.

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