Despite rhetoric from national candidates and some state elected officials claiming the upcoming presidential election will be “rigged,” Warren County voters don’t have to be worried about the integrity of the ballots cast here, county officials said.

“I am absolutely confident that we are having a very fair and honest election,” said Sara Dionne, chairman of the Warren County Election Commission and an election commissioner representing District 4.

Dionne and Don Oakes, who has handled the county’s voting machines since the late 1980s, detailed some of the steps the county’s election commission takes to safeguard voters’ ballots and voters themselves when they cast their ballots.

“Everyone who is a registered voter who casts a vote, their vote will count,” Dionne said.

She said all ballots are transported in sealed containers and those who handle ballots follow a strict chain of custody.

“We keep track of sealed numbers and check them on the voting machines and all of the paper ballot transport containers,” she said.

In fact, ballots remain in a sealed container in Warren County for the next two years.

“We keep them beyond any challenge period, which is 20 days after the election. We still have them sealed for the next two years,” Dionne said.

To make certain voters do not feel undo pressure from anyone when at the polling precincts, the election commission stations trained bailiffs at each polling place.

“His or her job is to maintain order and security,” she said. “They allow no campaigning within 150 feet of the precinct and they prevent anyone from talking to voters. You can’t do an exit poll or even discuss your vote with your neighbor within 30 feet of the polling place. You come and vote and move on.

“In fact, if someone gets out of their car and comes up with campaign pins or hats or anything like that, they have to remove it before coming into the polling place,” Dionne said.

“I am so pleased at the interest in this election and the voter turnout we are having in the absentee ballots,” she said. “Come and vote in person. It’s a privilege to elect officials in our government.”

Oakes said he is one of two people who take care of Warren County’s voting machines. The other is Dr. Jim Moore.

“Our job is to keep the voting machines up, test them, load the election information to the memory cards, seal the machines and get them to the precincts,” he said.

Oakes and Moore also get the results out of the voting machines and load them to a server at the county courthouse, accumulate all of the data from the precincts and merge into one set of data.

“The only way this election can be rigged is through Dr. Moore or I doing something. Even if that happened, we have backups and fail safes,” he said.

The voting machines have “checks and balances” during each step in the election procedure, Oakes said.

“There is no way for someone to hack in externally with electronics,” he said. “The machines have no connection to the internet and no wifi connection at all. There is no way anyone can hack into these machines.”

Voting information is saved on a memory card in each machine, and those cards are used to deliver information to the county’s server, which tabulates election data.

“I have a very strong, confident feeling that these machines and this election can’t be tampered with in some electronic way,” Oakes said. “I know there’s an awful lot of talk out there, and a lot of it is ill-advised, but I don’t see how the election can be tampered with through the machines in Warren County. We just have too many checks and balances.”