Steven Potter:
Can you take me back to say pre-pandemic to today, what those changes included?

Elena Hilby:
Yeah, so pre-pandemic, we didn't even have drop boxes. I'm not sure many municipalities did. There wasn't really a need for them. There was no demand for them. You know, we pretty much are trying to just serve our voters, and so until COVID hit and the United States Postal Service got a little overwhelmed, people were noticing mail slowing down. They were getting more nervous, they wanted an alternative to return their ballots, and so drop boxes came at that point. And even right then when we implemented them, it was immediately, "How do we secure 'em? How do we make sure the ballots are secured into a ballot delivery bag so that no one can tamper with them?" You know, we got all those protocols into place and then there was a ruling that that was not allowed. So all of us obviously stopped using our drop boxes.

Steven Potter:
A ruling by the state Supreme Court, right?

Elena Hilby:
A ruling by, yep — and then when the Supreme Court reversed that and said that it was OK to use drop boxes, and it was at the discretion of the municipal clerk, then those of us who had them and were able to open 'em opened them pretty quickly. Others maybe took a little bit longer. So ours was open for August. I think a lot of people weren't, but they are open for November.

Steven Potter:
How did ballot drop boxes become so politicized?

Elena Hilby:
I think, again, it's probably with people that didn't understand the process or they got nervous about it, the feeling that someone could just go there and stuff a whole bunch of ballots into them, that there'd be ballot harvesting, or that we could make ballots disappear. So, I think it's just everybody's starting to think, "OK, well now that we have these drop boxes, how might they be misused?" And perhaps, you know, it's just people speculating, talking, not really understanding how all the checks and balances that happen in between. So I think, I'm not sure exactly when there was so much concern about whether or not clerks were following the law and acting in an ethical manner, because it never used to be questioned before. But some, you know, popular figures have called into question the ethics of municipal clerks, of election officials, and that has kind of spread. It's just something that's newer in the last four to eight years.