An alarming statistic released just ahead of the 2020 election shows that up to 80% of all election officials in swing states failed to pass common core math tests that were considered an essential part of their training in preparation for the election.
Citing new counting standards for 2020, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) issued each polling station common-core math exams to be taken by each attendant months in advance of the election. However, according to their press release, the FEC reports that only 29% of all election officials were known to have passed the test. That average dips to around 20% in the battleground states of North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Wisconsin ranked 48th out of the 50 states with only 8% of election officials having certified themselves as being proficient in common-core, while North Carolina ranked closer to the national average, with 28% known proficiency in common core.
FEC vice-chairman Steven Walther told The Brown Valley Observer that various obstacles stood in the way of getting an accurate reflection of officials’ proficiency, stating that some precincts may have simply failed to return the exams and admitting that he was unsure if some precincts had even issued the exams to their local workers and volunteers at all.
At least one volunteer in Wisconsin admitted to The Observer that she had not been issued the test.
“I’ve been working these polls for years,” election volunteer Bettye Crann stated. “I knew they had the tests, but no one ever asked me to take one. I figured they knew they wasn’t going to scare me off that easy.”
Crann says that she has no way of knowing yet if common-core has created any issues with the counting of paper or mail-in ballots, but admits that the new counting methods are “considerably different and more convoluted” than methods used in the past.
“Here at our station they have us putting the ballots in stacks of exactly 38 and arranging the stacks across the floor in the school gymnasium before we re-assemble them,” Crann stated. “I’m not sure how well it’s working because I’m not really good at common core, but I do know that one volunteer here on the R side of the gym floor was rapped across the knuckles with a ruler for carrying a one, so I do know now that you don’t carry the one.”
“Because the election requires so many volunteers, our hands were pretty well tied,” Walther told The Observer. “Even though the FEC did not have the tests in-hand, we couldn’t operate at a 10, 20, or 30% capacity at any location, and this would have been a tremendous number of polling locations that we’re discussing. In the end, we had to tell the precincts to move forward with their counts and plan on trying the common-core tests again ahead of future elections, after Joe Biden wins this one.”
Another FEC official reported that the figures presented in the study may warrant further investigation. “The report says up to 80% haven’t tested proficient, but that number could be either 8% or 16% as well,” the official indicated, citing that the equation used to calculate the percentage of outliers could have been miscalculated due to using common-core methods.
Brown Valley Observer 