MABANK–The Cedar Creek Republican Club heard from Henderson County Elections Administrator Paula Ludtke at their regular meeting May 26 at Vetoni’s Restaurant.
In her 17 years with Henderson County, the last year with the Election Administration, Ludtke has done it all when it comes to election season and was on hand to explain just what she does and how her and her colleagues work hard to maintain fairness and integrity to all ballot boxes for all voters.
With just over 82,000 people in Henderson County, over 52,000 of them are registered voters, so Ludtke’s office handles quite a bit of ballots, both for early voting and on election day.
Ludtke spoke on voter registration, mail-in ballot applications, voting center locations and what her office does to maintain security over all ballots and ballot boxes to ensure everyone’s vote is counted and that each one is legitimate. Her office follows each ballot from when the voter is handed their slip until it is counted and registered in the polls. 
After all the uproar of the 2020 Presidential election and the lawsuits and multiple counts and once all votes were certified, there still remained doubt among many voters.
In Henderson County, Ludtke promises that the process is open for all eyes to see just how the process is of counting ballots and how secure the system is in tabulating the votes and making sure the checks and balances are in place to keep voters at ease.
“There is a big system of checks and balances to it,” Ludtke said. “We go through logic and accuracy testing. That’s open to the public if you want to watch, but we test every which way that machine is reading correctly and that it’s programmed correctly.” 
The office also makes sure that all serial numbers on ballots match the voters’ information and make sure voters don’t vote twice, either by accident or purposefully. The State can also audit at anytime to make sure that ballots are in order and votes are correctly tabulated. 
Information for voting, voting center locations and voter registration can be found at sos.state.tx.us, henderson-county.com and votetexas.org.
The next Republican Club meeting will feature newly-elected Tool Mayor Tommy Lawhon as the keynote speaker at 6:30 p.m., June 23 at Vetoni’s Restaurant in Mabank. The next CEC meeting will take place at 6:30 p.m., June 27 at the club’s headquarters with newly-elected Precinct chairs being sworn in. The club will then take a break for the months of July and August.