Rhetoric of a “rigged election” this presidential election cycle churned by Donald Trump has prompted election officials in the divided and politically critical state of Ohio to repeatedly reassure the public that the voting process is secure.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted declined to react to Mr. Trump and instead listed the multiple safeguards in place in the state.

Mr. Husted said he tries to “stay out of the elections fray” but that the attention on election security had forced him to cross into that realm.

“I want to reassure the public that Ohio is a place where it is easy to vote and it is hard to cheat,” he said.

Ohio’s voting is safe for multiple reasons, Mr. Husted said. Among them: voting machines are never connected to the Internet; every vote has a paper trail attached to it; no one is on the voter rolls who is not allowed to vote; the “friends and neighbors” of voters check identifications at the polls, and the media and the public are welcome to watch, he said.

“We have built an election system in Ohio that has integrity and it is irresponsible for a leader to call into question” the system’s security, Mr. Husted said.

Mr. Trump tweeted on Oct. 16: “The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD.” During the presidential debate Wednesday night, he refused to tell the moderator he would concede if Hillary Clinton wins.

Despite the accusations of elections problems, Ohio and Michigan elections officials are not calling for increases in voter security throughout the states. The elections are already as safe as possible, they said.

Mr. Husted said local elections officials are informed how to protect against hackers.

“We take cyber security threats seriously,” he said. “We have asked private and public cyber security experts to test the vulnerability … including homeland security and the national guard, and where they have found vulnerabilities, we have fixed them.”

He declined to reveal what those vulnerabilities were.

He also acknowledged that voter fraud exists in Ohio, but that it is rare and violators are prosecuted.

His office audited the 2012 election and found fewer than 100 cases of suspected fraud out of 5.6 million votes that were cast.

Others have vouched for Ohio as well.

Voter-rights groups held a conference call last week with reporters to emphasize the integrity of Ohio’s voting process.

“We want to reassure people that Ohio’s elections are fair, they are secure and you can have confidence in the results,” said Carrie Davis, executive director of the Ohio League of Women Voters.

“Ohio has multiple levels of security and the cyber security [threat] is one we are particularly protected against,” she said.

Gina Kaczala, director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, said her staff has drilled repeatedly on the process for Election Day.

Lucas County has 162 polling locations. After the election, memory cards from the touch-screen voting machines are taken in locked bags to ten locations called substations — each of which has two waiting sheriff’s deputies assigned to drive them to the county’s early vote center for tabulation. 

A civilian “watcher” rides with each deputy, Ms. Kaczala, a Republican, said.

“We can see at the early vote center once they get to the substation,” she said.

“On the night we tabulate, our server can never be hooked up to the Internet,” Ms. Kaczala said. “The secretary of state has sent a packet of thumb drives and every 15 minutes a thumb drive is physically walked over to another computer with a secure line exceptionally hard to hack.”

That line is used to send results to the secretary of state’s office, she said.

In the “impossible possibility” that all else fails, each vote has a paper record in Ohio, Ms. Kaczala reiterated.

Terry Burton, Wood County Board of Elections director, said the process in Ohio is fair.

“I think the Ohio model with a bipartisan board and a bipartisan office lends itself to a checks and balance system,” Mr. Burton, a Republican, said. “We always say we are a Noah’s Ark office because we are half Democrat and half Republican.”

Elections boards in each Ohio county have four members — two from each major party. Ties are broken by the secretary of state.

Dispute safeguards in Michigan, which uses paper scanner machines, the Michigan Republican Party plans to send an army of attorneys to polling locations on Election Day to monitor for voter fraud since Mr. Trump has claimed the system is “rigged.”

Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ronna Romney McDaniel, in a fund-raising letter, said she instructed attorneys “to prepare a massive statewide anti-voter fraud effort to go along with our last-minute get-out-the-vote efforts.”

“I won’t let Hillary Clinton steal this election from Donald Trump,” Ms. McDaniel wrote in the Oct. 10 fund-raising letter.

The process in Michigan is decentralized and conducted by 1,603 municipal clerks in cities, villages, and townships using paper ballots that are scanned into a machine. Those voting machines are also not directly connected to the Internet, said Sharon Lemasters, Monroe County Clerk.

Ms. Lemasters said she is “150 percent confident” in the state’s process.

“There is a memory card that holds all the information and that is put in the computer and under seal,” she said. “It is tested multiple times with a predetermined set of results and we hold a public accuracy test for anyone to see that these are programmed accurately.”

Votes are also backed up with the paper record, Ms. Lemasters added.

On Election Day, candidates are allowed to recruit poll observers, which Mr. Trump has asked his supporters to do. 

A volunteer sign-up on his website reads “help me stop Crooked Hillary from rigging this election.”

Electioneering is banned within 100 feet of any polling location under Ohio law but observers can be sent by political parties and candidates. They are allowed inside polling locations to watch.

Ms. Davis said advocacy groups, including the Ohio League of Women Voters, plan to send representatives to observe.

“As we are training election protection field volunteers, we are making sure they are aware of the rules as well so if they encounter any problems or encounter anyone interfering with voters, they’ll let us know right away,” Ms. Davis said.

She asked anyone encountering a problem on Election Day to call 866-OUR-VOTE for English, 888-VE-Y-VOTA for Spanish, and 888-API-VOTE for Asian languages.

Contact Ignazio Messina at: imessina@theblade.com or 419-724-6171 or on Twitter @IgnazioMessina.

First Published October 23, 2016, 4:00 a.m.