Idaho’s most populous county said it’s ready to count an unprecedented number of ballots next week.
Ada County election officials successfully tested its multi-step ballot tabulation process Thursday afternoon without hiccups.
Ada County Clerk Trent Tripple said his team hasn’t added any new verification steps compared to recent elections. But they have boosted security measures for the equipment.
“We’ve developed cages that allow us to take all of our equipment out that’s under lock and key and it’s GPS tracked so we know where all that equipment is,” Tripple said.
Anyone wishing to count every ballot cast in Ada County will be able to do so as well.
Tripple said scans of every anonymous ballot will once again be uploaded for the public to see shortly following the election.
He said his team has yet to find an error in that data.
“Because we are willing to put those out there, we really look closely to our systems to make sure we’re doing things right. The last thing we want is some kind of discrepancy.”
Those results can be sorted by races, legislative districts and even down to the precinct level. If a particular precinct or race has too few ballots to be properly anonymized, those scans will be blurred, Tripple said.
As of Thursday morning, more than 112,000 Ada County residents had voted early or by absentee ballot. That’s about one-third of all votes already cast in Idaho.
Early voting ends Friday, Nov. 1 across the state. Polls will be open next Tuesday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time.
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