At the beginning of last month our country was once again thrust into a time old and sacred tradition where Americans from near and far ventured from their homes to cast votes for our future. In light of the recent controversies surrounding election integrity, it seemed a worth-while civic project to investigate myself just how our election process works here at home. To accomplish this, I thought it might be fun to volunteer at the Ada County Election Headquarters in Boise, and see first-hand what really goes on behind the scenes.
Arriving shortly before 1pm, I and an additional 50 fellow citizens gathered in the large conference room adjoined to the rear of an administrative building on Benjamin Ave. Here we were promptly sworn in as election officials by County Clerk Phil McGrane. I must admit in reciting the pledge aloud and promising to faithfully uphold the Constitutions of the United States and the great state of Idaho, I became even more determined to be fair, objective and diligent in executing whatever my duties might be.
All the volunteers at Election Headquarters were then assigned randomly to groups each given a different task. The group I was placed in first was charged with preparing the mail in ballots for the tally machine. Specifically, we removed the ballots from their pre-cut envelopes and redistributed them to a tray for submission, checking all the while for any abnormalities which were expressly defined beforehand. These might include a ballot with only one page or one that is outside of the red slip which the ballot directions provide should enclose it. We were sat at tables of two and instructed not to talk about politics or religion. Having lived through many contentious Thanksgiving dinners I found this rule easy to comply with, even making a few friends along the way. The atmosphere was jovial as one might expect of any activity in Idaho, the process organized and the guidelines clearly articulated. Between counting sessions, we were given ample breaks and even provided specialty pizzas courtesy of the Idaho Pizza Company.
The room where we conducted these tasks had no internet connectivity and the entire time all were under the careful scrutiny of security cameras live streaming the event. The ballots were counted on a machine endearingly referred to as “Bessie”. A newly introduced system to the Ada County Elections team at the Election Headquarters, which at significant cost came prepared with the capability to scan nearly 20,000 ballots per hour. According to Absentee Specialist Rachel DenHartog, “The machine has a couple of different functions. One is our incoming scan when we get the mail, we will run it through, and it will date and time stamp the absentee envelope and it also will take an image of the envelope signature so we have a way to process that signature with the signature on file.”1 By all accounts, whether from my own personal observations or the opinions of the officials I spoke with that evening, this new system appeared to perform incredibly well. A fact further validated when Ada County passed a post-election audit conducted by the Secretary of State on November 21, 2022 with flying colors.2
At approximately 6pm I was moved to another team as the vote counting machines previously dispersed to each precinct began to arrive back at Election Headquarters. The votes on these electronic tally devices store the vote count data on a flash drive carefully secured in each unit. The box is first inspected to make sure no tamper markers have been corrupted or disturbed, before the flash drive is removed and handed to a select number of custodians. This is where I came in. It was my responsibility to deliver these flash drives a few steps away to a team for processing, I was then charged with placing the machines back in a locked cage where they are stored in the offseason. At no time were there to be less than two custodians allowed in the cage to prevent against any nefarious activity going unnoticed. Thankfully I was paired with a great team about whom I worried little, but the ability to trust but verify eased any apprehensions I might have conjured without this safeguard. We finished in record time.
In whole I was impressed amidst all the division that plagues our elections in the current, just how smoothly the night went. Everyone worked together to make the process run quickly and efficiently, most importantly, we did it with a smile. The feeling of camaraderie, even amongst those of differing parties surprised me, that is until I realized where I was. This then must be the lesson of the experiment, that the spirit of Idaho is still an unwavering sense of community, and Idahoans carry this positive and inclusive attitude with them no matter the task. I believe it can be confidently said, that even in the act of choosing the direction they are headed, Idahoans never forget to recognize from where they came.
