Ada County Elections Office unveils online Ballot Verifier tool
Ada County Clerk Trent Tripple, center, joins Civera CEO Adam Friedman, left, and Ada County Elections Director Saul Seyler, right, introducing the online Ballot Verifier tool on Wednesday at the Ada County Elections Office. (Clark Corbin/Idaho Capital Sun)
Ada County Elections officials unveiled a new online Ballot Verifier tool for the public on Wednesday, saying the first of its kind program is designed to increase election transparency.
Members of the public can use the free online Ballot Verifier tool to view scanned images of all ballots and those ballots’ corresponding cast vote records for every Ada County election from 2022 forward, Ada County Clerk Trent Tripple said during a new conference in Boise. The images of ballots do not contain voters’ personal information.
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That allows anyone to confirm that ballots and their corresponding Cast Vote Record were tabulated correctly and that the total votes reported in an election were reported accurately.
“I don’t know that we can get more transparent than what you are about to see,” Tripple said. “There is everything that you could ever want to see when it comes to election administration in this application.”
Tripple told reporters the goal was to combine technology with government records to increase transparency and confidence in elections.
“This was a great area to do it in so that citizens could have insight into our processes and they can increase their trust in how we conduct elections,” Tripple said.
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Previously, images of ballots and Cast Vote Records were available for public inspection, but only after someone filed a public records request for the data. The Ballot Verifier tool is a way to proactively make that information readily accessible online.
Ada County paid a software company called Civera to develop Ballot Verifier. Tripple told reporters it cost $40,000 for development, plus ongoing licensing fees.
Although the elections data in the tool only goes back to 2022, data from future elections will be added to the Ballot Verifier database after future elections take place, Ada County elections officials said. Tripple said he expects it will take four to six weeks for data from an election to be uploaded and accessible in Ballot Verifier.
During Wednesday’s news conference, Tripple and Civera CEO Adam Friedman said the images of the ballots are taken by the scanners that are used when votes are counted on Election Day.
Tripple said Ada County is the only Idaho county offering the Ballot Verifier tool.
The post Ada County Elections Office unveils online Ballot Verifier tool appeared first on Idaho Capital Sun.
