One Idaho county might just have a way to restore trust in elections, after questions still linger about the possibility of fraud and errors influencing the outcome of various races.
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After the controversy over the outcome of the 2020 election, Ada County officials recognized the need to rebuild trust in election processes and began looking into ways to promote transparency in the system, according to a New York Times report.
Voters wanted to know who had built the county’s voting machines. What software were they using? Did any parts came from China? Were the machines vulnerable to hacking? Outlandish claims were spreading in conservative circles across the country that votes had been discarded or altered in a coordinated effort to rig the election.
Trent Tripple, a Republican who had worked in the Ada County clerk’s office and was elected to lead it starting last year, said he was convinced there was a solution that could help people gain confidence in their elections once more: It was time to publish the ballots for everyone to see.
“I was tired of everybody questioning elections in Idaho,” Mr. Tripple said. “The idea is to get the vast majority of people back into this bucket of trusting elections.”
The county worked with software company Civera to develop the Ballot Verifier program, which allows users to sort ballots by precinct or voting method without exposing the identities of the voters. People can search through the database and view different ballots with private information redacted.
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In this way, the county seeks to make the election process transparent and easier to audit.
Some voters marked ballots with unique identifiers so they could verify later that their votes were counted. They used markings such as a serial number on a $2 bill and others.
If this system works, we could see other counties across the country adopting the program.
According to The New York Times piece linked above:
The extraordinary effort is being watched by elections officials around the nation who are looking for ways to restore confidence among voters amid years of distrust.
Anyone with an internet connection can now become an auditor, using the Ballot Verifier program to filter ballots by specific races, individual precincts or ballots that were cast by mail.
Reactions to the program have largely been positive, with many praising the initiative for its potential to build trust in elections while combating misinformation. However, some have expressed concerns about privacy and the potential for vote buying:
One area of concern in the program is making sure ballot privacy is maintained. The Ada County effort will redact ballots in small precincts where few people voted so that deducing a single person’s vote would not be possible.
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Other counties, such as Tarrant County, Texas, have also adopted the system, which could signal that there is already interest in the results it could deliver.
“It’s only a matter of time before that trend catches up to all sectors of government, including elections,” Adam Friedman, CEO of Civera remarked.
If this system works as it seems, then it could go a long way toward addressing valid concerns about election integrity. A program that allows users to view each ballot without exposing people’s identities would be a great way to not only build trust in elections, but also identify suspicious activity.