A new election program being used in Ada County is getting attention from states across the country and has the potential to put to rest false claims about stolen elections.
Ada County Clerk Trent Tripple unveiled the Ballot Verifier program in April, and since then, he said, his phone has been busy.
“A lot of people have taken interest in this,” Tripple told me in a phone interview. “It’s kind of fun to see how easy this is for people to look at and go, ‘It just makes sense.’”
He said the Nebraska Legislature held a hearing on it last week, and states such as Kentucky, Washington, Arizona and several in New England are looking into the program. Tarrant County, Texas, which includes Fort Worth, adopted Ballot Verifier last month .
The Ballot Verifier program allows anyone to look at a pdf version of every single ballot cast in an election, along with how the vote was recorded, what’s known as the “cast vote record.” Users can sort based on contest and drill down to the precinct level, broken down by early voting, absentee voting and in-person Election Day voting.
It allows anyone to individually and independently audit the election results reported by the county. Users can check to see whether there are any anomalies, such as whether thousands of ballots are being suspiciously deposited in one precinct disproportionately to voter turnout.
This kind of verification system is vital because four years ago, then-President Donald Trump told his followers that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen, based on lies that fake ballots had been cast for his opponent, President Joe Biden.
And we all know how Trump’s Big Lie ended on that fateful day on Jan. 6, 2021.
With Trump back on the ticket this year, the fear among many is that if Trump loses again, he once again won’t accept the results and will incite his followers to storm to the U.S. Capitol again.
We never want to go back to that.
The Ballot Verifier program offers a remedy.
Ballot Verifier is a product of Civera, a civics information technology company that helps government agencies provide public information and government data efficiently.
“In terms of settling the nerves of a lot of people who are questioning the elections integrity stuff, it’s had a strong impact, I believe,” Tripple said.
He noted that a gadfly had pestered his office for months after the 2020 election looking for errors and statistical anomalies that might suggest voting shenanigans.
As they were getting ready to launch Ballot Verifier, Tripple said they called him in to beta test it.
“As he got done with it, he said, ‘This is it. This is all I need. This is 100 times more than what I’ve been asking for from everybody else,’” Tripple said.
First in the country
It took about 18 months to get the project up and running, according to Nicole Camarda, public information officer for the Ada County Clerk’s Office, but she pointed out that Ada County was also the first government agency to do this, and a lot of initial testing had to be done.
I’d love to see this spread throughout Idaho and across the country. It would certainly put an end to this stolen election nonsense.
Tripple said a Republican state representative was in his office Friday contemplating legislation to mandate Ballot Verifier across the state.
Tripple estimates that it would cost about $1 million to make it happen. A side benefit is that it would bring some of Idaho’s rural counties’ voting machines into the 21st century (six Idaho counties still hand count all ballots).
Adam Friedman, Civera CEO, told me in an email that it would take Civera 7-to-10 business days to launch the Ballot Verifier to enable voters to review all ballot images and cast vote records from the Nov. 5 general election.
This timeline would apply to any jurisdiction — whether that be a state or county.
That said, Friedman noted, the elections office in the jurisdiction would have to deliver to Civera a complete and accurate payload of ballot images and cast vote records after election results are certified.
Their certification and digitization process could take anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks after an election.
It cost Ada County $20,000 for the initial development and another $20,000 annual licensing fee, which is a ridiculously low cost for something so vital.
Results go back to the May 2022 primary. Results do not go back to the 2020 presidential election because Ada County did not capture ballot images back then.
Tripple said the Elections Office has briefed the Ada County Republican and Democratic parties, with strong support from both.
“It’s good to see that both sides are welcoming this as a refreshing way of really hammering home the point that Idaho elections have never really had a problem, and this just allows everyone to see that on their own, if they wish,” Tripple said.
Election challenges
Ballot Verifier also could fend off expensive challenges from people like Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy who challenged election results in Idaho in 2021.
With Ballot Verifier, Ada County would be able to tell him to go look for himself.
The other beautiful thing about this is that it negates the need to file public records requests for this information. It’s all right there for anyone and everyone to see.
Tripple said that no matter what they do, there are still going to be people out there who just won’t believe the facts right in front of their face.
“I think from the beginning, I’ve always said that 95% of the people will never touch this website,” he said. “It’s just the simple fact that it exists that helps them know that we’re not trying to hide anything.”
And then, maybe, just maybe, we can talk about the issues.
“I want the masses to know that the outcome of Ada County elections, and I would hope for the whole state of Idaho, if we tend to go this direction, is that it reflects the will of the people and those that voted were accurately tabulated,” Tripple said. “And there is nothing here other than to focus on the candidates that got elected and their policy and get to the heart of conversations rather than bickering about who won.”
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