"I was tired of everybody questioning elections in Idaho," Ada County clerk Trent Tripple said. Those questions, the New York Times reports, included:
- Who built the voting machines?
- What software do they use?
- Do any of the parts come from China?
- Are the machines safe from hackers?
So the county decided to let everyone see every ballot cast in this month's election.
The 271,186 ballots will go up on an interactive website that will include details of how each was tabulated. "The idea is to get the vast majority of people back into this bucket of trusting elections," Tripple said—and to counter the claims being spread across the the US that Ada County votes had been tossed out or changed to rig the election results. Anyone who's online can use the Ballot Verifier program to filter ballots by race, precinct, or those cast by mail, back through the May 2022 primary.
There's no official identifying information on the ballot, but some voters drew or somehow marked theirs so they could spot them once they were published. Tripple is one of them. Another voter wrote in the serial number of a $2 bill, per the Times. Local Democratic and Republican officials have welcomed the move, though some are concerned a flawed system could reveal voters' identities. "It's kind of a shame that it has to be done," said Erik Berg, chair of the Ada County Democrats. "But if it is what it takes to make sure people have faith in things, by all means." (More Election 2024 stories.)
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