ST. GEORGE, Utah — With the election now less than three weeks away, clerks in Washington County did a test run Wednesday to make sure everything is ready to count the votes.
Officials used the test to try to reassure the public that their vote will count on election day as long as their votes are in on time.
Among the largest machines on display was one that didn’t count ballots or find out who people voted for, it just organized the unopened envelopes by precinct and made sure they have the signatures of voters. It’s just the first step in the process that ultimately will result in another machine scanning the ovals and counting the votes.
Ryan Sullivan, Washington County’s main election clerk, showed the public and media members that entire process.
“From audits, all these thousands of ballots have personally been encountered with other teams. I’m super confident these machines are reading the ballots correctly,” he said.
But one of the admittedly few members of the public to take in the test run, David Johnson of Washington City, said even after seeing everything in action, he still doesn't trust the machines.
“Part of my working career was working with machines and electronics and things,” said Johnson, a local and state Republican delegate. “I know that machines make mistakes, just like humans make mistakes. And I also know that any machine can be manipulated.”
Sullivan said while nothing is 100 percent, there isn’t a way for someone from a computer to hack into the machines in Washington County and other election tabulation centers around the state. He said all of the information from the individual ballots, including voters' names and who they voted for, remains on site in an internal server in each county and is not on the internet. The only thing sent out are the raw numbers each candidate or measure receives.
Ultimately, Sullivan had three pieces of advice for voters to ensure their vote counts. The one on top of the list: Use the drop boxes, rather than the mailbox.
“If there’s one thing I can guarantee 100 percent is that if you are going to put anything into a drop box, it will get here,” Sullivan said. “My staff is the one that picks them up. They will make its way back here 100% of the time.”
The other guarantee?
“I would just highly recommend that people vote in person,” Sullivan said. “If you don't vote in person, my personal preference is I use a drop box."
Sullivan acknowledges some people will have no choice but to use the mailbox.
That caused an issue during this year's Congressional primary with Washington and Iron County mail being processed two hours across the border in Las Vegas since the 2010s.
“Ballots weren't stamped in time because the mail was sent to Nevada and then came back, so 1,100 voters that thought they were doing it right because they mailed it before such-and-such-a-date, their votes did not get counted, and that's just not the way our country is supposed to do it,” Johnson said.
That’s still going to be the process in November. While Sullivan said he can’t control the Postal Service, he has met with postmasters to assure the ballots are safe. Still, he said people sending their ballots in the mail can’t wait until the last minute.
“If you're going to vote by mail, do it early,” Sullivan said. “And if it's close to election day, I would take the ballot into the post office and have it hand stamped so that you can make sure that it has a clear postmark date on it. And that has to be at least the day before election.”
He added that just putting a ballot into the outgoing mail on Election Day doesn’t mean it will get an Election Day postmark.
“Whatever you do, do not mail your ballot on election day because it will be late,” Sullivan said. “If you find yourself on Election Day and you've got your ballot, you need to take it to a drop box or head down to one of our in-person vote centers.
Sullivan said there are other safeguards in place to ensure a vote is counted, and it’s counted just once.
- A person who had already voted by a mail-in ballot that goes to a polling place will be flagged if they vote again. In addition, the machines at the in-person voting sites will read one mailed in as invalid no matter how it is filled out.
- A person who has not voted in two years will no longer be mailed a ballot. If they vote in person, their ballot will be considered provisional until it is double-checked.
- At least in Washington County, all of the drop boxes are under 24-hour surveillance. And there are certain seals that assure they can only be opened by an election official.
