Election bureau talks security, keeps checks in place to control ballots, voting machines
When polls close on election night, the voting machines used at Butler County precincts will be transported to the election bureau’s West Cunningham Street office by multiple county employees, and the ballots — placed in sealed containers — are taken there by a team of two poll workers from each precinct.
Staff at the Butler County Bureau of Elections then checks that the seals are intact as the containers arrive at the bureau, and the ballots remain in those containers after Election Day, according to bureau director Chantell McCurdy.
“No machine or ballot is left in the custody of any one individual for security reasons,” McCurdy said.
When a vote is cast at a poll, the vote and an image of the ballot are stored on a machine-specific USB media device that is plugged in to the voting machine.
Those USB devices are removed from precinct scanners at the end of Election Day and returned to the bureau with the ballots, she explained. The ballots are downloaded from the USB devices into a software program that counts the votes, McCurdy said.
McCurdy said accuracy and security are critical when tallying votes. Votes cast at polls and the voting machines are carefully handled to maintain those values, and several steps are to check accuracy of the vote count, she explained.
“Precinct scanners print reports on Election Day,” she said. “The poll workers sign those reports and reconcile the number of ballots they have given out that day against the number of voters in the poll book and the number of ballots placed through the scanner.”
The reports are brought back to the bureau with the USB media device and ballots, she continued.
“The USB media device is loaded into the equipment software,” McCurdy said. “The totals in the software are checked against the scanner results reports from Election Day and the poll books by election bureau employees.”
The Butler County Election Bureau had input 27,613 applications for mail-in and absentee ballots for the Nov. 5 general election, the highest since 41,742 were received for the 2020 general election, the bureau said Friday, Oct. 18.
Beginning this month, the bureau began sending mail-in and absentee ballots to the thousands of voters who applied for them. Mail-in and absentee ballots must be received by the bureau by 8 p.m. on Nov. 5 to be counted.
Voters who receive those ballots can send in their completed ballots as soon as they receive them.
When the bureau receives those ballots, they are processed through the ballot-sorting machine that sorts them by precinct and checks that the envelopes contain the required information and materials, McCurdy said.
The envelopes are then recorded into the voter registration system and organized alphabetically for each precinct. Reports, which are periodically printed out of the voter registration system, are manually checked against the ballot envelopes to ensure all envelopes are recorded and organized correctly.
All ballot envelopes recorded as “received” and “complete” are opened and counted on Election Day, in accordance with the state Election Code, McCurdy said.
