Editor's note: This script has been updated to reflect clarifying statements from Ada County Elections, regarding GPS Trackers and ballot printing on demand
Ada County Elections will be rolling out more ballot on demands and a new GPS tracker, to track the location of ballots to and from polling locations to the election headquarters.
- Early voting takes place Monday through Friday until May 17th,
- Absentee Ballot application deadline is May 10th.
- Ballot on Demand allows for ballots to be printed immediately after the normal check-in process rather than using one from a pre-prepared stack of ballots.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
We're less than two weeks away from the May primary election and early voting is already underway.
I’m your Boise Bench Neighborhood reporter Jessica Davis here at the Ada County Election Headquarters where I asked election officials about what’s new this election cycle.
The elections office prepares months before the election.
This cycle some voters will see additional equipment at their polls for Ballot on Demand.
Ballot on Demand allows for ballots to be printed immediately after the normal check-in process rather than using one from a pre-prepared stack of ballots.
“It eliminates any potential error for issuing the wrong ballot at a precinct or early voting so I'm sure, so it ensures everyone gets an accurate ballot based on their voting residence,” says Saul Seyler, Elections Director for Ada County.
Trent Tripple the Ada County Clerk, says, "We felt like it would be advantageous for us to expand that ballot on demand into some of our precincts for election day voting we have done that in the last couple of elections on a small scale at a couple of precincts.”
The ballot on demand will be available at 26 sites, servicing about 46 of the 197 precincts.
Along with the ballot on demand, Ada County is offering a ballot verifying software, that allows voters to see ballots from past elections and match it with the computer tabulation.
Tripple says, "This will be the first election in which we go through the full process and get our timing down in terms of when we get all the information on election day and then the weeks after getting that information to the software provider so we can present that information in the way that we've done it.”
Brand new for this election will be GPS trackers,
"That’s just allowing us to have warm and fuzzies as to where the carts are going, that they're arriving at proper locations for their precincts and we can track them back in,” says Tripple.
After our story aired, the Ada County Elections Office reached out to clarify the trackers saying, "These GPS trackers stay in the election cages. The cages that are deployed have everything precincts need. Once election night ends, everything is packed in cage, and the cage is left to be picked up by election officials."
You have plenty of time to cast those ballots, early voting runs Monday through Friday until May 17th with election day on the 21st.
