How your vote gets counted in Carson City

Whether by mail or in-person, a ballot cast in Carson City follows a path from the voter’s hand to recordation both digital and printed. With the help of more than 80 election workers and a number of bipartisan boards within the Clerk-Recorder’s Office, that path is secure with processes in place to ensure every vote counts, Clerk-Recorder Scott Hoen contended during an Oct. 21 interview.

Hoen said election workers, who get paid $12.50 an hour, are from the community — friends, neighbors, Democrats, Republicans and independents.

“Carson runs a good election. I am proud of what everyone does,” he said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, state law was changed through Assembly Bill 321 to make mail ballots a required option for all elections. Post-pandemic, the Clerk-Recorder’s Office must be prepared for all active registered voters to cast ballots by mail even if a significant portion chooses in-person voting.

In the leadup to this election, the Nov. 5 General Election, the original mail ballots contained an error in party affiliation, prompting the issuance of corrected ballots. The original ballots will only be counted if the voter doesn’t vote in person or doesn’t submit a corrected ballot. Hoen said many people chose to turn in original ballots in person unconcerned about the error, which listed Independent American Party U.S. Congress District 2 candidate Lynn Chapman as a Democrat. In the case of those unconcerned voters, their original ballots will be counted.

All mail ballots must be postmarked before or on Election Day (Nov. 5) but received no later than four days after Election Day — Nov. 9. Hoen has said original ballots will not be counted until Nov. 9 after corrected ballots are tallied.

Hoen expected near-full election results by Nov. 10.

“Poll workers are great,” Hoen said. “They are committed to making this work even with the error. They realize it’s more work on them, so I feel sorry for them for that, but they’re doing their check and their double check, so everything’s fine with poll workers.

“If anybody is skeptical with the systems or process, have them come and walk through what we do here or talk to an existing poll worker to hear the straight scoop. There isn’t anything nefarious; it was an honest mistake, and I apologize.”

Oct. 21, two days after the start of early voting, several election workers were in the Clerk-Recorder’s Office sorting through original ballots, checking them against corrected ballots.

“It’s a manual check, then we’ll have a computer check their manual work … Everything double checked,” Hoen said.

Early voting has already seen significant turnout: 806 people voted in a four-hour period on Oct. 19, according to Hoen and the Secretary of State’s Office.

As of Oct. 21, according to Hoen, 2,430 original ballots had been collected, and 5,638 of the corrected ballots had been collected.

“Saturday (Oct. 19), we probably had up to an hour-and-15-minute wait, and it was constant for four hours,” Hoen said. “This is a very controversial presidential election. Everybody is showing up. We probably had a half-hour wait this morning (Oct. 21) an hour before I left. Everybody is showing up. Everybody wants to participate.”

And despite different modes of voting, every vote is ultimately counted the same.

Keylocks and seals on a voting a tabulator in the Carson City Clerk-Recorder’s Office Elections Room on Oct. 21. In Carson City, printed ballots are kept as records while encrypted thumb drives are used to store digital tabulation. (Scott Neuffer photo) 

In-person voting

“They show up in person at the community center (851 E. William St.). We check them in on the new state registration system called VREMS,” said Hoen. “We check them in on the poll pad. We verify who they are by signature, not by ID. If someone wants to show us ID — and they do — we’ll scan the barcode on the back of the driver’s license, and it pulls the record up fast, just speeds it up.

“When they check in, they basically read an affirmation — I also have it in printout form too — that basically says you’re not going to vote twice. They sign that affirmation, and eight times out of 10, they surrender a ballot, meaning they bring their ballot with them (mail ballot). They don’t have to. Sometimes people bring the ballot in because they want to use it as a cheat sheet when they go vote.”

“When they check in, we give them a blank piece of paper basically with a barcode at the top that tells them what precinct and what ballot to pull up.”

And unlike partisan primary races with different ballots, in this General Election, “everybody gets the same ballot,” Hoen said.

Mail ballots surrendered for in-person voting are kept for record purposes, Hoen said, but are voided in front of the person and cannot be counted.

Inserting the paper, or the ballot card, into the ES&S voting machine pulls up a digital ballot on the screen. Making their choices, the voter will see the paper printed with their choices and can examine the ballot physically before inserting it into the ES&S tabulator.

There are 65 voting machines at the community center and three tabulators. One of the tabulators is ADA accessible. The tabulators record the ballot digitally into an encrypted thumb drive and keep a printed record.

“Carson City and Lander are the only two counties out of the 17 that have ES&S. We’re the only ones that use a paper kind of ballot,” Hoen said, adding the machines are tested and set to zero before every election.

The printed records are collected daily. The tabulators are locked and sealed at night, so any tampering would show a broken seal. The clerk-recorder has the only key to the storage area. At the end of early voting, the thumb drive is collected. Another thumb drive is used for Election Day and is collected at the end of that day, according to Hoen.

The printed records, and mail ballots retrieved from drop boxes, are transported by a bipartisan team consisting of one Democrat and one Republican. The materials are transported in secure bags and logged.

At the end of early voting and on Election Day, the thumb drives are transported with a Carson City Sheriff’s Office escort.

Hoen called the transport team “The Pony Express.”

“On Election Day, I’m estimating we’ll get 5,000 (voters). That’s why we have the sheriff follow us,” Hoen said.

This year, there also will be a polling location at the Stewart Community Wellness Center and Gym, 465 Clear Creek Ave., on Election Day. Any qualified voter can use the new location, Hoen said, and the Carson City Sheriff’s Office coordinated with Washoe Tribal Police to provide an escort of material from the Stewart Community.

“Their tribal elders can now vote on tribal land, and that’s just huge for them,” Hoen said.

After the transport, the thumb drives from in-person voting are plugged into a central election management computer, and a report with results is generated. That computer is not connected to the Internet, Hoen pointed out. To file results with the Secretary of State’s Office, the report is transferred to another computer. The Clerk-Recorder’s Office has a connection with the Secretary of State’s Office for secure file transfer, Hoen said.

Unlike the city’s ES&S machines, the state’s VREMS pads for in-person voting are connected to the Internet. They’re connected to the cloud database of registered voters in the city, and they allow the Secretary of State’s Office to compile voter turnout, Hoen said.

Monitors outside the Carson City Clerk-Recorder’s Office showing the Elections Room where votes are tallied as captured by security cameras. Poll observers can sit and watch the monitors. (Scott Neuffer photo) 

Mail ballots

Mail ballots are picked up at drop boxes by the transport team and taken directly into the custody of the Clerk-Recorder’s Office, Hoen explained. Mail ballots actually traveling through the mail must be postmarked on or before Election Day, and Hoen said the Carson City postmaster was working to make sure ballots could be postmarked up until close of polls on Nov. 5.

When the Clerk Recorder’s Office receives a mail ballot, it goes through two machines. First, a mail ballot goes through a Tritek scanner, which takes a picture of the voter signature and the ballot. Recorded signatures are verified manually, Hoen said, but the scanner will catch anyone who has already voted in person.

The mail ballot then moves on to the counting board, which is a bipartisan group comprised of approximately a dozen workers. They are the ones who remove the ballots from their envelopes and prep them for the tabulator in the Elections Room. The counting board looks for mistakes, for an example, an envelope containing two ballots.

If signatures can’t be readily verified, those ballots are set apart for curing. The Clerk Recorder’s Office will contact voters who need signature curing. The deadline for cured ballots this year is Nov. 12, and although the Clerk-Recorder’s Office will “do everything we can” to reach voters needing a cure, ballots that cannot be cured in time are rejected.

Absentee ballots for veterans overseas, the disabled or other qualified voters are sent to the duplication board, another bipartisan team in the Elections Room. Members of that board print what is essentially an email ballot onto a real ballot to be counted.

When the mail ballots are run through the tabulators, they are by that time stripped of personal, identifying information. Just the raw vote data goes in, Hoen said. Each ballot counted is also marked with a number that is eventually sent, with the vote tally, to the Secretary of State’s Office. This is so an audit can take place by referencing a specific ballot and checking results at all levels, Hoen said.

Like the in-person voting data, the mail ballot data is recorded digitally and stored on an encrypted thumb drive, which is accessed by lock and then plugged into the central computer when ready, adding the mail ballot totals to the in-person total.

A bipartisan effort

Per state law, election materials are sealed in a vault in the Clerk-Recorder’s Office and kept for 22 months after an election. Hoen said people from the both the hard left and hard right, politically, have signed up to be poll workers and have come away from the experience assured that Carson City’s election process is fair and safe.

“I think the far left and far right people are now… they understand Carson City runs a solid election,” he said. “I don’t think we’re going to have any issues.”

Hoen noted, over his tenure, he’s visited Republican and Democratic meetings to educate anyone interested about the process. Outside the counter of the Clerk-Recorder’s Office on Oct. 21 sat two video monitors showing the Elections Room as captured by security cameras. The monitors will be present through the election, and Hoen said if any poll observer sees an issue, he wants to know about it.

“I want him (or her) not to be adversary,” he said.

Candidates have also been informed about the process. The Secretary of State’s Office reached out to the congressional candidates affected by the ballot error, Hoen said. Final results may not be available until several days after Election Day — a reality Hoen himself knows, having won his seat in the 2022 General Election by 206 votes.

Hoen said Carson City is fortunate to have a small number of precincts (24) and nonpartisan offices.

“All the people running for office in Carson City are trying to do the best for everybody,” he said.

More information about the election, including a voter roster, is online: https://www.carson.org/government/departments-a-f/clerk-recorder/elections-department.

More about ES&S: https://www.essvote.com/.