Election rules, security measures detailed

SANDPOINT — During Commissioner Asia Williams’s weekly commissioner chat, Bonner County Clerk Mike Rosedale answered numerous questions regarding election season and how voting is handled in the county.

Rosedale started the April 16 chat by talking about how Election Day operates. Staff arrive at the polling places at 7 a.m. to set up and take their oaths of office. Doors are promptly opened at 8 a.m. for voters. Those doors remain open all day until closing at 8 p.m., Rosedale said. An announcement is made at 7:30 p.m. to remind voters there is only half an hour left before the polls close..

“The rule with that is — you have to be in line, you can’t come after 8 o’clock,” he said. “So it would be like somebody hanging the ‘lane closed’ on your Costco cart.”

The same goes for dropping off absentee ballots, he said. All votes must be dropped off prior to 8 p.m. Any ballots brought after that cannot be counted.

Once polling closes, ballots are collected and numbers are tallied up before they are sent to the Bonner County Administration Building for official counting.

Many questions were asked regarding absentee ballots, specifically how they are verified by Rosedale’s staff. Each absentee ballot must be put in a specific envelope and that envelope must be signed by the voter and every signature must be verified for the vote to count.

“The day they come in, if they come in late at night, we validate them — or we check their signatures — first thing the next morning,” he said.

The clerk said that every January, his staff attends a class on how to properly verify signatures as there are certain signs to look for to authenticate one. 

“It’s an art, it’s not a science,” he said. “You can’t put a formula on it and say this is good or this is bad. A lot of times, people have strokes. Lots of times, husband and wife will sign each other’s, which we cannot accept. We have to have them come back in and sign their own.”

Rosedale said that oftentimes, signatures are written so hastily or sloppily that they cannot be properly verified. Other times, voters will leave out their full legal middle name and only write their initial, which cannot be accepted.

Signatures also tend to change over time, he added, but there are oftentimes very distinct points to each signature that staff are taught to look for that can still work to verify the signature.

Every election, there are at least a few signatures that cannot be verified. When that happens, Rosedale said his staff does all they can to contact the voter and have them come in to correct the signature.

This year, Rosedale said the clerk’s office has sent out roughly 1,500 absentee ballots and will likely get about 1,000 of those back by the deadline. Out of roughly 30,000 voters in the county, he said the number of absentee ballots is fairly normal.

Rosedale also said that each absentee ballot must go in its own envelope; two ballots cannot be put in the same envelope, even if coming from the same household. If two ballots come out of the same envelope, neither is able to be counted.

If a voter loses their absentee ballot, the clerk said the easiest remedy to the situation would be to come in and vote regularly on Election Day. If that is not possible, voters can come in and request a new absentee ballot. Staff will use a secure computer system to request that ballot, he said, which will ask if the voter is returning their absentee ballot in place of a new one or if the ballot will be destroyed.

“Either way, it will cancel the barcode on that envelope and there’s no other way that can make it back in now,” he said.

A new absentee ballot will be issued and can be mailed out to the voter if there is enough time for them to receive it and drop it off before the deadline. If not, Rosedale again suggested that voters come in and cast their votes regularly on election day.

Rosedale invited anyone who has additional questions about the voting process to reach out to him, as he wants every resident’s mind to be at ease with Bonner County’s processes.

“I want an absolutely, positively, dead secure election,” he said. “I have confidence in my system, but I also have an open mind that I might be missing something, and I don’t want to miss anything.”