IDAHO — Allegations have been made across the country and right here in Idaho about the integrity of the election process, especially when it comes to the 2020 presidential election.
The Idaho Secretary of State's office took these allegations seriously and held a recount in a few of Idaho's counties and said the findings show the vote totals were accurate.
According to the Secretary of State’s office, the elections division and the 44 elected county clerks around Idaho make a tremendous effort to make sure Idaho's elections run with integrity. So, when allegations come against the state, the Secretary of State's office wanted to prove just how secure Idaho's election process is.
“When there's a blanket claim made across all of the state, that’s absolutely something we are going to speak up on and that’s what happened in the case of the most recent ballot reviews that happened in three counties across the state,” Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck said.
After reviewing almost 10,000 ballots, officials found a margin of error of less than 1% across that entire population.
“Those errors often attributed simply to human error that easily could have been pushed into the process by the review itself,” Houck said.
Bonner County participated in the recount. Every vote in the county goes through one computer and the results of the recount showed a 0.116% margin of error for Bonner County.
“The most important thing on any aspects of elections is to be an educated voter,” Houck said. “So, because we absolutely believe that one of the most important defenses to election fraud is a well-informed voter, the Idaho Secretary of State created the Idaho Voter Education Project.”
Atvoteidaho.gov under the voter-education tab, you will find over 20 videos explaining specific components of the election process from registration to ID requirements and more.
“All put into two to two and a half minutes, some are as long as three-minute videos that are animated and closed-captioned that you can translate as well into Spanish closed captions if that’s something that you need,” Houck said.
This year's general election is approaching. In November you’ll see races for city council members, some mayors and more. Then, in May of next year will be the primary elections which will lead into the 2022 election cycle where you will see all of the state races including for governor.
