A behind-the-scenes look at how votes are counted in Washington County

ST. GEORGE — It is natural to be skeptical of the voting process. It seems so opaque. There are so many moving parts. How can I trust that my vote is really getting counted?

The Washington County clerk/auditor’s office, who runs elections in Washington County, is very confident in how they manage their elections. So confident in fact, they will let anyone come visit behind the scenes to watch the vote counting process (including a nerdy reporter with a camera and a lot of questions).

Today, November 10, is the canvassing date for most municipalities in Washington County, which means the election results are final as of today. The updated and final results can be found in our report or on the county election website.

As a ballot travels from your home to being recorded as a vote for a candidate, it passes through several stages, multiple redundancies, and four or five teams of eyes before the vote is ever recorded in the system.

It starts as a ballot envelope that you, the voter, have filled out, signed, and sealed. The ballots are collected from dropboxes and mailboxes, and are brought back to the election office.

First the ballots are checked to make sure they are postmarked before the cutoff date. The ballots are then sorted by municipality and city.

Every single ballot is marked down and signed off on by a worker, so not a single one is missed. Once a worker removes the privacy slip and confirms that a name is on the ballot, paper tracking slips are attached to each ballot. These will follow the ballot throughout the entire counting process.

Each step of the way, the ballots are counted to make sure none are lost.

Next, the ballots are verified by a machine. Each envelope has a unique number, and if the machine reads two of the same number the ballot will be flagged and a worker will investigate. During this process the ballots are also marked with another number to make them easier to track.

After the ballots are verified, teams of workers look at the signatures on the ballot and compare them to other signatures on file. These signatures come from voter registration or other government records on file. If the signatures of the person voting and the name on the ballot do not match, the ballot will not be counted.

If a ballot has a signature that does not match, election workers will call the voter and ask them to come in to the office and confirm that it is them. This is called “curing” a vote. If the voter does not come in, the vote is discarded.

Finally, the tracked, checked, verified, signature checked, secured ballots are fed into another machine that scans the form inside the ballot, and the vote is recorded.

It may seem like a lot of hassle, but the extra steps are what make it safe. Election workers told me it would be almost impossible to get a fake ballot through. “We feel like it is really safe,” said Susan Lewis, Washington County Clerk Auditor. “That is why we do it the way we do.”