BOISE, Idaho — Ada County is making history as the one of the first counties in the United States to publish all voter ballots online, with voter names redacted. The transparency initiative is designed to restore confidence in the election process, allowing anyone to view the ballots online, including the marks voters made on them, at any time.
Ada County Clerk Trent Tripple led the efforts, and Idaho’s Secretary of State Phil McGrane said it was Tripple’s “passion project,” one that is a helpful tool to increase transparency.
"Whether it's counting the votes for President Trump or votes for Taylor Swift, or anyone else someone voted for, you can see all of that," McGrane said. "Ada County really deserves a ton of recognition for leading the nation in terms of what they're doing. This is truly leading the way."
The online system is called the Ballot Verifier, and it’s available on the Ada County Elections website.
It allows users to pull up any ballot from recent elections, see an image of the ballot, and verify how the ballot scanner read it. This transparency tool gives voters, researchers and anyone curious a chance to verify election results independently.
"This really is an amazing tool," McGrane said. "For anybody who's uncertain or just curious, this gives them a window into a part of the process that no one gets to see."
While Ada County is the first to implement such a system, McGrane said other counties in Idaho also want to follow. However, he said the process will take time.
"It's still going to take time," McGrane said. "This is novel anywhere in the country."
While it will take a few weeks for all the ballots from the November 2024 election to be posted, voters can already access ballots from elections as far back as 2020.