BOISE, Idaho — Idaho’s first post-election audit has been complete. The audit took three full days of visits to eight different counties in the Gem State.
Chad Houck, Chief Deputy Secretary of State said the results from the audit were promising.
“The ballots that were counted in Idaho in the 2022 primary, are the ballots that were cast by the people of Idaho,” Houck said. “The inventory matched, the canvas numbers matched, the count numbers matched, all except for one ballot out of the 20 thousand that we requested, we were able to put our hands on those specific ballots for those specific precincts cast by whatever specific mechanism we were asking for.”
The team of auditors is made up of staff from the Idaho Secretary of State office, along with state-trained representatives from both the democratic and republican parties.
On the first-day, team members audited Ada, Idaho, and Payette counties. On the second day, they audited Jerome and Bonneville counties, and the last day included Bannock, Kootenai, and Madison counties.
“We had originally set up to have a point five margin of error threshold and there wasn't a single county that was even remotely close to that,” Houck said.
According to Houck, Bonneville and Ada Counties saw perfect runs, with a zero percent margin of error. However, some variations were noted in other counties.
“19 in Kootenai, about six or seven that were found from sorting errors in Bannock, and then Madison with about another four or five that were all found by sorting errors as well,” Houck said. “Really successful day altogether.”
Houck said that at the end of the multi-day process, when auditors came up with numbers that didn't match a certain precinct's count, they were ultimately able to attribute all but one of them to a procedural error.
“Adding some information to the investor cards, one of the great things that we saw in one of the counties that we were in, was as soon as we pulled the box off the shelf we knew simply because it was labeled as box one of two, we knew that we had another box even if it was just a couple more ballots for that count so that we didn't previously leave one on the shelf,” he said.
Houck said the collected data will be shared with Boise State University where experts will look at the margin of error and statistical components. Houck said they will continue to study their model and adjust procedures in the field for the general election if needed.
“Having these procedures and knowing that all these ballots are correctly segregated and separated and sorted out to where and when you get into one of those races, you can actually get into that recount, those are the things that we are actually hoping to increase.”
Watch more Idaho politics:
See all of our latest political coverage in our YouTube playlist: