RENO, Nev. (KOLO) – “Use it, train on it, and be ready to go on election night,” says Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar of the new ballot processing machine here in Washoe County.
The Washoe County Registrar of Voters Office is only one of three in Nevada who will be using the machine in the general election.
The machine can process 36,000 ballots in one hour.
By processing we mean verifying signatures every second, and then placing the ballots in its designated precinct.
“Mail in ballots should be arriving in people’s hands the next few days,” says Andrew McDonald, Washoe County Deputy Registrar of Voters. “So, once they fill them out and send them in, through the postal service we are doing daily pick up service. Today we picked up mail-in ballots. Those are military and oversees folks. But as mail ballots come in daily, we have the opportunity to process them starting on October 15.”
If the signature is in question, say what is on the envelope does not match what’s on record, that signature will appear on a screen just feet away from the machine.
The ballot will be held separately, and the voter will be contacted.
However, if the signature sails through the machine with no problem, the ballot will be extracted from the envelope where it will be examined for any damage and prepared for scanning.
Scanning means the ballots are fed through a scanner where the vote is digitized and held for tabulation.
The new technology means on Election Night when all the polls close, the Nevada Secretary of State will release the initial numbers.
Those mail-in ballots counted thus far, and early voting results will be posted first. Same day voting results will follow.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar says he wants to shorten the time between when polls close and initial election results are released.
As time goes on, he says speculation, inaccuracies, and falsehoods have a chance to circulate and damage the integrity of the Nevada elections.
“As somebody who ran in 2022 and had to wait until the following Saturday to find out the result of my election, there is a lot of time for a lot of conversation to take place,” says Aguilar. “What I am trying to do is decrease the amount of time and just give the facts.”
It’s estimated more than 60% of Nevadans will choose mail-in voting this election season.
This machine and the labor it takes to process the ballots prior to tabulation will be invaluable.
While there will be only three machines processing ballots for the general election in Nevada, their performance could determine if more machines will be in place two years from now.
The mail ballot processing machine in Washoe County was paid for by both state and federal dollars.
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