County elections office previews May special election, flags ballot proofing error and vendor invoice

Grant, a staff member with the Williams County Board of Elections, told the Board of Commissioners during the regular session that the office has slowed since the last election but is preparing for a statewide special election set for May 6.

The elections office is updating routine procedures and said machines are current. “There are no major updates that need to happen soon,” Grant told the commissioners. He said vendors demonstrated next‑generation voting equipment at a recent conference but characterized such upgrades as long‑term possibilities that would likely depend on future state funding.

The office described the county’s statutory post‑election processes as a key safeguard. “It’s now statutory actually that we conduct audits of the election results, after every single election,” Grant said, describing the audit process and its scope. He said audits are done by randomly selecting whole precincts and that audits must cover at least three contests when three contests exist on a ballot. Grant said the county’s recent audits demonstrated “that our results were counted, they were 100% accurate.”

Grant also addressed proposals and legislative discussions the office has watched at the state level about eliminating electronic tabulation in favor of hand counts. He said demonstrations of hand tabulation at a conference illustrated how much longer and how more error‑prone manual counting could be. “It was very complicated. It was something that made having results much less timely,” he said, adding that hand…