Committee holds House Bill 254, advances updated ballot-authentication measure to second reading

The House State Affairs Committee held House Bill 254 in committee and, in the same hearing, introduced RS32460 and recommended it for the second-reading calendar. Representative Steven Tanner, who sponsored the measure, walked the committee through technical changes to how Idaho statutes identify "official election ballots" and how counties may authenticate ballots.

Representative Steven Tanner (first reference as sponsor) said the change responds to technological differences across Idaho's 44 counties and to an incident in 2023 where a ballot used in a logic-and-accuracy test was read by a scanner when a photocopy was run through because a unique identifier feature was not enabled. Tanner said the draft clarifies that where vendors and equipment can generate unique, nonsequential identifiers for ballots, counties may use that feature — but that any identifier must never be capable of identifying the voter.

"The unique identifier can never ever identify…