Anchorage election officials explain how ballots are kept confidential and secure
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - City election officials said they expect to receive about 30,000 voted ballots by the end of Wednesday for Anchorage’s April 2 municipal election.
Even though results won’t be tabulated till later, Acting Election Administrator William Northrop said ballots are being processed through a secure system.
Northrop said the question he is asked about most often concerns the barcode on the back of the return envelope. People wonder how their votes are kept confidential.
Northrop said the barcodes — which are unique to each voter — are first scanned into the system to record who has voted, and preventing people from voting twice.
“Essentially what’s happening is, this machine on first pass is marking the voter off on the voter registry as voted and it’s also taking a picture of the signature that is on the ballot return envelope,” he said.
Once signatures are verified, Northrop said the ballots are placed in a locked cage until the envelopes are ready to be opened. He explained the process for removing the ballot from the envelope: teams of two people first remove the secrecy sleeve that contains the voted ballot from inside the envelope, then the envelopes are put permanently aside.
Only then, Northrop said, are the ballots removed from the secrecy sleeve. He said the process is anonymous from that point on.
“Once it’s separated, we don’t know who voted it. It gets put in another cage which is also locked, which also then goes to our scanning team who will scan it into the system.”
The city’s mail-in voting system, which began in 2018, has operated this way for some time according to Municipal Clerk Jamie Heinz. But Heinz said there have been more recent changes in response to concerns about security.
Complaints from election workers that they were harassed by election observers during the mayoral runoff election in the spring of 2021 led to changes in the Observer’s Handbook for the 2022 election. Among other things, election observers are now required to take a training course and tour the Election Center.
In 2023 the election was challenged by a former chief of staff to Mayor Dave Bronson. There were concerns over an internal policy change and the use of a thumb drive to upload election results to the internet. Although the election results stood, Heinz said she has decided to return to using a printer for this election and will take the extra step of scanning the results into the system.
“We aren’t really worried about the extra step, we are worried about election security,” she said. “And so that was a concern, so we’ve just gone back to the printer.”
Northrop said the city has worked hard to make the process as transparent as possible, including installing cameras which broadcast activity at the Election Center to a YouTube channel 24 hours a day. He said people who have concerns are always welcome to see what’s going on for themselves.
“The one thing I like to emphasize is just come down to the election center and see the process see how it works, we are open to the public,” he said.
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