Phoenix — At a secure facility staffed with armed guards in Phoenix, Arizona, the sound of democracy echoes as ballots are printed, sorted, filled out and mailed.
The Runbeck Election Services facility near Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport will print approximately 35 million ballots for counties in eight states for voting. November electionincluding Arizona, Nevada, California, Colorado, Texas, Utah, Florida and Illinois.
“We don’t overprint anything,” said Runbeck CEO Jeff Ellington. “So every step of the way, as we move forward, we’re printing exactly what the counties have asked for.”
When voting ends on November 5, the facility will use approximately 6,000 kilometers of paper to print up to 1.5 million ballots per day, enough to fill 51 tractor-trailers and weighing about the same weight as two Boeing 747s.
Runbeck takes a photo of each ballot and checks its thickness. Ellington says it would be difficult to duplicate those ballots.
“It has to be on the right paper, the tolerances for cutting a ballot are incredibly tight, I mean, there are three decimal places, and these are not 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper,” says Ellington .
For example, Arizona’s Maricopa County alone, which includes Phoenix, has “about 15,000 different voting styles,” he adds.
The type, thickness and color of paper may vary depending on the machine that tabulates the ballot, which varies by county. The same goes for the design and presentation of the ballot itself.
Additionally, each ballot is tracked throughout the process.
“There is a secure process in which the chain of custody of all of these ballots, from paper to ballots, to the election office and to ballots sent to voters, is maintained under rigorous circumstances,” he said. said CBS News elections chief David Becker. expert and political contributor.
Becker says 95% of all voters in this election, including all voters in battleground states, will vote on paper ballots. Becker claims these ballots are “auditable and verifiable.”
Runbeck works in 30 states and Washington, D.C., and a growing portion of its business is now focused around election security.
“We recently started selling panic buttons to counties because of all the threats to poll workers,” Ellington said.
So far, the company has sold around 1,000 panic buttons in different countries. When pressed, the button alerts 911.
“There’s a lot of concern,” Ellington said.
Kris Van Cleave
