By: Greg Knight, News of the North
Before and after the polls closed at eight o’clock Tuesday night, city officials worked to ensure the ballot count was accurate and complied with election integrity regulations put in place by the CBJ.
Ballots from Juneau’s five drop boxes and two vote centers were securely delivered to the city’s Ballot Processing Center on Thane Road. That center has been in operation since 2022.
Once ballots were inside, teams of two verified voter signatures, separated secrecy sleeves, and fed the ballots into high-speed scanners, all under strict chain-of-custody rules. Each envelope and unique barcodes were cross-checked to prevent double counting.
CBJ Municipal Clerk Breckan Hendricks says that election integrity is taken seriously by the borough.
“We need to make sure that we’re transparent, that everybody has faith in our system,” Hendricks said. “A lot of people don’t understand it. We have our election rules and procedures online now, on our juneau.org elections page, and we’re trying to get more PSAs out there, trying to make people hopefully understand the process a little better to give them more faith in our system. I know that there’s a lot of hesitancy with by-mail ballots, and we really are following all the rules and regulations to make sure that there’s no gaps.”
One thing to note is that mailed ballots postmarked on Tuesday and those needing signature fixes can be counted through October 21.
In the end, Hendricks told News of the North that patience is key, and that accuracy comes before speed in Juneau’s current vote-by-mail system.
