Vote certification process is underway in District 26

JEROME, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — Election day came, and went… And across Idaho, much of the vote count is complete, including District 26.

“It took a very long time.”

Cy Lootens and his team worked into the early morning of Wednesday, to complete the first count of votes across Jerome’s 12 precincts.

Now, in order to certify the election results, Lootens will work with Jerome County Commissioners to double and triple check ballots.

“We’re using an excel spreadsheet to run through and make sure the numbers we put into the spreadsheet match what came from our machine,” said Lootens.

The process of vote counting has been under scrutiny across the country and Lootens, who has overseen elections for nearly nine years, says the operation is secure.

“We’re 100% confident in our results and we did have that audit last year in May,” said Lootens.

Jerome was one of eight Idaho counties randomly selected for a post-election audit following May’s primary election... as for how the team scored...?

“We matched exactly,” said Lootens.

One additional challenge in this year’s vote counting process, write-in candidate for County Coroner Jason Robertson meant each of the nearly 5,000 ballots needed to be inspected by hand.

“We had to read those write-ins and make sure that they were for the actual candidate, because things like Mickey Mouse don’t count. We had to make sure all of our numbers were correct,” said Lootens.

At the end of the day, District 26 saw a unique result for Idaho, all legislative seats up for grabs were won by Democrats.

“Blaine County has quite a few registered Democratic voters and compared with our Republican voters it’s pretty close to 50/50, so it probably came down to voter turnout,” said Lootens.

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