Inside the Gallatin County Courthouse four tabulators are running test ballots to ensure the machines accuracy.
The machines that will count ballots, look similar to a copy machine you’d find in an office. Officials stack the ballots in a tray and they fly through, getting scanned and sorted.
Gallatin County Clerk and Recorder, Eric Semerad says the tabulators remain under lock and key throughout the process and are an important tool.
“With the volume of counting we do, we definitely need to have this to count all the races.If there was one race on the ballot a hand count , wouldn’t be any big deal, But we have a 3 page ballot it’s very tedious to hand count every race“ Semerad said.
Semerad reports at this time a little more than half of absentee ballots have already been returned in Gallatin County.
Once the signature on the envelope is verified the outer envelope can be seperated from the inner secrecy envelope. The Thursday and Friday before election day ballots can be removed from their green envelopes and started to be stacked and flattened.
Gallatin County will start counting votes Monday at 8am and go through 5pm. The count then resumes on election day and will go continuously until the count is done.
“In the last several large federal elections, we’ve been finishing Wednesday evening” Semerad said.
With a new grant this year from the Montana Secretary of State's office to fund the graveyard shift, Semerad says that could help to finish earlier.
“We’ve never really had a consistent count through the night, we're really hoping for that, and maybe that might help us get done late Wednesday morning, that would be great” Semerad said.
A post election audit scheduled for November 15th. The Secretary of State randomly assigns the county a particular district and race, which will be hand counted and compared to the tabulator numbers.
