Phoenix — Inside a safe facility with armed guards in Phoenix, Arizona, the sound of democracy reverberates as ballots are printed, sorted, stuffed and shipped.
The Runbeck Election Companies facility close to the Phoenix Sky Harbor Worldwide Airport will print about 35 million ballots for counties in eight states for the November election, together with Arizona, Nevada, California, Colorado, Texas, Utah, Florida and Illinois.
“We do not over-print something,” mentioned Jeff Ellington, Runbeck’s CEO. “So each step, as we undergo, we print precisely what the counties requested for.”
By the point voting ends on Nov. 5, the power will use about 6,000 miles of paper to print as much as 1.5 million ballots a day, sufficient to fill 51 semi-trucks, and weighing about the identical as two Boeing 747s.
Runbeck takes an image of every poll and checks it for thickness. Ellington says making an attempt to duplicate these ballots could be troublesome.
“It is acquired to be on the suitable paper, the tolerances to chop a poll are shockingly tight, I imply, they’re three decimal locations, and it is not 8.5-by-11 sheets of paper,” Ellington explains.
For instance, Arizona’s Maricopa County alone, which incorporates Phoenix, has “about 15,000 totally different poll kinds,” he provides.
The type, thickness and colour of the paper can range by the machine tabulating the poll, which varies by county. So does the design and structure of the poll itself.
Moreover, each single poll is tracked all through the method.
“There is a safe course of the place the chain of custody of all of those ballots, from paper to ballots, going to the election workplace, to the ballots going to the voters, is all maintained underneath rigorous circumstances,” mentioned David Becker, CBS Information elections knowledgeable and political contributor.
Becker says 95% of all voters on this election, together with all voters in battleground states, will vote on paper ballots. Becker says these ballots are “auditable and verifiable.”
Runbeck works 30 states and Washington, D.C., and a rising a part of its enterprise now facilities round election safety.
“We not too long ago began promoting panic buttons to counties due to all of the threats to ballot staff,” Ellington mentioned.
Up to now, the corporate has bought about 1,000 panic buttons to totally different counties. When pressed, the button alerts 911.
“There’s numerous concern,” Ellington mentioned.
