- Pinal County officials quickly built a $32 million election headquarters that more than quadrupled the previous space and has walls of windows so that more observers can more easily watch the vote-counting process. They added more cameras inside and out to create a trove of surveillance footage.
- Election workers now strap GPS devices onto the cages that transport equipment and ballots to and from polling sites, creating a record of every movement. The need for this came after trying to disprove rumors in 2020 that a school bus filled with voting equipment had been abandoned in a nearby desert town.
- The wiring for machine tabulators runs through see-through grates instead of behind drywall so that officials can prove that the equipment is not connected to the internet and possibly hackable, a popular false theory.
- County leaders launched an outside review of the election and cybersecurity systems to “unequivocally prove the integrity” of the process after a Republican county leader raised doubts about the legitimacy of the July 30 primary. The outcome is expected in October.
“When you know in your soul there is nothing to hide, being open about the process is a no-brainer,” said Pinal County Recorder Dana Lewis (R), who helps oversee elections. “Even when you pull the curtain back, there are still people who lurk in the shadows, but we are going to continue to try with logic, accuracy and reason to combat the narrative of distrust in the elections process.”
The new headquarters illustrates how many officials around the nation are trying to rebuild confidence in elections. Trump’s relentless focus on how votes are cast and counted — along with false and fantastical information floated by him and his prominent supporters — has led to a dramatic increase in the number of people who are observing and scrutinizing the process across the nation. In just a few short years, the election process in many states, especially closely watched battlegrounds, has been transformed.
Election officials are hosting open houses and trainings so that those who are curious about or skeptical of the process can see it for themselves. They are video recording ballot-counting procedures so people can watch live streams from their homes — or request the footage later. They are setting up video cameras at ballot drop boxes, which were central to a baseless theory in 2020 that purported “mules” had illegally stuffed the boxes with votes for Joe Biden.
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