In the aftermath of the 2020 election, as supporters of Donald J. Trump scoured the nation for any malfeasance that might explain his defeat, the county clerk’s office in Boise, Idaho, was inundated with queries. Voters wanted to know who had built the county’s voting machines, what software they were using, did any parts come from China, and were the machines vulnerable to hacking? Outlandish claims were spreading in conservative circles across the country, claims that votes had been discarded or altered in a coordinated effort to rig the election.
Trent Tripple, a Republican who had worked in the Ada County clerk’s office and was elected to lead it starting last year, was convinced there was a solution that could help people regain confidence in their elections once more. “I was tired of everybody questioning elections in Idaho,” Mr. Tripple said. “The idea is to get the vast majority of people back into this bucket of trusting elections.”
In the coming days, Mr. Tripple’s pioneering idea will be put into effect for the first time in a general election. All 271,186 ballots cast in Ada County in the Nov. 5 election will be published on an interactive website, along with details of exactly how each ballot was tabulated. Anyone with an internet connection can now become an auditor, using the Ballot Verifier program to filter ballots by specific races, individual precincts, or ballots that were cast by mail.
The ballots do not carry identifying information, but some voters this year, including Mr. Tripple, doodled or otherwise marked their ballots so they could later find them when published. The extraordinary effort is being watched by elections officials around the nation who are looking for ways to restore confidence among voters amid years of distrust, stoked in large part by Mr. Trump’s false claims about a stolen election in 2020.