Harvey County

As Clear Ballot’s first voting system partner in Kansas, Harvey County Clerk Rick Piepho viewed the transition from the county’s older system to ClearVote as an opportunity to make county elections more efficient while maintaining full-faced paper ballots for all voters. While the ease of use of the precinct scanners and ballot marking devices were a selling point for poll workers and voters, Piepho was particularly impressed with ClearVote’s innovative Vote Visualization technology that could allow him and his counting board to ensure all votes were being captured based on voter intent.

“It’s not necessarily just that ClearCount makes it easier, but I think it makes it more efficient,” said Piepho. “The fact that you can look at a race and you look at all the undervotes and you just see all the little ovals. Now you see one with the little slash in it that didn’t count and the board looks at that ballot, and says ‘oh this voter really did vote, they didn’t fill it out like they should have.’”

Maintaining a paper-based system was important to both Piepho and local voters, and having a system that offers all voters a full-faced paper ballot regardless of if it is marked by hand or the ClearAccess ballot marking device was a key part of the county’s decision to partner with Clear Ballot.

“Even if you use ClearAccess, it is still a paper ballot,” said Piepho. “It’s the exact same ballot you’d get if we handed it to you and you filled it out. And you get the opportunity to look at it, and say ‘did the machine do what it was supposed to do - did it fill in the right ovals.’”

For Piepho, the core tenants of the ClearVote system come down to four things - “The system is supportive, innovative, accurate, and secure.”