HB 148

Abstract

This Act makes updates to Title 15 related to the efficient administration of elections. Section 1 requires that ballots and sufficient materials essential for the administration for each election shall be provided to each polling location on Election Day.   Section 2 revises, consolidates, and clarifies the sections of the Code that address opening and preparing ballots for tabulation. Updates are made to the language to reflect the use of electronic scanning and tabulation machinery rather than written tally sheets. It also clarifies the process for creating a duplicate ballot that can be read by the machine in the event the original ballot is unreadable. For administrative efficiency, the Act extends the time when ballots may be opened and processed to begin 30 days before the election rather than the Friday before the election.Finally, instead of requiring the teams of election judges to be composed of half Democrats and half Republicans, the requirement would now be that no more than half of the members of the team may be registered with any one party. This allows independents or members of smaller parties to participate as election judges but prevents any one party from dominating a team, as a safeguard against fraud. The requirement that ballots may only be opened and processed in public meetings, with challengers present, and that the ballots at all times are securely stored is maintained. The results of the ballots are not permitted to be extracted or reported before the polls have closed on the day of the election