How Cuyahoga County tracks ballots after the polls close

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Election Day is less than two weeks away, and once polls close Nov. 3, a process begins to track ballots from voting machines to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

Memory sticks are removed from every voting machine after polls close, and paper ballots are sealed inside a red bag.

“The red bag is the hot bag that has ballots and memory sticks,” Tony Kaloger, deputy director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said.

The bag is not moved by one person alone. “They drive together in that vehicle to a drop-off location,” Kaloger said.

Kaloger has worked through the process hundreds of times. He said nothing happens without more than one person involved.

At each of the county’s 30 drop-off points, a second bipartisan team takes over.

“They’ll have a chain of custody, and they’ll inventory and make sure that, hey, if there’s supposed to be one red bag and three gray bags, they make sure that all the materials are there,” Kaloger said.

Kaloger said officials count bags carefully because the risk is doubt in the process, not fraud.

“Having confidence in the process that there’s not, you know, a bunch of extra paper ballots,” Kaloger said.

From the drop-off points, memory sticks are taken directly to the Board of Elections.

“This is hand-delivered because it is such an important thing because it does contain the memory sticks of all the ballots. And we handle that with ultimate care,” Kaloger said.

Every ballot is sorted, boxed and labeled by ward and precinct, then locked inside a vault.

“This whole area is secure on election night. We have Sheriff’s Department is here. There are 24-7 cameras here running all the time as well,” Kaloger said.

Kaloger said a sheriff’s presence, cameras and bipartisan-only access mean any problem would be identified.

“There are checks and balances on the back end. If something is missing, we will know it on this end,” Kaloger said.

Results are uploaded to the state using an American-made flash drive used one time.

“This flash drive never goes back in. It’s put into a separate container over there, and it’s never used... Okay, there you go. It’s put in there,” Kaloger said.

Kaloger said accuracy is the priority over speed.

“We want to make sure we’re 100% accurate before we give our final results, okay?” Kaloger said.