A common way to ensure accurate and trustworthy results in an election is for a third party to distribute, collect, and count ballots. A third party does not have any vested interest in the outcome of the vote, and they are experts at ensuring accuracy. Having a third party administer elections is a common practice among tribal governments, large professional groups, corporations, unions, and clubs.

The Seneca-Cayuga Nation has held elections in the past that were administered by a third party. For this year’s upcoming election, the Business Committee opted to search for and hire a new company. To select the company, members of the Business Committee solicited feedback from other tribal governments to obtain recommendations. After evaluating several companies, the committee selected Election Trust, based in Bellevue, Washington. Election Trust’s clients include the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe, along with a range of other organizations, including the American Academy of Family Physicians and the National Bar Association.

The Election Committee is responsible for ensuring that the election is conducted in accordance with the Seneca-Cayuga Nation Election and Voting Ordinance adopted March 10, 2020. Employees from Election Trust will manage all aspects of distributing, collecting, and counting ballots under the supervision of the Election Committee. There are multiple controls in place to ensure an accurate count without fraud. The election will be conducted by a mail-in vote only, and all ballots will be mailed to a post office box that can only be accessed by Election Trust employees. Unique pin codes will be used on envelopes to ensure there are not duplicate ballots. Ballots will be counted in the presence of the Election Committee and designated candidate representatives using the Federally Certified Clear CountTM digital scanning platform.

Here is the full process of distributing, collecting, and counting the ballots as described by representatives from Election Trust:

1. The Seneca-Cayuga Nation Officers & Grievance Committee election will be conducted exclusively by mail-in ballot
2. Ballot packets will be mailed to all eligible voters and will contain a ballot, secrecy envelope, and a uniquely PIN-Coded return envelope that is pre-addressed to a special local Post Office box under the exclusive control of Election Trust. 
3. On the morning of the election, Election Trust personnel, under the observation of members of the Election Committee, will open the Post Office box and retrieve all returned Vote-by-Mail ballot envelopes for secured transport to the Tribal Community Center for processing and tabulation. 
4. Once delivered to the Community Center, Election Trust personnel will, under the observation of designated candidate representatives, scan the PINS pre-printed on all returned Vote-by-Mail ballot envelopes to determine which members have participated in the election. Reading and recording this unique PIN-code not only gives that voter credit for participating in the election it also ensures that no duplicate ballots were cast by any single voter. 
5. After building this Voter Credit list, Election Trust personnel will then proceed to slice open each Vote-by-Mail envelope and extract the enclosed secrecy envelope. Once the two envelopes have been separated (thus ensuring a secret ballot as no PIN is associated with any ballot secrecy envelope), Election Trust personnel will open each secrecy envelope and extract the enclosed ballot. 
6. Ballot counting and reporting will be done using the Federally Certified Clear CountTM digital scanning platform: by feeding the paper ballot batches through a scanner, the lead Election Trust teller will digitally record and tabulate each marked ballot. Once all ballot batches have been scanned, the lead Election Trust teller will then work with the Election Committee to digitally adjudicate, or ‘correct’, the software’s initial reading of any and all ballots that, due to they way they were marked, could not be read by the scanner. This individual ‘ballot adjudication’ will be projected on a large screen for viewing by all stakeholders present.
7. Finally, the lead Election Trust teller will print two copies of the Certified Results Report generated by the Clear CountTM platform, one for presentation to the Election Committee and the other for Tribal archiving with all paper ballots as well as an electronic copy of the immutable ‘key-stroke’ record also generated by the Clear CountTM platform. 
8. In the end, everyone present in the count room will have witnessed the entire counting process and the Election Committee’s agreement that every ballot has been processed and counted correctly.  

Election Trust employees and representatives will ensure that every step of the election process is secure. No matter who wins, everyone can be confident that every ballot was counted correctly, there were not fraudulent ballots, and that the results are accurate.