GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Election Day may be behind us, but for some, the election is still very much ongoing.
That some to whom we're referring: election officials.
Now that Election Day is over, local clerks and boards of county canvassers are getting to work on making unofficial results from Tuesday official.
"While we have results reported out to the public - they're on our website - results are unofficial until our Board of Canvassers reviews all these materials and certifies the election," Kent County Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons said.
It's a thorough system of checks and balances, local clerks told 13 ON YOUR SIDE, filled with signatures, seals and paper - lots of it.
"Paper is critical to making sure the election is accurate, to making sure we have something to go back to and to audit, to check through," Lyons said. "We hand tally our paper ballots if we ever do any recounts. It's old fashioned, it's antiquated, but paper, paper, paper."
Such records - including paper poll books, copies of results tapes from tabulators and the paper ballots themselves - are kept under tamper-evident seal for a certain period to ensure everything is documented and results can be cross-verified by the bipartisan boards through several different ways.
"This is done by essentially checking all of the information, checking the poll book information, making sure that the number of voters on that poll book match the number of ballots that were cast in the tabulator," Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck said of the canvassing process. "And that process will last for a number of days as they go through this, basically, this initial audit."
Many times, Lyons said, discrepancies in numbers are easy to identify.
"We can explain a lot of times by just looking at the paper poll book through the remarks there why, perhaps, we issued more ballots than were cast," Lyons explained. "Sometimes, our voters make mistakes on their ballots, and so they'll have to go to the election workers, and we'll spoil that ballot and give them a new one so they can make sure that their votes are recorded accurately."
If there happen to be inexplicable mismatches, however, additional action may be taken.
"If perhaps we can't determine from the poll book why the numbers may not balance, what we'll do is we'll call the local clerk for that precinct, and they will bring the ballots to the canvass where they will be re-tabulated here," Lyons said.
Addressing the nation Thursday morning, President Joe Biden made mention of concerns and allegations made in recent elections regarding their accuracy and integrity.
"I also hope we can lay to rest the question about the integrity of the American electoral system," Biden said. "It is honest, it is fair and it is transparent."
Serving as the clerk of a county widely seen as an all-important battleground in this election, Lyons hopes, through continued transparency and education, trust can grow.
"Elections are the bedrock of our republic, and they're reliant upon public trust in the process," Lyons said. "And I think that's reliant on being able to understand the process. So, education, participation, transparency - those are the keys to helping make sure that you can trust your elections."
They're your elections," she continued. "I want you to be able to have confidence in the outcome."