So tonight Erin and I went back to a precinct we visited earlier in the day and watched the election closeout when the polls close. The poll workers at this precinct were great, as evidenced by the infinite patience they showed a woman who came at 7:58 and voted provisionally. The closeout process itself was rather easy, with the workers following the step by step instructions that the county had developed (with photos of each step). The workers literally followed the steps, did their assigned task, and the entire poll shutdown took 30 minutes. They secured everything, locked and sealed everything, and followed the equipment return procedures.

It was clear that the Salt Lake County had spent quite a bit of time and energy into thinking through everything that could go wrong and then developed training and procedures to ensure that it would not. Granted, this was a very low turnout primary but still it was an excellent rollout of a new voting technology.