In order to give Iowans confidence that their votes count, a number of groups have collaborated to create an election administrator training program.

Alan Vandehaar, a field specialist in the ISU cooperative extension field program, has been working with Paul Coates, associate professor of political science, to create the State Election Administrators Training Program.

Vandehaar said each election official must complete 50 hours of initial training to become certified and another 25 hours every four years to maintain his or her certification.

Once an official completes the initial training, he or she is given the title Iowa Certified Election Administrator.

“The motivation behind it was the problems that occurred with the 2000 elections,” Coates said, especially because this year’s race between presidential candidates John Kerry and President Bush looks like it will be a close one.

Vandehaar and Coates were chosen to lead the certification program developed in 2001 by the Iowa State Association of County Auditors/Commissioners of Elections Auditors, the Office of the Iowa Secretary of State, the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board and ISU Extension.

“We need to develop some uniform practices — make sure all election officials are working on the same page,” Coates said.

Vandehaar said one of the main goals is to ensure the public’s trust that elections are “fair and open.”

“We wanted to make sure that election laws are known and complied with to make sure democracy is played out in a full and fair and transparent way,” Vandehaar said.

Coates and Vandehaar said Iowa’s election officials have gone “above and beyond” to create a fair and accurate election process in Iowa.

Vandehaar said the goal is “just to make sure the public has full confidence in the election process, to enhance trust.”

Vandehaar also said all 99 counties in the state have had some staff in the certification training programs.

“The first thing to remember is that we couldn’t have had problems like Florida did four years ago,” said Coates.

He explained that one of the major issues in Florida was the amount of people turned away, which didn’t cause a problem for Iowa because the state had provisional ballots that Florida didn’t have in 2000.

Also, he said, Iowa doesn’t use the punch card system that created so much controversy in Florida.

One of the biggest advantages of having election officials together in this training program is their being able to share experiences with one another, Coates said.

“It helps everyone understand one another to get a sense of the common kinds of problems,” Coates said.

Vandehaar said election officials have remained dedicated and hope this year runs smoothly and fairly.

“The level of commitment is impressive,” Vandehaar said.