BOISE — When Gov. Brad Little this year proposed that Idaho institute proactive “election integrity audits” after each election, just to make sure results were valid, lawmakers backed him unanimously.

The first of those audits was completed on Friday, and the results were encouraging. Not only were any differences found between new hand-counts and the already certified results infinitesimal, in the state’s largest county they were non-existent.

“Our counts were exactly the same as what Ada County’s were, across all of that,” said Chief Deputy Idaho Secretary of State Chad Houck.

Also, Ada election officials had detailed tracking information available indicating how each ballot was counted, whether it was cast by absentee or early voting or fed into a tabulator at an election day voting precinct.

“Having that level of detail of tracking is awesome,” Houck said.

Perfect results also were found in Kootenai and Bonneville counties.

Idaho randomly selected eight counties around the state for its first integrity audits; all were conducted Wednesday through Friday by teams of auditors who included staffers from the Idaho Secretary of State’s office along with state-trained representatives of both major political parties. The teams flew to the counties on a state-owned small plane. The Legislature this year voted unanimously in favor of a $50,000 appropriation to fund the audits.

The auditors will prepare detailed reports on not only the results, but observations of and recommendations regarding practices observed at all eight of the counties, which included Ada, Bannock, Bonneville, Idaho, Jerome, Kootenai, Madison and Payette counties. The counties were chosen by random ball draw weighted proportionally to their population.

“It is in these reports that we hope to be able to provide the real value of this process,” Idaho Secretary of State Lawerence Denney said in a statement. “Sharing the observations, both positive and negative, that our teams are able to make over the course of this process with all 44 counties is one way we can continue to push Idaho’s processes forward and guarantee the continued high integrity of Idaho’s elections.”

Little proposed the new audits in his State of the State message to lawmakers in January, saying they would “enhance transparency and confidence in our elections here in Idaho.”

“We must make election integrity a priority, to give our citizens confidence that their vote matters,” the governor said.

Houck said the Secretary of State’s office under Denney has been pushing for the audits for several years, and unsuccessfully proposed legislation to launch them last year.