Our previous post touched on the topic of certified destruction and recycling of unused elections material. We’ve gotten a couple requests for more information, so let’s delve into the topic a little deeper.
Before our vendor, Northern California Paper Recyclers, picks up the material for recycling, we do our part to first deface items like ballot paper. We take indelible markers and strike through each sheet. That’s our role in the “destruction” process. Once the material is in the vendor’s hands, they have their own process. Here’s an excerpt from their website:
Northern California Paper Recyclers, Inc. has one of the largest secondary paper processing plants in the State of California.
We have been under the scrutiny and walkthroughs of our destruction process from various departments from the U.S. Federal Government, State of California, and Bay Area County Services, as well as Hospitals and various Legal Institutions. We have been in the business for years; we are the professionals to choose.
We are a fully liability insured company and also carry additional insurance to cover the handling of confidential material in regards to compliancy of HIPPA, (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996) as well as GLBA. (Gramm-Leach-Baily Acct of 1999)
Employees are only allowed to enter and exit the building from the front entrance to start and end their workday. Supervisors monitor them as they check in and out each work period.
The material destruction process is constantly monitored by floor supervisors or managers.
The yard of our plant is enclosed by a chain link fence topped with a string of barbed wire. All of our metal rolling doors are chain locked by a prearranged time each work day.
All employees are monitored as they leave the building then one final walk through of the plant is completed by supervisors or managers. The building entrances are then secured and the security system is set. We use maximum security procedures to ensure that any materials sitting in our plant are secured from unauthorized viewing.
Destruction Procedures
1) Your documents or electronic media can either be delivered to our facility or be picked up in our enclosed trucks by our drivers.
2) Upon delivery to our plant in Hayward, the truck containing your confidential, and other recyclable materials, is unloaded and immediately weighed.
3) The material is then forwarded to our high speed, high volume shredder where in most cases, it is shredded in less than 24 hours.
4) The shredded material is then commingled with thousands of pounds of paper from other sources, bailed, and shipped directly to the mill [for pulping].
5) For each pickup of confidential material we process, a certificate of destruction is issued that guarantees the destruction and confidentiality of your documents.
The company we use is “diamond-certified,” which is a certification process that helps ensure maintenance and adherence to their quality of service standards.
Regarding “used” ballot materials, we store the election materials like voted ballots in our secured warehouse for the designated time frame. For federal elections, it is 22 months, and it’s six months for state elections. Once the “destroy date” is reached, the material goes through the certified destruction process.
When materials are destroyed, our vendor sends a “Certificate of Destruction” to our offices for record purposes.
As I’m sure most of our readers have noticed, the San Mateo County Elections Office has been making strides towards becoming more transparent through the use of “Web 2.0.”