Carrie Phillips knows well the toughest challenge of adapting to election consolidation.

"Learning the new laws and finding who's responsible for doing what," said Phillips, Kootenai County Elections supervisor.

Now that Kootenai County Elections is charged with running all local elections under new state law, it means a larger workload, Phillips said.

The county has been harried with prepping for the upcoming May 17 elections, in which 11 highway, library and school districts have seats up for election.

"It has been a little bit stressful and causing more workload for us," Phillips said.

Part of the county's responsibilities lately, said Clerk Cliff Hayes, have been training taxing districts on the changes under the Elections Consolidation law that took affect on Jan. 1.

"There were significant changes to what the districts did, to what the county now has to do," Hayes said.

For instance, taxing districts previously counted paper ballots, he said. Ballots will now be counted by the county's electronic ballot machines.

"The electronic counting is significant," he said of expediting the process.

The biggest challenge for the May 17 elections in particular, though, is ballot preparation, Hayes added.

Because of the combination of highway, library and school district elections, the county has to prepare around 100 different ballots, he said.

"A given resident may be in the library district, but not the highway," Hayes said. "And then you go across the street, and that one is in the highway and the school, but not the library. It is really labor intensive to put together the ballots for every household."

Phillips added that the county also has to work with other counties that share some school districts.

"We have to coordinate with them as to who the home county is," she said.

Entering all six school trustee zones into the county's computer systems has also been an onerous undertaking, she said.

Staff has had to assign every street to trustee zones, she said.

"We had to manually do that," she said. "I'd say over a few months, it's almost been a daily basis trying to get everything finalized."

She lauds the new consolidation law, however, especially because voters can now cast ballots at their designated polling areas at every election, instead of having to go to specific taxing district locations.

"It's to ensure conformity with elections," she said.

Angela Sieverding, board secretary with East Side Highway District, said the consolidation has been a relief for taxing districts.

Running elections was added stress for staff, she said, who already have heavy workloads with their usual duties.

"It has eased the burden on the local districts," Sieverding said. "We are not experts in elections, and considering that Kootenai County is, it's best that's it handled that way."

The highway district now only has to worry about collecting filing applications from candidates, she said, adding that she was in the office on Friday because it was the final day for write-in candidates to file.

"I've been here 20 years, and this (the consolidation) has been a great process," she said.

She believes that the consolidation also makes voting easier, too, she added, because the law has arranged for multiple elections to run on the same days.

"It gives them an opportunity to turn out for them all," she said.

Laura Rumpler, spokesperson for Coeur d'Alene School District, said there is definitely value in having an objective third party running an election.

"The elections office, that's their main task. For them to do so in a uniform and consistent manner, we support that," Rumpler said. "That allows us to focus on our mission, which is to provide an excellent education for every student."

Phillips expects the May 17 elections to go smoothly.

Elections will only get easier from there, she added.

"I think these are all positive changes," she said. "Once you get through the transition year, we'll have things fine-tuned a little better."