COEUR d'ALENE - About 3,000 down.

Only 65,000 more to go.

Kootenai County Clerk Cliff Hayes has assigned an ambitious project to the elections department staff: Verifying every voter registration in the county.

"It's a big deal, obviously, because now we (the county) run all county elections, regardless of city, fire district or what," Hayes said, referring to a new state law charging counties with overseeing all local elections. "I think the voter registration, it needs to be validated."

There are about 68,000 registered voters in the county, the clerk estimated.

After kicking off a couple months ago, staff are pacing themselves, aiming for 25 random checks a week.

"They're exceeding that," Hayes added.

He's partly pursuing the project to hold high standards in his new position, he said.

But it's also prompted by the election challenge in 2009, when a lawsuit was dragged out over a Coeur d'Alene City Council election due to votes from illegally registered individuals.

Although a few individuals were discovered voting under fraudulent addresses - and fined hundreds of dollars by the 1st District Court - the problem might not be fixed, Hayes said.

"Who could say if all of them were caught? No one could," he said. "If (their registration) is not valid, they should not be entitled to a vote. It would skew the election results if they were voting."

Commissioner Todd Tondee said he supports Hayes' efforts.

"That's part of his task (as clerk)," Tondee pointed out.

He agreed this could potentially help prevent voter fraud down the road.

"With the verification of the people voting, I think that that would help," Tondee said.

The process is simple.

Hayes' staff is comparing individuals' addresses on their registration forms to the addresses on their driver's licenses, available in an online program called Access Idaho.

If the two don't match, staff must investigate further, Hayes said.

"There's a lot of possibilities. You can send a letter, you can make a phone call," he said. "Maybe you know the person. You have to just use the basic resources to figure out if they live there."

He has gone to extra measures himself to verify addresses, like driving out to confirm if residences listed in industrial areas were actually there.

About 30 percent of the 3,000 IDs checked so far have not matched with registrations, he said.

That doesn't mean people's registrations are invalid, he added. Driver's licenses sometimes show mailing addresses and not residences, he pointed out.

For absentee voters living abroad, the office sends a "nice" letter asking them to verify their registration, Hayes said.

If they don't reply, a second, slightly less cordial letter is mailed informing them their registration will be canceled if they don't respond within 20 days.

"It's not a big deal," Hayes said. "If they fail to comply with notifying us they can re-register fairly easily."

There's no deadline on this, Hayes added.

But it could be awhile.

"It's too early to tell how long it's going to take," he said. "But we are not going to complete this project this year, I'll tell you that."