Election equipment for Monroe County passes logic, accuracy test

Monroe County’s election equipment, manufactured by Hart InterCivic has passed the logic and accuracy test mandated under state statute.

The test was conducted with help from Bob and Lori White, with B&L IT Services, which is a contractor the county uses for logistics and technical support in connection with elections.

The test took place at 9:30 a.m. on Monday at the old Johnson Hardware building at 7th and Madison streets, aka Election Central.

After a test deck of 22 ballots was fed into each of the three machines, and the machines tallied up the results, every candidate in every race received 4 votes. That meant the devices selected for testing passed with 100 percent accuracy.

During the work, as deputy county clerk Tressia Martin was feeding test ballots into a machine, she fielded a question: What happens if someone somehow manages to feed their ballot through the machine more than once? It will be rejected, Martin said.

The followup question: Could that be demonstrated right now? Yes. Martin paused her work feeding the ballots into the machine, opened up the cabinet where the ballots drop after the machine accepts them, and retrieved one for another try. When she fed the machine the same ballot a second time, the machine spat it right out.

Before the test, Bob White took questions from those assembled, including members of the public. One question from a retired software engineer: Do the machines “know” where they are? Yes.

According to White, the machines at the polling locations are programmed to function only at a specific location—which means they will accept only the ballots that are supposed to be voted at that location.

For Monday’s test, White said, the machines were set up as early-voting machines, which means they accepted test ballots from any of the locations that have been set up throughout the county.

Early voting for the Nov. 8 election starts on Oct. 12.

In Monroe County, that will take place at the election operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets.