KENTUCKY — The Jessamine Board of Elections oversaw ballot scanner testing at Harp Enterprises this week ahead of Kentucky’s primary elections.

Secretary of State Michael Adams was in attendance at the event aimed at ensuring safe, accurate elections.

“Not many people know that every single ballot scanner in Kentucky gets rigorously checked before it’s ever utilized,” said Adams. 

The testing is a lengthy process to ensure accuracy during elections, something that has been done for decades.

“You’ve got Democrats and Republicans, it’s a bipartisan board,” said Adams. “That’s state law. And so they are checking every single one of these. It’ll be all day before they are done. This is happening in all 120 counties this week.”

This test is just one test of the many done on the machines.

“These will be deployed on election morning,” said Bobby Gantley, the president of Harp Enterprises. “The poll workers will then go back and do a third check before they actually open the polls.”

It’s all done to reassure voters that the elections are fair.

“There’s so many checks and balances going on that, you know, the public needs to know that these machines are safe, they’re counting votes correctly just like they have been in years past,” said Gantley.

In a time when there is mistrust with the election process, those who were involved with yesterday’s event want Kentuckians to know that this is a reliable process. The machine testing is open to the public to observe, and it is illegal to connect Kentucky ballot scanners to the internet.

“It’s really important, I think, for the public to know that we go through all of this,” said Adams. “It’s a lot of work, very important, not just to make sure these work correctly but so the public can trust them.”

While Adams says it’s an old-fashioned process, he is confident that it works.