MADISON, Wisc. (SPECTRUM NEWS) — The Madison City Clerk’s Office invited the public to watch as they test all the voting machines before the August primary.
Wisconsin’s partisan primary is August 11. It’s expected to be an election unlike any other thanks to the pandemic. More and more people will be requesting an absentee ballot and voting through the mail.
The Madison City Clerk’s Office is testing the voting machines ahead of August 11, just like it does for every election.
City employees set up shop in a nondescript strip mall on East Washington Avenue Saturday morning. Dozens of big black voting machines sat in the space, wheeled out one by one to be tested.
They create election numbers, knowing what the outcome should be. They run the ballots through the counters to check that their count is accurate. Clerk Eric Christianson says he’s never seen a machine with an inaccurate count; just human error.
“We have the final tally that the machine should come up with,” says deputy clerk Jim Verbick. “Then after we run the total, make sure that the machine actually comes up with that mark. A lot of times if there's an error, it turns out it was human error when we just marked the wrong sheet.”
The city has about 100 voting machines. The clerk’s office tests every single one, before every single election.
“We [test] both on the paper ballots, the traditional ballots that you fill in the circles, as well as our express vote ballots, the ballot marking device ones,” says Verbick.
When each machine has been tested and proven accurate, it’s prepared for its future polling place.
“We put seals on it, we mark the seals and inspector statements will be given to the chief inspectors at each polling place,” Verbick says. “They open it up, break some of the seals and pull out the stuff and they set it up for the election.”
The public is invited to watch the clerk’s office do these tests. However, staff say people don’t often show up to check it out. They believe that may change for the November race, because of the politics surrounding the election.
Verbick says the public is invited to watch in the interest of full transparency, and to build trust in the voting process.
“The goal is to make sure that they count accurately so that way the public can trust that the machines are correctly counting their votes, and that they don't have to worry about any sort of interference with anything,” says Verbick.
The clerk’s office will be testing the machines again Monday, August 3. It’s held at 2713 East Washington Avenue, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a one-hour lunch break starting at noon.