El Paso County prepares for election day, starts to test counting machines

Nearly 4500 test ballots are making their way through counting machines on Tuesday morning.

The El Paso County Clerk’s office has started getting ready for election day, just five weeks away. Chuck Broerman, current Clerk says, “this is one first steps in the election process.”

The test ballots are previously filled out with random selections so machines can be tested as their full capacity. “We have a very robust test that we’re sending each of our ballots through each of our election equipment that populates the votes to make sure it reads the votes correctly and it tabulates it for the right candidates or issue,” Broerman says.

The testing process is done over the course of two days. A representative from the Republican and Democratic side are also a part of the testing process. Each fills out 25 ballots randomly with their own selections and then run those through the counting machines as well.

By the end of just today, all those test ballots will be run at least eight times through every available machine. This catches mistakes the machines can make, like returning a ballot, or miscounting how many are in the batch. Catching these mistakes now is a way to prevent them from happening on election day and slowing down the results process. “We’re exercising possible combination or permutation might see so we’re really exercising these machines very vigorously so any possible situation, the machine can read it directly,” Broerman says.

If a vote on a ballot comes in and the choice someone made isn’t clear, it’s sent to a judication process where again, two people from both parties can review the voter’s choice.

The 2018 General Assembly Ballot will be sent out October 15th and Election Day is November 6th.