Lee County elections office ensures voting machines are accurate

Voting machines for early voting and Election Day are being tested in Lee County Monday. It’s a long-term process to make sure machines are working properly.

“We don’t want any glitches during the election,” said Tommy Doyle, Lee County’s supervisor of elections. “We’re always gonna be ready for something.”

The canvassing board for Lee County elections, those in charge of the count, are also ensuring voting machines are functioning properly.

To test voting machines, unofficial pre-marked ballots are fed through them.

Doyle said that once the unofficial ballots are tallied, “We close the pool, and it prints out a tape with all the votes on those tapes, and those are reconciled with the election report.”

Poll tapes, which look like long receipts, must add up to pre-determined results. If that happens, a voting machine is functioning properly.

Anyone can sit and watch voting machine testing alongside the elections supervisor, and it’s critical the count is right every time.

Monday, Doyle found out there was more work to do to test voting machines accuracy. Things started out great for the election office, some hiccups were caught, which is why the process is taken seriously.

“We want to get it right for these machines,” Doyle said. “We’ve been testing these machines for months. This is a combination of months of work.”

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