JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Duval County Supervisor of Elections office tested out voting machines ahead of the upcoming November election. This is done before every election to ensure every vote is counted correctly.
The headquarters houses 299 voting machines, and staff tests each one. Then, some are retested. One by one, 19 voting machines were picked at random and brought out for testing on Friday.
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This process is open to the public to observe.
“You wanna make sure that all the machines are tallying the ballots properly and that’s what this does,” Karyn Morton said. She’s watched the process dozens of times. Morton is the former Republican Party chair for Duval County and is currently the vice chair for the Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida.
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“I’ve been engaged in voter protection since the 2000 election,” Leslie Jean-Bart said. She was also in attendance. Jean-Bart is an attorney for voter protection for the Democratic Party in Duval County. “Hopefully, [it] gives some integrity and assurance about the election process, and how it works.”
Staff will feed what’s called a “test deck” into the digital scanners to make sure the machine accurately records the bubble that was filled for a specific candidate.
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“It is fascinating to see the behind the scenes, and to know all of the checks and balances that actually exist,” Morton said.
The machines were all in working order and spit out the same vote put in. The last step is to delete all the votes so it’s set back to zero before the actual voting.
All of the machines are now resealed, and won’t be touched until early voting or election morning.
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