PHOTO: Courtesy of WLUK
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) –The city of Green Bay conducted a public test of its voting equipment ahead of next Tuesday’s partisan primary.
All municipalities must conduct such a test within 10 days of each election. Pre-election testing is designed to ensure the accuracy of voting equipment programming. Test ballots are used to confirm the voting equipment accurately reads the ballots.
Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys — along with a number of poll workers, election technicians and chief inspectors — were on hand to test the equipment before voters hit the polls next week.
“It’s just a good refresher for them to come and see the machines in use, feel the ballots going in, seeing what happens when someone overvotes — which means they voted for too many people in a contest — or undervote, which means that someone didn’t vote. Or, for this partisan primary, very importantly, a cross-over vote, which means they they voted in two parties, essentially, which you are not permitted to do for the partisan primary in the state of Wisconsin,” Jeffreys said.
She believes these tests help residents better understand the many checks and balances in the election process.
What this does is, it brings about trust in our machines for election day so that we can ensure that the machines are seeing what they’re supposed to see.
Jeffreys said the deputy clerk prepared the test ballots and essentially made a predicted results table, allowing officials to verify the accuracy of what the voting equipment reads.
“So for every single machine, that is for every single ward, we ensure that the results that we get from today match the results that we predict,” said Jeffreys.
Comments