Board of Elections: New Dominion voting machines tested and ready for Nov. 2

CANTON – Staffers at the Stark County Board of Elections have completed testing on the final batch of new touchscreen Dominion Voting Systems machines that will be used on Election Day on Nov. 2.

Full-time and seasonal election workers did what is referred to as logic and accuracy testing, required by the state. They ensure the machines work, their batteries are charged, the touchscreen functions and the machines count votes accurately, said Travis Secrest, one of the board's two administrative assistants.

Logic and accuracy testing "is where from start to finish, our staff will go through every Election Day component to make sure that the machine is functioning correctly. That it is receiving the votes correctly. That it is tabulating correctly," he said.

Related:New Dominion voting machines start arriving in Stark County

Board staff tested a total of 1,408 Dominion machines. Stark County is using eight machines for in-person early voting at the Board office on Regent Avenue NE in Canton. The rest will be used on Nov. 2. And the board will have 42 backup machines.

Secrest said it takes about 15 minutes for one staffer to test a machine.

Secrest said use of eight touchscreen voting machines in early voting has not revealed any problems, and voters have widely praised the machines.

David Weiland and his wife Jo Weiland of Pike Township, who voted last week at the Board of Elections, said they liked the changes.

"I thought (the screen) was a little bigger," said David Weiland, who added that the use of a stylus on the screen wasn't necessary. "I'm old and I can't see anyway ... (The touch-screen responsiveness) was instantaneous. ... I thought they were great."

Delivery of the Dominion voting machines to Stark County

After much controversy and a legal battle over the purchase, Dominion delivered 1,450 of its ImageCast X touchscreen voting machines in July and August. They come with bigger touchscreens that are faster and more responsive than the old TSX touchscreen the county had used since 2005. 

More:Stark commissioners approve Dominion machines to comply with court order

The main difference is a voter inserts a plastic card telling the machine which ballot to bring up into a slot on the lower center of the machine rather than the upper right.

After a trade-in credit, the machines with ballot tabulation servers, four paper absentee ballot scanners, memory cards and software cost about $4.75 million. The state covered $3.27 million. Stark County paid $1.48 million and will have to pay about $331,550 a year to cover software license costs, the hardware warranty and ballot printing.

The Ohio Supreme Court in May ruled that state law required Stark County commissioners to approve funding for the purchase. The three-member board had refused to do so, saying the Board of Elections had insufficiently vetted the purchase in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

More:Stark County commissioners reject Dominion voting machine purchase

How does Stark County test its voting machines?

The Repository observed some testing on a recent morning.

Workers in the board's warehouse on Regent Avenue NE prepared several machines for testing. Workers unzipped the luggage bags and removed them, placing them on stands.

One worker used the electronic poll books to encode the card of a randomly selected voter as part of the test. Another worker took a card and inserted it. Another plugged in cables into the devices.

One man, a seasonal worker, tested a machine meant for a precinct in Meyers Lake. His counterpart, tested a machine to be used in Massillon. Occasionally, they stopped to make notations on a clipboard.

Both quickly paged through the general-election ballot for those communities and selected candidates and cast test votes on levies. They wanted to check that in a council race where voters were asked to vote for not more than three candidates that the machines would not allow voters to select more.

The two workers then plugged in headphones and used a control pad to cast votes. They verified that the machine would read the offices to be voted on, the names of the candidates and levy language for visually impaired voters. The printer quietly printed the selections on the roll of paper behind plastic on the right side. The workers checked that the votes cast matched the printed paper.

Security done on Stark County voting machines

As they did the tests, a warehouse supervisor affixed seals on ports and compartment doors on the machines. If anyone tries to tamper with them or plug an unauthorized USB drive, it would be evident to elections workers, Secrest said.

Any opening of the ports for repairs has to be documented and witnessed by a Republican and Democratic election worker. A chain-of-custody procedure tracks everyone who has possession of the machines.

Secrest said voters verify their votes on the paper through the glass or clear plastic. Elections workers would count the votes on the paper in the event of a recount, and he said all audits in the past where votes recorded on paper of randomly selected machines were checked against the machine-recorded votes showed the vote counts were accurate with the formerly used TSX voting machines.

The votes are printed on one continuous roll of paper, making any signs of tampering evident. Under state law, voting machines and the tabulation servers can not be connected to the internet.

"The paper that was printed in front of the voter is the official ballot of the election," said Secrest. "So whatever conspiracy theories are out there, they miss that key component that the paper can't be hacked."

After testing, the workers were to place the machines in locked cages. The cages help secure the machines from tampering before or after the election and protect them during transportation to polling locations, said Secrest.

On election morning, a Republican poll worker and Democratic poll worker will use a key to unlock the cage and verify that the number for the machine matches one of the numbers for the machines allocated for that polling location.

Audio capabilities

Each of the county's 111 polling locations, which cover 276 precincts, plus the early voting site at the board's Regent Avenue NE office could have anywhere from three machines to 41 machines depending on the number of registered voters.

One per polling location will be designated for use by those with visual impairments. Those machines had to undergo logic and accuracy testing and testing of the audio system. 

Secrest said the testing revealed about seven cases where elections workers found batteries weren't fully charged or printer cables had not been connected properly. They quickly remedied those issues. The new Dominion machines come with battery backups of up to four hours in case of a power failure at the polling location, Secrest added.

He said the Ohio Secretary of State will require additional public testing with sample votes overseen by the four-member Board of Elections of randomly selected voting machines on Oct. 26.

Reach Robert at (330) 580-8327 or robert.wang@cantonrep.com. Twitter: @rwangREP.