Maricopa County voting machines undergo routine 'logic and accuracy test' ahead of midterm elections

MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz. - Maricopa County is testing out its voting machines – the process is done before and after every election.

Why? It's to make sure there are no issues with the counting of votes.

The process of checking the machines is called the "logic and accuracy test." The process, while underway, is open to the public.

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This way, Maricopa County Elections Department can make sure it's programmed the equipment accurately, and they are going to count all the ballots for the general election as they are designed.

Arizona Secretary of State employees visited to oversee the process on Oct. 11, as well as the chairs of the three major parties, Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian.

Volunteers fill out ballots, some regular ballots and others use auditory assistance or brail to fill out ballots. Some are tested in English and others are tested in Spanish.

The idea is to make sure every single voter is able to use these machines with no issues. 

During the test, they had an issue with one of the ballots in Spanish using auditory assistance, so the elections department is going through and reprogramming the machine before the volunteers come back and start the process over again until the machines are ready to go.

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"The accessible voting device in the Spanish ballot had an appellate court judge's name who is being read twice when you hear it on the audio. So when someone would click on the accessible voting device, they would hear that twice, and it wouldn’t mark it twice, but they would be able to hear it twice," explained Megan Gilbertson, communications director for the Maricopa County Elections Department.

Continuing, "So we’re going to go back, we’re going to make sure that you can only hear it once in Spanish. The English was accurate and then everyone will come back, and we’ll finish the test tonight."

The elections department says it's important it does these tests before voting begins, so they can work out any of the kinks like this before people start dropping off ballots.

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