Polk County, Iowa — Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and Polk County Elections Director John Chiodo are allowing the public to view the testing that’s done on voting machines.
Pate says they want to be sure everyone knows how the process works.
Chiodo says it is a long process to get everything ready.
Pate says they’re testing different kinds of ballots, because each precinct might have a different ballot for the different offices that are up for election.
Chiodo ran a number of different ballots through a machine as reporters watched.
Pate says the machines are all clean when voting begins on election day.
Pate says his office will identify a precinct in all the 99 counties that has to be manually audited with a hand count of the ballots for the top office against what the machine’s tabulator says. He says they’ve been doing that for three election cycles and it’s checked out 100 percent in all 99 counties. Chiodo says the machines are not connected to the internet during voting.
Pate says those numbers are only unofficial results and the numbers reported by the machines are checked against the paper ballots.
