MILWAUKEE — Public testing of electronic voting equipment begins Saturday for the April 4 Spring Election.
According to the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC), the test allows the public to witness how election officials are preparing for the upcoming election and to better understand the security
protocols in place. Communities are allowed to witness the testing between March 25 and April 3.
All municipalities are required by law to conduct a public test of their equipment no earlier than 10 days before each election.
"Pre-election testing is intended to confirm the accuracy of voting equipment programming and to bring transparency to the process," WEC said in a statement Friday.
Voters can check their local notice to see when the public test is scheduled for their municipalities.
"Programming is verified by feeding a set of pre-marked test ballots into each machine and reviewing the results tape that is generated. An errorless count is required at the conclusion of the testing," WEC said.
Any errors during testing are required to be fixed before the equipment can be used. After the public test, the voting equipment and memory device are required to be secured.
"The Commission tells local clerks to keep memory devices in the equipment with a tamper-evident seal and to maintain a chain-of-custody log that documents any access to each memory device or tabulator by a member of the clerk’s office," WEC shared.
How Milwaukee tests electronic voting machines
Rebecca Klopf | Aug. 1, 2022
MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee tested a major item in ensuring a fair and accurate election, the electronic voting machines.
A public test was conducted Monday morning at City Hall. The executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, Clair Woodall-Vogg, tested nearly 40 paper ballots as one person from the public and four members of the media watched.
“We compared these machines today to the results and made sure it matched how the ballot was actually filled in,” said Woodall-Vogg.
The state requires all municipalities to run a public test of their voting machines within 10 days of an election. Milwaukee has been testing all 180 of its DS200 machines. Those machines are manufactured by Election Systems and Software. The tests are the same process that was used during the 2020 election when audits of the machine were conducted after the election. It confirmed the results of candidate Joe Biden’s victory over then President Trump. The recount in Milwaukee County extended President Biden’s win by an extra 132 votes.
"We went through the same auditing process with the city reviewing, then the county reviewed it. Then in Milwaukee County, we also had a recount where all of the bags were opened. Every single voter was accounted for and the machine was cleared out and we ran them again,” said Woodall-Vogg.
Milwaukee also verifies during its count that there is a legitimate voter for every ballot sent through the machine.
"For every ballot, there is an associated voter. Again, we don't know how you voted or which ballot is yours, but as far as integrity goes, making sure the number of ballots cast equals the same number of people who came, checked in, or requested an absentee ballot to make sure there (are) no extra ballots,” said Woodall-Vogg.
Since there is not electronic voting in Milwaukee County, every voter has a physical ballot to reference.
“We have paper ballots for every vote that is cast so the most important thing for voters in Milwaukee County to know is that the paper trial is extremely extensive,” said Woodall-Vogue.
The state’s Legislative Audit Bureau reviewed the 2020 voting process in Wisconsin. The independent, nonpartisan state agency says it found all the machines it reviewed counted the votes correctly.
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