Public test to ensure accuracy of El Paso County voting equipment

(EL PASO COUNTY, Colo.) — The El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Office is starting a public Logic and Accuracy (L&A) test of all Voting System equipment that will be used for the Nov. 5, 2024, General Election.

The test included the Central Count Scanners and Voter Service and Polling Center ballot marking devices. The L&A test began at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 3, and will continue until completion, which the Clerk’s Office anticipates will be Tuesday, Oct. 8.  The test will be held in the Peterson Counting Room at the Citizens Service Center, 1675 W. Garden of the Gods Road, on the second floor.

“This is a significant test, it’s composed of three different components where we’re looking at a system test hardware test, and an integrity,” Steve Schleiker, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder said.

The Logic and Accuracy test consists of three components:

1. System Function Test – This part of the test requires a pre-printed test deck with known results. This allows the Clerk’s Office to be confident that a vote for every choice is tested and placed in the correct “bucket” of results. This test verifies that the election was programmed correctly by county staff in the Election Management System (EMS).
   
2. Hardware Function Test – This test ensures that all of the EMS hardware that will be used in the election functions properly. For example, powering devices on and off, checking that battery-powered devices are holding a charge, and printing from the ImageCastX ballot marking devices.
   
3. Integrity Check – The final part requires the party-balanced testing board to select a sample of a minimum of 25 blank ballots to vote as they choose. The testing board makes a hand tally of these ballots to check against the machine count after they are tabulated on a scanner of their choosing. This test is as expansive as the testing board chooses to make it, in an effort to achieve the highest confidence in the EMS vote tabulation.

“Over the last 21 months here in El Paso County, we changed up a lot of things here in the election office and we were just really focussed on one being a leader in the state and two transparency,” Schleiker said.

Right now, El Paso County is the only county in Colorado where voters can access a live stream of the 41 ballot boxes scattered across the region. “And since doing that, this office has received zero complaints regarding that,” Schleiker said.

“Here in Colorado, it’s required that there is video surveillance of all drop boxes,” Jena Griswold, Colorado Secretary of State explained. “It’s not required that it’s live streamed but that’s considered a voting record and it’s held onto for quite some time after the election. It’s really useful in the case we ever have to pull footage of any type of behavior at a drop box.”

The test was open to the public in accordance with section 1-7-509(2) (b) C.R.S.

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