County’s voting system primed and ready for Nov. 6

Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Republican Election Board member Opal Sutherlin (Left) County Clerk Marty Watts and Democratic Election Board member Bud Sharp test three voting machines as part of a state-mandated test of the Putnam County election system Monday.

Putnam County’s voting system passed a public test with a perfect score Monday, accurately tabulating all simulated votes cast and absentee ballots input.

These results prove that the Infinity voting machines and computer software are ready for the Nov. 6 municipal election, said County Clerk Marty Watts.

Voters across the county should have confidence in the system, she added.

Mandy Miller, the director of operations for Indianapolis voting machine vendor MicroVote, walked election officials through the test and tabulation process.

Election board members Opal Sutherlin and Bud Sharp and Watts stress-tested the system as they cast a total of nine test votes on machines set up to with the Russellville, Cloverdale Ward 1 and Greencastle Ward 3 West ballots.

As they filled out the ballots, which will not be counted toward the election, they attempted to vote for too many candidates, selected a straight-party ticket and made split-ward votes.

To ensure that the machines tallied the votes correctly, each tester hand-marked their votes on a piece of paper.

When the voting was done, Miller printed out paper receipts and then plugged the machines in for a computer count. All results matched perfectly with the candidates they selected on the machines, Watts, Sutherlin and Sharp said.

Then Miller gave Putnam County’s election technology guru Carl Singer a refresher on how to tabulate absentee ballots. As with the voting machine test, Singer tried to enter ballots into the computer that were incorrectly filled out or had too many candidates selected.

As with the previous test, the system preformed flawlessly.

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