Wisconsin’s Elections Board Gets an Earful about Ballot-Counting Machines

Election officials from the Government Accountability Board looking for public input on new ballot counting machines got a little more than they bargained for during a public demonstration of the machines in Madison on Wednesday.

The GAB offered the public the chance to use the DS200 optical scanner at a demonstration session this week. Election specialist Ross Hein told the 40 people who assembled for the hands on session the goal was to help elections board members decide whether to install them statewide, “Tonight is your opportunity as members of the public to play around with the equipment to take ballots run them through the auto mark voting system, the DS200 system and see how it works and provide comments.”

But most of the people who attended the session weren’t interested in playing with the ballot tabulating machines. Many wore T-shirts printed by the group Citizens for Election Protection that bore the message “Hand count all ballots”. Hein was barraged with questions about the transparency and accuracy of any kind of voting machine. Sue Trace is a teacher at the Madison Area Technical College, “If they truly want us to feel secure and feel that are votes are counted they cannot use voting machines without some way of verifying and right now it’s actually illegal for a clerk to count something to double check. They can run it through the machine and once they have to bag it up and seal it and they cannot count it to make sure that the machine counted accurately.”

But GAB staff say tests they have run on the machines show they are accurate and reliable. Officials also pointed out that current state law requires the use of ballot counting machines in municipalities with populations more than 7,500. Hand counting can only occur in the event of a mandated election recount.