Iowa’s Secretary of State in Sioux City as voting machines are tested

SIOUX CITY (KTIV) - Today the Secretary of State for Iowa, Paul Pate, was in Sioux City as the county began the testing process of checking voting machines for all 44 precincts.

The machines will each be tested for accuracy over the next several days. Auditors with the county mixed properly filled out ballots with overfilled ballots, blank ballots and write in ballots to ensure each precinct’s voting machine catches all mistakes.

Pate and County Auditor Pat Gill watched as machines were tested.

Pate talked about how Iowa’s counties check and audit the machines.

“Woodbury County has 44 precincts so, it could take them a week to go through each of these machines because they have to do it, again, with balanced observers. There’s more than one person who’s doing it and who signs off on it. Everything we do has to have an audit trail, so we can audit to make sure it was done right,” said Pate.

Pate said machines are checked before every election in all of Iowa’s 99 counties.

“Every election, whether it’s school board or a special election, the machines that are utilized go through this entire test. They run all these sample ballots through trying to calculate what might happen, whether someone over voted, under voted,” he said.

The public was invited to watch today’s tests. Election Day is Nov. 8.

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