Voting Machines Tested by Prowers County Clerk

Electronic Voting Machine

The primary election will be held June 26 in Prowers County, and before the balloting begins, voting machines are routinely tested using Test Ballots. On Thursday, June 7, Prowers County Clerk and Recorder, Jana Coen and Jan Alexander went step by step through the process of conducting a public testing of correct and incorrect ballots on the two pieces of machinery which will be used to tabulate voting between June 18 and June 26.

Paper ballots are counted using an electronic scanner. Voters casting their ballots in person at a precinct use a computerized voting machine, available at the Lamar Community Resource and Senior Center on East Olive Street, starting June 18 for Early Voting. Coen said over 2,000 ballots have already been mailed and they can be scanned starting within one week of the county primary, June 26.

The machines were checked out in a public testing during which Janet Marriott, Prowers County Republican Chairwoman was on hand, along with Tony Garcia, Vice-Chair for the Prowers County Democrats. Each representative had 25 Test Ballots which were run through the scanner used for mail-in ballots.

Coen and Garcia Review Voting Machine and Marriott and Alexander Review Scanner

A situation of “under-voting” and “over-voting” should occur during the primary election count. Coen explained that if a person marks off two boxes for the same contested position, the vote for that particular issue is negated, while all the other contest positions may be accurate and will be counted. By the same token, if those two boxes are left blank, or if an uncontested position is not marked for a lone candidate, that contest won’t be counted but the rest of the ballot will.

The results could show that the number of votes cast may be less than the number of ballots submitted. Coen also explained that a double vote for a candidate is not possible from an electronic voting booth and your ballot will not be finalized until you have corrected your error. She said provisional ballots will be made available if a Colorado resident is voting outside their precinct during primary election day. The judges will then have 10 days in which to ‘cure’ the ballot to make certain the voter is properly registered for their vote to be added to the Final Official Count total.

By Russ Baldwin