Before The Real Voting, There Was The Trial Run

Burleigh County Auditor-Treasurer Mark Splonskowski, left, conducts a public test of county voting equipment with Rep. Karen Karls, R-Bismarck, chair of NDGOP District 35, observing on Oct. 28, 2024. (Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)

(North Dakota Monitor) – Bob Henderson, the director of information technology in Cass County, called it one of the most important but most tedious parts of election preparation — testing the machines that tabulate the votes.

Before voting begins, the vote tabulators are fed a “test deck” — a group of ballots that is filled out before the election to make sure machines get the correct vote total.

Similar tests are done in every county across the state before the machines are used.

The North Dakota Monitor observed the public demonstrations Cass and Burleigh counties did of voting equipment leading up to the election.

“It went as it should go,” Mark Splonskowski, auditor-treasurer for Burleigh County, said of the test. “It counted it correctly and then we zeroed it out and made sure it was at zero when we were done.”

Henderson and other Cass County election officials demonstrated how the voting machines work and answered questions about the election process on Oct. 25 at a Fargo warehouse where the county stores its election equipment.

Nathan Hansen, who works in the county’s finance office, fed ballots into the machine by hand, just as a voter would, unless a voter asks for help from an election official. Some of the ballots are intentionally mismarked, such as voting for two candidates in the presidential race, to make sure the machine flags those kinds of mistakes for voters so they can get a new ballot to fix the mistake if they want to.

The machine will also flag races that are skipped or where the voter does not vote for the maximum number of candidates, such as voting for only one candidate for state House of Representatives when voters can select two.

Voting already has been taking place for weeks in North Dakota by absentee or mail-in voting and early in-person voting.

Cass County, North Dakota’s most populous county, runs more than 500 ballots through each of the more than 60 voting tabulators before they are given the stamp of approval.

The number of test ballots is determined by the number of contests. A county or precinct with fewer races will have fewer scenarios to test for.

During the Burleigh County test, Splonskowski demonstrated how the machine won’t allow multiple ballots to be inserted at the same time. He added the height and width specifications of the ballots must match the requirements of the machine.

Rep. Karen Karls, R-Bismarck, chair of NDGOP District 35, also viewed the Burleigh County election equipment test.

“It seems pretty straightforward,” Karls said of this year’s test.

She said she comes to the test every election cycle because some of her voters have concerns about election security.

“There are election deniers out there, and so I ask the questions and hopefully get the answers that take care of the problem,” Karls said.

Splonkowski said election officials and state lawmakers have tried to get ahead of election integrity questions.

“What I want is an informed electorate,” Splonskowski said. “I want informed legislators, so they know how the process works, so that they can understand it better. If there are to be improvements made, you can’t make improvements unless you already know how it works.”

All ballots cast in North Dakota are paper ballots, whether filled in manually or with a touchscreen. Henderson calls the touchscreen “a digital pencil” that transfers the voter’s choices to a paper ballot. The voter can review that ballot before submitting.

Henderson emphasized that neither the touch screen nor the vote tabulators are connected to the internet. Flash drives or “data sticks” are used to physically take results from the machine to the auditor’s office, but the paper ballots are put into sealed containers for potential verification.

Cody Schuler, advocacy manager of the American Civil Liberties Union in North Dakota, observed the Cass County demonstration.

The ACLU is among the groups that monitor voting sites and take reports of irregularities. The ACLU partners with the League of Women Voters on voter access issues.

“If folks feel their rights are being violated, or if there are long lines and want to report things that might be hindering people’s accessibility to the polls, those are the kind of things that people need to self-advocate for, but the ACLU and our partner organizations across the nation do that and we’re active here in North Dakota,” Schuler said.

Voters also can report issues to either of those groups, the county or to the secretary of state.