The Macon County Election Commission met last Thursday to talk about how they get the voting machines ready for election day.
鈥淲e run programming where all candidates and the referendums get on the ballot,鈥 said Administrator of Elections Barry Doss. 鈥淎fter the programming is run, and they actually vote each machine to make sure it will accept votes that is called a verify. After that they鈥檒l run another zero tape after everything has been programmed so the machine will start out at zero on election day.鈥
Officials say Tennessee is ranked number one in the country for election integrity.
鈥淲e have 29 machines, and that gives each precinct three machines except for one, which will have only two as they don鈥檛 have a very big turnout,鈥 said Doss. 鈥淲e also have eight machines dedicated to early voting. Four will remain here, and the other four will be located at the Sally Wells building at the fairgrounds. This will provide two locations this year for those that prefer early voting.鈥
Doss provided a demo machine to illustrate what the machines look like, and it serves as a training module as well.
鈥淭his is what I do my training on,鈥 said Doss, pointing to the machine. 鈥淚f anyone wants to come and see the ballot they can view the ballot on the training machine. I also train my machine operators on this machine. On election day, they have to run a zero tape when they start out, and at the end of the night, they run the tally tape. They will get the totals off each machine There鈥檚 a little card with a chip in it, kind of like a little credit card, and that鈥檚 what they bring back to me and we will download the results onto the machine here. The tally card and the tapes are exactly the same.鈥
Early voting for the November election will be held from Oct. 16-31. Election day is Nov. 5.
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.