The Park County voting machines have been tested more than usual in advance of the November general election. 

On Thursday morning, all machines were tested as part of a public test done each time before an election. Once again, no flaws were seen or reported. 

However, unlike over the summer when political candidates and a number of members of the county Republican Party were present, only three members of the public — former Cody City Council candidate and Cody Cupboard president Dan Schein and two reporters. 

The double-digit attendance of the pre-primary ballot machine test was the outlier — First Deputy Clerk Hans Odde said no one showed up for the early voting machine test this fall.

“We’re happy to have people show up,” he said. “In the primary, so many people showing up was unusual.”

Now elections office staff are looking to see if the high voter totals in the summer are something of an outlier too, as Odde said early voting is much lower than during the primary — less than 300 votes — although absentee ballots are roughly three times that. 

Voting machine test

All of the machines involved in the Nov. 8 general election processed test ballots to check that they’re correctly tabulating results. If a machine had failed the testing, it would not be used in the election. Odde, elections clerk Kaitlyn Johnson and accounting clerk Bobbie Hinze, all sworn in as election judges, performed the test in the basement of the old county jail. 

The same number of voting machines present at the primary polling locations will be present for the general. 

Park County uses equipment manufactured by Election Systems & Software, an American-owned company based in Omaha, Nebraska. The ES&S devices include DS200 ballot scanners/vote tabulators that are deployed at each polling site and a DS450 scanner/tabulator used to process absentee ballots. Additionally, each polling site has an ExpressVote that’s designed to help voters with disabilities mark their ballots.

Odde said it helps to have ES&S as their ballot printer as well. 

As part of the safeguards used to secure Wyoming’s elections, all of the voting machines are incapable of connecting to the internet, the office said in a release. Results are logged on a USB flash drive that’s sealed into the machine. Once the polls are closed, the flash drives are securely transported to the elections office, where they’re processed on a hardened computer that’s also disconnected from the internet.

Odde said the flash drives are military-grade and are sanitized of data after use using a Department of Defense process. 

Although results are tabulated electronically, all voters in Wyoming cast their votes on paper ballots. The DS200s and the DS450 capture an image of each ballot and pair it with a vote record, making it possible to check that the vote recorded by the machine matched the voters’ markings on the ballot. 

Previous tests

Following the primary election, the Park County Elections Office participated in a statewide post-election audit: a review of the images of 450 ballot marks found that the machines accurately recorded every one of those votes.

Park County’s machines got another audit of sorts during a recount of the results in the House District 24 Republican primary. When the 3,747 ballots cast in that race were re-tabulated for the recount, the results came back exactly the same.

“Voters can feel confident that their ballots are being counted accurately and with integrity,” said Park County Clerk Colleen Renner.

Early and absentee voting for the general election is already underway, with more than 940 votes cast as of last Wednesday morning.

For more information about the election — including to review sample ballots — visit parkcounty-wy.gov/county-elections.