Jim Stingl
Milwaukee’s voting equipment tests out accurately — and Russian-free.
It is perhaps Milwaukee’s poorestattended public event, even though it’s free.
In the unlikely event that you do go, don’t expect snacks. I asked.
Before every single election, the Milwaukee Election Commission invites anyone and everyone to come and watch them test their electronic voting equipment. Other municipalities do it, too, because state law says they must.
Not to spoil the ending, but the tabulating machines always pass the test. Or at least that’s what Russian cyber hackers want us to think.
“Now I’m worried you’re going to jinx me, Jim,” said the commission’s executive director, Neil Albrecht.
He can relax. At Tuesday morning’s test at City Hall, nine paper test ballots marked for the three candidates running for state Supreme Court — the only race next Tuesday in the city — were fed into the DS200 automated vote counter.
The machine, shaped liked a trash cart shrunk down two sizes, got them all right, even rejecting the ballot inked with more than one vote.
I know how reassuring that must be for the 90% of you who plan to sit out next week’s sleepy primary.
True to form, the stirring demonstration attracted no one, except for me and Journal Sentinel photographer Angela Peterson, and we were paid to go.
I asked how many times any spectators had shown up.
“In six years, twice,” and it was one person from a political party each of those times, said Terri Gabriel, the commission’s deputy director, who assisted Albrecht with the test.
Any turnout at all is more likely before presidential and gubernatorial contests.
“Whatever we can do to assure the public that there are checks and balances both before and after the election that confirm the election results are accurate,” Albrecht said.
The process of voting can be a magnet for conspiracy theorists.
“I did actually have someone ask me what would happen if they pointed their garage door opener at the voting machine. Could that frequency change the election results?” Albrecht said.
Voting machines are smarter than that. You know how you’re supposed to fill in the little oval next to the candidate you like? If you underfill or overfill the oval, or even put an X in the space, the tabulator likely gets what you mean.
I always thought you had to insert your ballot into the counting machine face-up with the top end first. Turns out you can slide it in any which way, as long as you don’t fold it in half and try to jam it sideways.
“There’s a lot of attention on the integrity of election results amid all the rumors of Russian hacking,” Albrecht said.
There’s no evidence that the Russians interfered with the 2016 election in Wisconsin. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced last September that this indeed had happened, and four days later said never mind.
Touch-screen voting is seen as more vulnerable, but Milwaukee and the rest of the county use paper ballots and electronic tabulators. The whole system of securing election results is on a closed network. “Without any internet access, it really doesn’t present a hacking opportunity,” Albrecht said.
Milwaukee tests just one electronic voting machine for the public’s edification. Behind the scenes, they’re also checking the 193 vote counters that go out to schools, park pavilions, churches and other voting sites around the city.
So go ahead, comrade, and cast a write-in for Vladimir Putin if you must, but that’s just not going to hack it here.