Tippecanoe County voting machines pass with flying colors

The county's electronic voting machines are tested before every election.

Glitches.

The county's electronic voting machines are tested before every election.

As news 18's joe paul reports, about 120 thousand county residents have registered to vote.

And roughly 50 to 60 thousand could turn out.

<nat pop five percent of the county's voting machines were chosen at random friday for public election test.

Clerk julie roush says they passed with flying colors.

"all of them did work.

One of them needed to have a recalibration.

We recalibrated it and it worked like a gem, so yes, we think everything is going to go well."

The county added more scanners to count what could be a historic number of mail-in ballots.

Roush predicts about 15 thousand people to vote by mail.

That's even more than this year's record-breaking primary election.

"our primary went so well when it came to counting the mail-in ballots that i'm absolutely confident.

Last primary, i was not.

I had no clue how we were going to pull this off."

Election board chairman randy vonderheide says he advocates for voting in person rather than by mail.

"it's very labor intensive and there's many moving parts, and so, the way people, in my mind, are sure that their vote has been received is when they hit cast ballot on one of these machines."

But league of women voters member ken jones says voting by mail is legitimate.

"i think you should have confidence that if you vote absentee, your vote's going to be counted.

An absentee ballot leaves a paper trail."

Officials say some of the machines are aging and have had calibration issues in the past.

When voters checked the box next to their chosen candidate, the box for another candidate was checked instead.

"the people working the polls need to be notified if there's a calibration issue so they can take care of right then and there.

It's a simple fix."

Here's to hoping election day goes off without a hitch.

Nat pop joe paul, news 18.

The election board is planning a drive-thru ballot drop off at (edge-leah) edgelea elementary school.

You can find more information about that... ...as well as a full list of voting locations and times on our website, wlfi.com.

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