WAUKESHA, Wis. — Waukesha tests its voting tabulators for the public. For about three hours, the city ran every variation of the ballots to ensure the machines that count the votes are working correctly. It was also an opportunity for the public to watch and ask questions.
Annette Kuglitsch, a Waukesha resident, came to City Hall to observe the testing. She arrived with election laws printed out, walked by all the machines, and watched as ballots went through and results printed. She also brought numerous questions for Linda Gourdoux, the City of Waukesha clerk.
“Are the ballots that you run through the machine each of the same things?” Kuglitsch asked.
“We are starting at one and just going around the room, entering the ballots for each location,” Gourdoux replied.
“Will you be unplugging the machines to see if the battery takes over?” asked Kuglitsch.
“We did the pre-lat with no power,” Gourdoux said, referring to the preliminary test.
“Where are your testing scenarios? What are you testing?” Kuglitsch asked.
“We are testing every race, every race, correctly,” Gourdoux responded.
A total of 23 machines were tested with all variations of the ballots. That included ballots with extra votes or writing on them to see if those were detected by the machines.
Kuglitsch will be a poll worker on Election Day in Waukesha, but she says her priority is election integrity, which for her starts with how the votes are counted.
“Are you concerned about these machines?” reporter Rebecca Klopf asked.
“Yeah, oh yeah,” Kuglitsch answered.
During the 2020 presidential election, false claims about voting machines were widespread. Companies like Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic sued and settled with companies such as Fox News and Newsmax for falsely reporting they were involved in election fraud.
“The testing of the machines is something I try to understand better. I don’t really know it that well,” Kuglitsch said.
The City of Waukesha clerk says she encourages the public to come in like Kuglitsch and bring up concerns and questions.
“We want people to see. We want to be transparent. We want people to see that this is a good process,” Gourdoux said.
“These are our elections. We are the citizens, we’re the taxpayers, we are the electors. We should be engaged in our elections,” Kuglitsch added.
After the test, each machine is locked down and secured for transport to its polling location for Election Day.
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