Test Voting Machines Yourself
Between now and the June primary your county must publicly test its voting machines. You can participate–and not just by watching.
You can call the county auditor for the schedule or ask your political party chair who should have been notified as well. Contact the Rs or the Ds where you live.
Iowa code chapter 52 provides for a test using “a pre-audited group of ballots” including a provision that “Any observer may submit an additional test group of ballots which, if so submitted, shall also be tested.”
Your test group is limited to ten ballots, but they may be the only independently created ballots in the test. It is common for officials to run canned tests provided for them by the same company that sold them the machine and then set up the ballot definition for the next election. In that case it is only the programmer testing himself.
“As near as I can tell election departments use no formal or written test procedures anywhere in the country,” according to Wisconsin software quality engineer John Washburn.
Independent tests are in order. See this post for some ideas on how to mark ballots that will reveal much about the calibration of ballot scanners (and what can happen when you don’t do a good job).
This pdf file contains 50 pages of explanation by Washburn on creating your own test deck of ballots. If that is too much to digest, try the one page Executive Summary.
The full document tells how to test touchscreens as well as how to fill in paper ballots that scanners read.
There are stories after every election of uncounted ballots and touchscreens that didn’t behave. Much of this could be prevented with good independent testing of the machinery before the election, according to Washburn.