Oakland County tests election equipment ahead of midterms
PONTIAC (CBS DETROIT) - With less than two weeks before the midterms, election officials in Oakland County spent Thursday testing the accuracy of their equipment.
It was open to the public so people could observe the process.
This will be the first election Rochester Hills resident Scott Jackson and his wife signed up to be poll inspectors, so they have many questions.
"What do they do to identify faulty ballots, and how do they adjudicate them?" Jackson wondered.
He was among those who went to Oakland County's election office Thursday to see how accurate the equipment responsible for counting absentee ballots is.
The staff ran the machines through different scenarios, like a ballot with all the boxes filled in.
"We want to make sure that the tabulator picks that up and says, 'no, we're going to reject this ballot because it's been overvoted.' We put in blank ballots to make sure it reads that as undervoted," said Oakland County Clerk/Register of Deeds Lisa Brown.
According to the Secretary of State's office, there are 1.8 million Michiganders planning to vote absentee.
Oakland County sent ballots to 101,407; over 40% have returned theirs as of Oct. 25.
"So people may see people walking into precincts with a lot of ballots and then just feeding them in, it's not fraud," Brown said. "Those are absentee ballots that are being that have already been checked in at the clerk's office and are being tabulated at the precinct."
With increased interest in the election process, voters may see more poll challengers on Nov. 8.
"A challenger cannot just do a blanket challenge and say, 'I challenge everybody in the precinct.' They have to have a good cause for it. They cannot hold somebody's ID and examine it," Brown said.
Those in attendance appreciate the transparent process.
"They're not scared to answer real questions," said Joseph Person, chair of the Southfield/Lathrup Village Democratic Club.
Jackson sought the answers he was looking for.
"This just emphasizes my faith in the system," he said.