TAMPA, Fla. — As this year's presidential election approaches, you'll probably hear a lot about election integrity.
That's part of the reason that the Hillsborough County’s Supervisor of Elections office is publicly testing its equipment and giving people a chance to see how accurate their voting tabulation machines are. The logic and accuracy test is also required under Florida law ahead of every election.
It checks the equipment to make sure ballots are being properly counted.
The Hillsborough County Canvassing Board oversaw the tabulator test, and the results came back exactly as expected: accurate to the last vote.
“We had a random sample of our tabulators that are going to be used election day and early voting, and then all of our high-speed scanners that we use for vote by mail,” Hillsborough Supervisor of Election Craig Latimer said.
Despite failed legal challenges, hand recounts and more, election officials say conspiracy theories about inaccurate vote counts persist.
Chris Gleason was among the public observers who still had questions about the election integrity. He was one of about a dozen public observers watching, and in some cases, taking video of the process.
Despite the transparency, he says he came away as skeptical as ever.
“A lot of the problems and issues that we identified, I confirmed,” he said. Gleason raised questions about modems attached to Hillsborough’s voting tabulators, which he contends can be hacked.
Latimer says that's not true.
Concerns were also raised about blank ballots and whether several votes may have gone uncounted in recent elections.
Latimer explained that in elections where there are two full pages of candidates and issues, some only vote in the main races, and leave the rest blank.
“So, it's not unusual,” said Latimer, “that when we have a two-card ballot that there is a large number of blank ballots. When we have a one-card ballot that goes down to almost zero, because somebody votes for something on that ballot.”
Not everyone walked away unconvinced.
Teresa Miller, a Republican with the Florida Fair Election Coalition, also observed the accuracy test.
She says the transparency gave her — and she hopes others — confidence.
“I don't necessarily question what's going on in the tabulators maybe the way some other people do,” Miller said. “Because, if we really wanted it and had an issue, we could go back and count those ballots.”
“There's always going to be people who have alternative views about how things occur,” Latimer said. “I'm confident in the systems that we've got. You know I've got a law-enforcement background, so I'm very concerned about the security of our elections. And making sure that they are accurate, too.”
The Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Office also sent out nearly 50,000 vote-by-mail ballots on Feb. 15th. They say 1,800 poll workers are being trained for the upcoming elections and 40 regional technicians will be on hand to make sure those ballot machines work — and work properly.