Given the ongoing COVID-19 situation, it seems like
March 3 was an eternity ago. But, that was the date of Minnesota’s Presidential
Nomination Primary (PNP). As Wright County voters came out to the polls to cast
their ballots, behind the scenes, the Wright County Auditor/Treasurer’s
Elections Division was breaking out a new voting system.
With the Republicans not having a race – President Donald
Trump was the only name on the ballot – Wright County Auditor/Treasurer Bob
Hiivala knew there would likely be a very low turnout by election standards. It
was small enough that the poll pads used to confirm voter rosters weren’t
necessary. It was also a chance to give a test run to new voting tabulators.
In 2019, Wright County got a grant from the State of
Minnesota to upgrade the county’s vote tabulators. They purchased DS200
tabulators for precincts and a DS450 as a central tabulator for the election
headquarters the Wright County Government Center. The DS450 is used to run
absentee ballots or recount ballots for accuracy and can do so at a rate of 70
a minute – a far cry from the antiquated AutoMARK system the county had used
for year.
“We were still stuck with the assisted voting
technology – the AutoMARK,” Hiivala said. “They’re aging, so we were starting
to have issues with them. The DS200 are the new tabulators. The sense from our
election officials was that they wanted the new machine.”
With the grant funding, the county was able to make
the purchase and get an upgraded product. As Hiivala viewed it, there was no
better opportunity to give a trial run for the new equipment than the light
participation expected in the Presidential Nomination Primary.
“The PNP was the perfect time to introduce the new
tabulator to all the precincts,” Hiivala said. “There were far fewer people
voting in that election than we will be seeing in the primary election in
August and the general election in November. We were able to roll it out and
give it a run without the pressure of having a flood of voters casting
ballots.”
Wright County is still using paper ballots when voters
come to the polls and select their candidates of choice. They are tabulated by the
DS200 via media sticks. The ballot count is read into a secure laptop from a
secure media stick and those votes go through a secure website to get the
Minnesota Secretary of State’s office. They still have the paper ballots to
fall back on if needed, but, the technological advantage of the new tabulators
has improved the process of accurately counting ballots significantly, as well
as assuring the sanctity of the ballots.
“The media sticks are secure and our machine can only
read a designated stick,” Hiivala said. “We have the summary reports from the
precincts and we validate that those are the same numbers we have on the
sticks. We have the paper ballots behind those summary statements to make sure
the numbers match up.”
As impressed as the precinct workers were with the
DS200’s performance, Hiivala was equally impressed with the precision of the DS450.
It was a dramatic change from how business was
conducted and the tabulator more than lived up to what Hiivala was anticipating.
“We were very impressed with the accuracy of how that
machine worked,” Hiivala said. “Prior to having the DS450, election officials
had to make the numbers match up between the number of ballots they were issued,
the number of votes cast and the number of unused ballots remaining. Prior to
this election, election judges were told that they don’t bring their results in
until the numbers match. It’s not that hard to be one or two off. Those things
happen sometimes. With the new machine, they can bring those ballots in if they
can’t get a matching count and we can run them through the central tabulator
and quickly figure out where the problem is. We put the DS450 through its paces
and it exceeded my expectation of how easy it was to run.”
With the August primary coming and what many believe will
be a November general election that will include a record number of voters
coming to the polls, putting the new tabulators a trial run under almost clinical
election conditions was an opportunity Hiivala was happy to have – this year
was the first time in 28 years that Minnesota conducted a PNP – to get a test
of the new equipment was critical.
He had some concerns heading in, but Hiivala ended the
process with a newfound respect for the tabulators, which he needed given the
higher voter turnout that is expected in November.
“I was very happy how the voting equipment performed,”
Hiivala said. “Whenever you’re running equipment for the first time, there is
always a little anxiety that something won’t go as expected. But, I thought it
went very well and will be a benefit for us moving forward, because we
anticipate high turnout for the elections later this year.”