JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – With less than a month before Jacksonville returns to the polls to elect a new mayor, Duval County’s Supervisor of Elections is testing the equipment that will be used. It’s to make sure the count will be accurate.
It’s something they do before every election and what they’re doing is actually going to check the accuracy of scanners, the machines that you put your ballots into. There has been a lot of concern in past elections about this.
The scanners were chosen at random and they are actual machines used at precincts and early voting sites.
There were only two observers on hand including Rod Sullivan an attorney for the Republican Party.
“I think the more people know about how the process is run here and Duval, the safer they’ll feel and the better other counties could do if they were to copy Duval,” Sullivan said.
There was no one from the Democratic Party observing but Keith Garrett from the Libertarian Party was also watching closely.
“The last time I was here, I had plenty of questions about that,” Garrett said. “The IT director here explained it to me very carefully, have observed their physical and logical security is much better than other places are reported to have.”
The test was successful, with no problems.
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Afterward, News4JAX spoke to Supervisor of Elections Mike Hogan about the expected 35% turnout and he said as of Friday things appear very slow.
“Everything seems to be in a kind of a standstill mode. I’m not hearing anything from people getting rah-rah about this election at all. It’s still kind of real quiet,” he said.
Recent polling suggests that the mayor’s race in particular is going to be a very close race. The real test of these machines is going to be in 25 days, on election day when the final count is taken.