How voting machines are tested in Quincy

by Quincy Votes! board member Maggie McKee

This morning, thanks to a tip from an eagle-eyed watcher of public notices, I went down to the basement of City Hall to observe the testing of election equipment ahead of the March 5, 2024, presidential primary.

There, I found out that the machines for each of Quincy’s 31 precincts are put through their paces before each election to make sure they’re working properly.

For this test, 25 hand-filled ballots were sent through each machine (10 ballots for the Democratic primary, 10 for the Republican, and 5 for the Libertarian) and tabulated. The results were checked against the expected outcomes, and if they matched, the machine’s count was reset to zero and its memory card was locked, not to be opened until primary day.

Here is Assistant City Clerk Joe Newton describing the process, which is expected to take all day:

Workers test each of the 31 machines to be used at polling places on March 5, 2024

Red locks are placed on each machine’s memory cards after a successful test, not to be opened until the presidential primary on March 5, 2024

If you’d like to observe how absentee and early ballots for this primary are processed, you can. Head to the basement of City Hall on the following dates: