New digs for Porter County’s election equipment lent a little variety Friday morning to the usual test of the machines prior to the May primary.
Staff from the Porter County Elections & Voter Registration Office began at 8 a.m. on the dot with the Pledge of Allegiance and running the voting machines and tabulator through their paces in the basement storage room at 155 Franklin St. in Valparaiso. The space looks much the same as the old storage room in the Porter County Parking Garage where half of the machines are still being stored until they’re deployed for the election on May 7.
Early voting starts Tuesday in Porter County. Voters must be registered at least 29 days before an election. For more information, visit https://www.porterco.org/170/Elections-Registration.
Porter County Elections & Voter Registration Office Director Sundae Schoon assists Election Board Member Jeff Chidester during the election test Friday morning. (Shelley Jones/Post-Tribune)
Valparaiso resident Jim Moulton was the only member of the public on hand when the check began.
“I like to see how things work. It just popped up on my feed,” he said of how he found out about the test.
Office Director Sundae Schoon said that while the board is only required by law to test 5% of the machines at the public test they always do more and then the staff keeps going.
“Every single machine that is used on election day is tested,” she said.
Moulton wanted to know how long the office had to keep the test results. Schoon told him 22 months.
The group then recessed their formal meeting long enough to hop in their cars and drive over to The Porter County Expo Center to test the final machine, the high-speed vote tabulator known as the DS 850. It’s used on election night to count absentee ballots and used to be housed in the Elections & Voter Registration Office.
“It’s a very expensive machine,” said Porter County Clerk Jessica Bailey. She and her staff used to have to move it to the Expo Center and recalibrate it before every election. “And you hold your breath every time,” she said.
Lori Daly, director of the Expo Center, made room there and had a dedicated closet built to house the machine “so Sundae and I don’t have to get mild heart attacks every time it gets moved to the Expo Center,” Bailey said. A camera keeps watch over the DS 850 when it’s not in use, as all the equipment in the basement at Franklin Street is also monitored.
It was rolled out of the closet Friday morning and fired up for testing.
“It sounds like a jet engine when it turns on, which is amazing,” Schoon said.
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
