DENVER — Every county in Colorado must make sure the voting machines count ballots accurately ahead of each election.
The primary election in Colorado is June 28. Ballots go out next week.
On Wednesday, Denver County conducted its required "Logic and Accuracy" test.
"We do this before every single election to test the accuracy of our equipment," said Denver Clerk & Recorder Paul D. López.
Denver Democrat Marc Kamin and Denver Republican Stephen Gurr each filled out 32 test primary ballots to be scanned through one of Denver's election machines.
Kamin and Gurr then used the touch screen ballot machines to type in their 32 ballots to simulate as though they had voted in person instead of with their mail-in ballot.
Each touch screen ballot gets printed as a QR code on a piece of paper, and that gets scanned into the same machine that the paper ballots were scanned into.
Watch the process in the video above.
The computer counts for both styles (paper ballot and touch screen QR code) should equal the same total.
As a final test of accuracy, the paper ballots are also counted by hand by two election judges.
Their tally is compared to the computer counts.
Drum roll please: all counts were the same.
That means that the votes by Kamin and Gurr were counted exactly as the two intended by the computer, the touch screen and by hand.
"This is really just to involve the public, to verify that we are doing our jobs correctly and that the equipment is behaving as it should," said Jimmy Flanagan, Denver Election Senior Voting System Analyst.
The hand count took about an hour longer than the computer scan.
Though, the Logic and Accuracy test was not meant to compare computer scans to hand counts.
"Weird, right? That the hand count took longer than us actually scanning the ballots," Flanagan said. "This is a very simple ballot, so that was actually very fast as far as hand counting goes."
The ballot was one page, two-sided. Denver November election ballots are known to be three pages, two-sided.
"You can, maybe, extrapolate a little to figure out how long it will take to hand count, which is going to take forever," said Flanagan.
Elbert County conducted its Logic and Accuracy test on May 24.
According to Election Manager Rhonda Braun, there were no issues with the test.
That means that a vote bubbled in for "Candidate A" was accurately counted by the machine as a vote for "Candidate A."
Republican Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder made two copies of his election voting server, saying he was concerned that a required "trusted build" update of his voting machines deleted 2020 election data. An Elbert County judge required that he turn those copies over to the Secretary of State's Office.
In May 2021, Schroeder had his county conduct a hand recount of the 2020 presidential election. His hand recount determined that the machine count was accurate.
Anyone can watch a Logic and Accuracy test. Denver even has an open invite to check out the process outside of the test.
"Just come and actually see the process, we'll show you every step of the way," said Flanagan.
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