Behind the voting curtain: Election security in Indiana

This story was originally published on WFYI. On October 4, the Marion County Election Board, county clerk, and several election employees greeted reporters and members of the public for an election equipment test. It was part of a regular board meeting and open to the public. After the board approved the county’s final election plan, the testing began. Temporary workers and election equipment manufacturer employees filed in and took four stations. In a flurry of action, they cast mock ballots and watched as machines spit out corresponding paper records. Then, they locked the devices down and sealed them with green tags that say, “DO NOT REMOVE” and “SEALED.” Simultaneously, hand-fed ballot scanning devices on a back wall printed long streams of paper that spilled onto the floor. And a large scanner labeled “ZEUS” was tested for mail-in and absentee ballots. Indiana requires this pre-election “logic and accuracy test” by law, for all 92 counties. Each county must test 5 percent of its equipment.& Marion County Clerk Kate Sweeney Bell& said her county voluntarily tests 100 percent. “I don’t want [voters] to even have to think about this,” Sweeney Bell said in a later interview about election security preparations. “But it’s...