ST. CHARLES, Mo. (KMOX) - With less than two weeks until Election Day, St. Charles County held a public test of their election systems Thursday to ease concerns of a miscount or voter fraud.
St. Charles County Director of Elections Kurt Bahr tells KMOX what the intent of the test is to "ensure every target, every possible choice on a ballot is accurately counted when it is voted, and it is never counted when it is not voted, left blank."
Bahr says this test is required by state law and it's also the state who determines how the test works.
"We have a process laid out in state law of how to do that, so that we know that our machines are accurately recording every vote cast, every vote not cast," said Bahr.
Bahr shares they also must partake in a public facing test.
"We then allow the public to come in, and watch this test and see for themselves that the machine that is going to be use at their precinct is correctly counting," said Bahr.
The test wasn't only public facing, but had a public involvement. One Democrat representative and one Republican representative each got to choose a random voting machine to be tested.
Each machine was given eighteen ballots to pass through, each of which showed the correct vote total. They also tested blank ballots and overvotes, both of which were properly rejected back to the voter.
Arnie AC Dienoff represented the Republican Party. He was thorough looking over the results of each race for both machines before affirming his signature the results were accurate.
"This is a time where if there are errors or problems, it would come up here and this is what this system is built to do," said Dienoff.
He adds why it was important for him to be there for this test.
"It comes down to power, control, access, money and greed," said Dienoff. "That translates into integrity, honesty, accountability and transparency. I keep government officials accountable. I think there should be no punches, no secrets. They have to be honest and transparent with all their information."
Bahr says after Election Day they will hold another round of tests, to ensure nothing unexpectedly went wrong with the machines after.
"Two days after the elections, we will do the hand-count audit of the voted ballots," said Bahr. "What we do there is we randomly select certain precincts and certain races."
"In one of the precincts, we will count the presidential election by hand and see if that matches up to the ballot counter in that polling place. We will randomly pick the U.S. Senate race at a precinct and we will count that by hand to match that up with the election night results."
Bahr says this hand count audit is conducted by members from both the Democratic and Republican parties.
There was one notable absence in St. Charles County Councilman Joe Brazil. Brazil has been a longtime critic of Bahr and how elections are handled in St. Charles County. Bahr had a seat saved for Councilman Brazil, with his name on it which went empty through the test.
"I personally invited him recently and reminded him about this event," said Bahr. "We've invited him to our hand counts, we've invited him to our verification board. He is always welcomed to come... so he can see this process and see how it works well."
The St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners held a public logic and accuracy test on Friday morning to check the accuracy of their voting machines.