Utah officials testing ballot reading machines ahead of election season
Jul 8, 2025, 1:53 PM | Updated: Jul 9, 2025, 11:09 am
Election specialist Andrew Haun processes ballots at the Utah County Clerk/Auditor’s Office in Provo on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020. Utah election officials are preparing for this fall's elections by testing their equipment.(Scott G Winterton/Deseret News)
(Scott G Winterton/Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah election officials are preparing for this fall’s elections by testing their equipment.
Utah law now requires election officials test equipment ahead of elections each year. The testing must be conducted publicly, and officials must give at least 10 calendar days notice before testing.
Related: Follow the Ballot: How Utah ballots are tabulated and audited
This is something that’s been going on for years in Utah County, said Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson.
“LNAs, or logic and accuracy tests … have been going on for years. We’ve done them every year since I’ve been here, and I know they were doing them before,” Davidson said. “They’ve just become more highlighted to the public.”
How do officials test Utah election equipment?
The tests involve ballots referred to as “test ballots” and other ballots which have been purposefully marked and folded.
“We actually have a deck of test ballots that we have printed up,” Davidson said. “Then we also make additional ballots, where we take a ballot and we put pen marks on it and we fold it in different directions. [We’re trying to] make all the different combinations that would come through in a regular election.
“Then we run it through each piece of machinery to see if the machinery comes out with the expected results,” he said.
If the results are not what officials expect to see, they have to find out what happened.
“We know what’s on the ballot. So if it doesn’t record it [the ballot] properly, or if it doesn’t read it properly and record it, then we know that something’s wrong with the machine. But if it reads it properly and comes out with the same results, we know that that machine is programmed and is working properly.”
Davidson said the machines don’t typically make mistakes.
He said they plan to test all 16 of the county’s machines before July 17. At that time, Davidson said officials will test the machines randomly and for the public to see.
Davidson says he’d love to see more people come, “so that they can gain an assurance that the machines do work properly.”
Weber County officials plan to publicly test some of their election machines on July 15. Cache County officials plan to test their machines on July 17 while Davis and Salt Lake County officials plan to test their machines on July 18.
