We all know how frustrating it can be when technology doesn’t work properly. Most of the time, it’s merely a pain. But when democracy hangs in the balance, the stakes are higher.
That’s one reason that state law requires all voting equipment in Virginia to undergo so-called logic and accuracy testing before every election. With early voting for the November general election underway now, elections officials and equipment vendors have been busy the past couple of weeks certifying the systems that will collect and tally voters’ choices.
Logic and accuracy testing, often called L&A testing, ensures that hardware and software are in good working order when voters show up at the polls or mail in their ballots. The process also helps assure citizens that elections were conducted fairly and accurately, offering peace of mind in a political climate often fraught with tension.
“There are many facets of election integrity, and this is an integral part of it,” said Veronica Bratton, chairwoman of the Lynchburg Republican City Committee. Bratton has been an observer for L&A testing in Lynchburg since she became party chair in 2022.
Virginia Department of Elections spokesperson Andrea Gaines said that five electronic voting systems are approved for use in the commonwealth: Election Systems & Software, Clear Ballot, Dominion Voting Systems, Hart InterCivic and Unisyn Voting Solutions. All of them must undergo the same rigorous L&A testing.
L&A testing takes place at the city or county level, where a local general registrar and board of elections oversee voting. In guidelines provided for local elections officials, the Department of Elections is clear about who should be present and what must take place during L&A testing.
The general registrar or a member of the board of elections has to be there, and the chair of a local committee for each political party — or a representative in the chair’s place — must also be allowed to attend. Typically, a representative of the vendor of the voting equipment is also present. The proceeding is not open to the public.
The Department of Elections also stipulates that each machine be tested with enough sample ballots to make sure that it has recorded the votes completely and precisely.
That stretches into an hours-long process because making sure that voting machines are working properly isn’t merely a matter of testing a few bubbled-in ballots; voting machines must be ready for anything that’s thrown their way. 
Once the machines have been programmed for the current election, registrars insert a set of sample ballots with predetermined outcomes, said Appomattox County General Registrar Patricia Morton. Logically, this includes sample ballots that have been marked to record a vote for each candidate who is running. There are ballots made to test write-ins, too.
“This process simulates an election very closely,” said Jeff Rosner, treasurer for the Lynchburg Democratic Committee, who has served as an observer of L&A testing in previous years.
As in a genuine election, things can occasionally go awry, and those scenarios must be tested to make sure that the machines behave correctly. Sometimes ballots are filled out incorrectly. There are overvotes, when a voter selects more than one candidate in a particular race, and undervotes, when no candidate is selected at all.
Daniel Pense, general registrar for Lynchburg, said that ballot scanners are programmed to reject ballots that show a full undervote (with no candidate chosen for any race) or an overvote. The voter would be given an opportunity to fix incorrectly marked ballots.
State law also requires polling places to have at least one machine that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and those must be tested, too.
Once all the test ballots have been run through, the machine produces the results, just as they do on Election Day. Pense said that because the test ballots have known results, elections officials can compare the tabulation of each machine with the results it is supposed to produce. Most of the time, machines work without issue.
“Generally, they go very smoothly,” Morton said of L&A tests. 
But sometimes, there’s a glitch, and for that, Gaines said, localities keep extra voting machines on hand to swap out for any that aren’t acting right.
Morton recalls a recent test when the screen on an ADA-accessible voting machine inexplicably went dead. “We used a backup for that precinct, sent the machine to North Carolina for repair, and had it back in time to be a backup machine for Election Day,” she said.
Pense, too, has encountered the rare occasion where a machine doesn’t pass muster. Recently, a high-speed scanner that was used to tabulate absentee ballots created a vote where there shouldn’t have been one.
“We opted not to use that machine for that election as the vendor was not able to definitively explain the error,” he said.
Once it’s been confirmed that all the voting machines count votes accurately, the general registrar affixes to each machine a security seal, which prevents tampering. The next time that the machine is put into service is when the election is underway.
The security seal is one measure to prevent unlawful interference, but other security features are also in place.
Pense, who became Lynchburg’s general registrar last year, previously worked in electronic securities trading — a career that has parallels with running elections in the need for physical and technological security. Understanding regulatory requirements and maintaining a secure networking environment are skills that transferred from his previous job to his new role.
Like election technology across Virginia, Lynchburg’s voting machines “never touch any network anywhere, as they are completely self-contained,” Pense said. “The only way information comes in or out of them is via Department of Elections-approved memory sticks. These are kept securely in locked cabinets until programmed for use in the election and inserted in the machines at L&A testing.”
After L&A testing, and before elections begin, each locality is required by law to file a document with the Department of Elections affirming that its voting machines function as they should.
Although election integrity has come under intense scrutiny in recent years, L&A testing is not new. “Virginia has always tested the machines used to count votes in elections, dating back to the first use of lever machines in the state in 1950,” said Gaines, of the Department of Elections.
What has changed in recent years is the sheer volume of test ballots that must be run through machines to ensure their accuracy, said Dianna Moorman, who has been general registrar for James City County since 2016 and has worked in the county’s office of elections since 2005.
Recent legislation increased the number of ballots that jurisdictions must print because of how results are reported, she said. Until a few years ago, Moorman’s office, like many across the commonwealth, might have had only a handful of ballots to test. Now, she and her colleagues must test scores of different ballots in each machine.
But the added attention to detail makes her all the more convinced of elections’ security. “I have even more confidence in the system now than when I started,” Moorman said.
Because of the large number of test ballots and the thoroughness of the L&A testing, the process is tedious, said Denise Tuttle, chairwoman of Lynchburg Democratic Committee, who observed L&A testing ahead of a primary earlier this year. “They are very thorough and go from machine to machine to machine,” she said. “But in this political climate, when voting accuracy has come into question, this is very important.”
Bratton, of the Lynchburg Republicans, said that L&A testing is also a warm and welcome gesture of unity behind a shared goal, an event where politics are put aside to make sure that everyone — Republicans, Democrats and independents — works together so that elections are accurate, safe and secure. 
