BUFFALO, N.Y. — Western New York is preparing for a busy political year. Voters will elect a President and new congressional leadership in the 27th District.
With some fears of foreign interference and the technical problems that plagued the Iowa caucuses, 2 On Your Side wanted to learn about the protocols in place to ensure election security in Erie County.
Erie County election commissioners explained how the system works. You vote by filling out a paper ballot. You then insert the ballot into a standalone machine that will scan and count your selections.
After polls close, election workers at all the precincts will remove a thumb drive from those machines containing the results and drive them to the Board of Elections office. Those drives contain all of the data from the precinct election machines, including scans of each and every ballot.
"Rather than have a situation where apps are used or people are calling in, we take that actual chip from the voting machine, and we put that into our system and then retrieve the results from that chip. So that way we get 100 percent accuracy," said Ralph Mohr, the Republican Erie County Elections Commissioner.
The drives are inserted into computers that are standalone and not connected to the internet.
"Our machines are not networked into anything so there is an air gap there. They are not hack-able. You can't get into our machines," said Jermey Zellner, the Democratic Erie County Elections Commissioner.
Voters also use paper ballots, so if there was ever any discrepancy the Board of Elections can hand count the paper ballots to ensure accuracy.
"It's very critical that you have a paper trail in this day and age," Zellner said.