Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and Dallas County Auditor Julia Helm hosted an informal meeting Thursday in Adel to discuss the inspection of election equipment ahead of the primary election. 

Workers along with Pate and Helm gathered at the Dallas County Auditor’s Office on Thursday as they began to conduct inspections on the 37 vote tabulators that will be used in the June 7th primary election. Pate says it’s important to have transparency in the process of inspecting the equipment before it’s used. 

“We want to assure the public of the integrity because if they don’t believe in the results we just failed and that’s something we can’t accept. Making sure that these tabulators are totally calculated correctly and working properly is so important and allowing the public to watch it that transparency is a way to ensure them of that as well.”

Helm tells Raccoon Valley Radio it’s important to complete this process to ensure the machines are reading the ballots correctly. While this is the checking process that occurs before the election Helm says there are also checking processes that occur after ballots are cast. 

“After the polls close the poll workers have to get results out, they have to do their processes and then the results are driven back to our office here in Adel and some of our polling locations are over 40 minutes away so it takes a while and then once the results come into our office we have to check them with the results tapes before we upload them to the Secretary of State Election Night Reporting website.”

Helm reminds voters in Dallas County that with the recent redistricting process 12 new precincts were added and she asks all voters to double check where their precinct for voting will be this year.