By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County Deputy Elections Clerk Jenna Fager said that, though the county does use Dominion voting machines that were purchased in 2017, there are several security measures taken to be sure that your vote is counted correctly.
"None of our voting machines are ever connected to the Internet," Fager said. "It's actually illegal to connect them, ever. We do all of our programming and everything in house, here in Reno County."
Also, every ballot counted in Reno County is a paper ballot.
"We have mostly paper ballots at the polls," Fager said. "If you do use a touchscreen, that also prints out a paper ballot. You can overlook it, just check and make sure that your race is counted how you wanted them to count and then you feed it through the same machine that all of the ballots go through."
Any software updates from Dominion are done in person here in Kansas.
"We had one, it was about a year and a half ago and they actually send a person from Dominion to come in," Fager said. "They do it in house. It's not done over the Internet or anything like that."
The state of Kansas requires audits of selected races after each election. In 2020, it was the U.S. Senate race and the Kansas House District 104 race. All audits have shown that the counts are accurate in all races that were audited.