Vote testing took place without a hitch Tuesday afternoon, a week prior to the Nov. 2 general election.

Representatives from the Democratic and Republican parties gave their approval to the automatic tabulating system after seeing it in action at the County Administration Building in Sycamore.

“It went as smooth as it could possibly go,” said Mary Simons, chairman of the DeKalb County Republican Party, who was representing the Republicans along with Andrew Nelms, chairman of the NIU College Republicans.

John Horn, representing the Democratic party, also backed the system, saying he was particularly happy the tabulator leaves a paper trail to ensure accuracy.

Along with DeKalb County Clerk Sharon Holmes and Dana Pittman, account manager of the Fidlar Election Company, the group discussed solutions to problems that might occur on Election Day.

“The only problem we’d have is if a ballot gets jammed in there, which can be easily corrected,” Holmes said. She said the county has used the current system for four years, and she has become particularly familiar with the equipment during that time.

Diebold, Inc., the Ohio-based company that manufactures the vote-counting machines used in DeKalb, also manufactures many ATM machines and bank vaults, Pittman said.

The machines have a six-hour battery backup in case the machine somehow gets unplugged, Pittman said.

During the testing, Pittman attempted to show all the types of ballots that could occur on Election Day. She showed what would happen if a voter “over-voted” and chose two candidates in a “vote for one” election.

“Over-voted ballots pop back out,” Pittman said as she demonstrated. “A judge sits about five feet from the ballot box. They can override it and that vote will not be counted.”

Another ballot can be given to a voter if this happens, Pittman said.

The machine also recognizes when a write-in candidate is selected, although those votes must be hand counted, Pittman said.

“There’s only a certain number of write-in candidates you can choose, so it will not show up in the paper if you put your own name or something like that down,” Pittman said.