San Mateo County will begin testing all voting equipment for the Nov. 3 general election on Wednesday, Sept. 23, at 8:30 a.m., and residents can watch.

The Logic and Accuracy testing, known as L&A, takes place at the Registration & Elections Division at 40 Tower Road in San Mateo. Mark Church, the county's chief elections officer, announced the schedule Sept. 17 and said the public and media are welcome to observe how the county verifies its vote-counting system. For Burlingame and Hillsborough voters, the testing is the last public checkpoint before equipment ships to Vote Centers across the county.

The testing runs in two phases. In the first, staff mark paper ballots in English, Spanish, Chinese and Filipino according to preset patterns and scan them through the Image Cast Central system. Results must match exactly. The second phase repeats the process on Ballot Marking Tablets, the touchscreen devices voters use at Vote Centers.

Every piece of Vote Center equipment, including tablet printers and mobile ballot printers, also gets a function check to confirm it runs software and firmware certified by the California Secretary of State.

Once testing wraps, the county will deploy equipment to 50 Vote Centers across San Mateo County. That is one more than the 49 centers used for the June 2 primary election, when the county ran the same two-phase process starting April 22.

Three Vote Centers open for early in-person voting on Monday, Oct. 5, with more centers opening through Election Day. All registered county voters will also receive a Vote by Mail ballot starting in October.

The county uses the Liberty Vote Voting System, known as Democracy Suite. The state-certified system generates paper ballots so voters can review their choices before casting. San Mateo County has used Democracy Suite since November 2019. The system was formerly provided under the Dominion Voting Systems name.

After the election, the county conducts post-election audits, including a manual tally of randomly selected ballots, to verify reported results match ballots cast.

Residents with questions can call or text (650) 312-5222 or visit smcacre.gov.