WASHINGTON COUNTY (KFSM) -- For a good portion of his campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump has suggested the general election is rigged and during the final debate Wednesday night (Oct. 19) he said he wouldn't commit to accepting the results of the election.
Benton County Election Coordinator Kim Dennison said any tampering with their voting machines is highly unlikely.
“Each machine is an individual tallying machine, as well as the laptop we tally our results on,” said Kim Dennison. "It has never been connected to the internet."
Kim Dennison said she takes the results, downloads them to a thumb drive and sends them to the IT department to be uploaded to the state's website, or she uploads them herself.
“If you try to open those results on a normal computer off of the thumb drive I have, you won't be able to see anything,” Dennison said. "It's going to give you an error because you do not have the program that we use to open those results."
Washington County Election Coordinator Jennifer Price said they don't connect their equipment to the internet either and before the election they go through all the equipment to make sure it counts correctly and all the votes show up accurately.
“At the end of the evening we go through a process where we close down all the equipment and we verify that the amount of ballots cast on one piece of equipment match the number of voters we've checked in on the ballots,” she said.
Price said once those come back to the courthouse they do another verification.
“We have worked really hard to maintain the confidence of voters in Washington County and always provide a secure and a very good election for the voters to know that they can trust the results they see election night,” said Price.
Voters are encouraged to vote early to avoid long lines on Election Day. In Arkansas, early voting begins Oct. 24 and runs through Nov. 7.
Early voting in Oklahoma starts Nov. 3 and ends Nov. 5.