Richland County voter-registration officials will begin public testing of the machines that will count ballots in November’s general election on Monday, September 22, 2026, at 9:30 a.m. The testing will take place at the county’s voter-registration office at 300 Columbia Mall Blvd., Suite 210 — the former JCPenney space at the mall on Two Notch Road that the office has occupied since its move from downtown.
Public testing of tabulators is a step South Carolina counties are required to complete before every election. The county tests each machine with a known set of ballots, confirms that the reported counts match, and seals the equipment for use at polling places. Any anomaly triggers a rerun.
The Richland County notice, posted at the voter-registration office and published to the county website on Thursday, does not spell out how long the testing runs or how many machines will be examined. County staff typically work through the equipment over the course of several days when the pool is large.
For voters, the testing has no practical effect on how or when to cast a ballot in November. Registered voters can confirm their status, polling place, and sample ballot through the state’s scVotes.gov portal. Absentee-in-person voting for the November election opens after the state’s official absentee window begins in mid-October.
The public notice remains posted at the county voter-registration office in Columbia and on the county’s elections page.
