elections administrator says a scam like frank describes with widespread hacking and phantom votes would never succeed. >> if you even change a period, a period in the election programming, it sends up a red flag that immediately stops the entire process until we can identify what would have triggered that red flag. >> reporter: in harris county alone, election officials inspect thousands of voting machines. >> six months out we start checking all 13,000 pieces of voting equipment in harris county opening them up, do they turn on, have they been tampered with, can we take them to a voting location, are all the buttons working. >> reporter: they run tests and on election day they track the number of people showing up to vote and the number of ballots cast. one of many safeguards that would catch an election inflated with phantom voters. >> would be would have to find a way to break into the voter rolls in every county? >> in tandem, breaking into