The present invention is directed to a system and method that allows a central election office to maintain control over actions taken on voting devices located at various polling locations. In an exemplary embodiment, a poll worker or other user contacts the central election office with a request to perform an action on a voting device. An election management system located at the central election office executes a hashing algorithm to generate a first hash code associated with the action. The central election office communicates the first hash code to the polling location, and the poll worker or other user inputs the first hash code into the voting device. The voting device executes the same hashing algorithm to generate a second hash code associated with the action, and compares the second hash code to the first hash code to verify the validity of the first hash code. If the validity of the first hash code is verified, the voting device permits the poll worker or other user to perform the action on the voting device.