Hartford, CT - Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill today joined a voting rights advocate Luther Weeks of CT Voters Count for a public drawing to randomly select three precincts that will have election results audited following the September 27, 2011 municipal primary in the city of Bridgeport. The three voting precincts to be audited are the Beardsley School, Bassick High School, and the Roosevelt School, with the alternate precinct selected is the Thomas Hooker School. Precincts from 21 other municipalities that had previously held their primaries on September 13th were selected for post-election audits at a random drawing on September 28th. Bridgeport’s primary was delayed to September 27th by a court order.
“Despite the unusual circumstances surrounding Bridgeport’s municipal primary on September 27th, things went very smoothly that day as Registered Democrats went to the polls to choose their party’s nominees for municipal offices,” said Secretary Merrill, Connecticut’s chief elections officer. “This post-election audit drawing gives another added layer of security to check the accuracy of the machine counts in Bridgeport. We expect that the results of this audit will reassure the public to have continued confidence that all votes were recorded properly.”
As required by Public Act 07-194, An Act Concerning the Integrity and Security of the Voting Process, 10% percent of the polling precincts used in the election are subject to an audit. Secretary Merrill directed that three precincts from a pool of 23 precincts in Bridgeport be chosen to fulfill the 10% requirement, plus one alternate. The alternate precinct chosen will only face an audit if one of the selected precincts cannot perform an audit. The audits must be complete by October 31, 2011.
The law requires a hand audit 10% of all polling places in all elections and primaries. (Polling precincts which are already part of a recount are exempt from audits by statute). The provisions in the law, developed in close cooperation with the computer science department at the University of Connecticut, give Connecticut one of the strictest audit statutes in the country. Connecticut is the first state in New England to require a comprehensive audit of election results.
Public Act 07-194 states that local Registrars of Voters, “… shall conduct a manual audit of the votes recorded in not less than ten per cent of the voting districts in the state, district or municipality, whichever is applicable. Such manual audit shall be noticed in advance and be open to public observation.” The results of audits will be analyzed by the University of Connecticut and then presented to the Secretary of the State’s Office and the State Elections Enforcement Commission, and ultimately made available to the public.
The law contains a detailed description of the audit process:
“The manual audit… shall consist of the manual tabulation of the paper ballots cast and counted by each voting machine subject to such audit. Once complete, the vote totals established pursuant to the manual tabulation shall be compared to the results reported by the voting machine on the day of the election or primary. The results of the manual tabulation shall be reported on a form prescribed by the Secretary of the State which shall include the total number of ballots counted, the total votes received by each candidate in question, the total votes received by each candidate in question on ballots that were properly completed by each voter and the total votes received by each candidate in question on ballots that were not properly completed by each voter. Such report shall be filed with the Secretary of the State who shall immediately forward such report to The University of Connecticut for analysis. The University of Connecticut shall file a written report with the Secretary of the State regarding such analysis that describes any discrepancies identified. After receipt of such report, the Secretary of the State shall file such report with the State Elections Enforcement Commission.”
