In our most recent Presidential Primary there were many towns in Connecticut that ran out of optical scan ballots and a huge percentage (30-40% ?) of the vote in those towns was then un-scannable hand counted copied ballots. These were counted late at night by unprepared election officials after a fifteen hour day.
Ironically the only votes audited (because that is the law) were those counted by machine.
(This is particularly ironic because many discrepancies in past audits were attributed by election officials to hand counting errors during the audits – resulting in claims by election officials that it is impossible to count accurately by hand.)
Of course reality is that it is possible to count accurately by hand, but it takes checks and balances. One check is to count more than once. Another check and balance is to count by machine as well. Or by machine followed by sufficient random hand count audits.
The post-election audit should audit by random selection all types of ballots no matter where or how they were cast, no matter where or how they were originally counted. Currently we only audit ballots cast in polling places that were originally counted by machine. We exempt all hand counted ballots, all absentee ballots counted centrally by machine, and provisional ballots.
