This morning, Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill randomly selected three districts for post-election audit from the twenty-four districts using optical scanners in the May municipal elections. Two alternates were also selected. Exempted from the audits were districts from two towns with post-election close-vote racanvasses and two that used ballots, but not optical scanners.
This is a good time to recall our stand that the audit law should be amended to included all ballots and districts in the audit, with no exemptions. The three major exemptions are districts with recanvasses, centrally counted absentee ballots, and all hand counted ballots. We know from experience that manual counting can be performed with great accuracy, yet also with significant errors. Any exemption from the post-election audit is an opening for errors to be hidden and a formula for skulduggery.
For example, the November Bridgeport election and citizen recount demonstrated about 25% of originally hand counted ballots being incorrectly counted or reported in the (still) official results. Since audits do not include hand counted ballots we do not have a way of judging how accurately other towns in Connecticut count ballots on election night. We speculate that sometimes some are quite accurate, but that sometimes some are also significantly inaccurate.
The districts selected were:
- Groton – West Side Middle School Dist. 2
- Groton – William Seely School Dist. 4
- Stonington – Stonington Fire House
Alternates selected:
- Griswold – Griswold Town Hall
- Woodbridge -Center School
