Nov 2012 Post-Election Audit Report – Flawed From The Start
Coalition Finds Continuing Problems with Election Audit and A New Flaw
Post-Election Audit Flawed from the Start by Highly Inaccurate List
of Election Districts
The report concluded, the official audit results do not inspire confidence because of the:
- Lack of integrity in the random district selection.
- Lack of consistency, reliability, and transparency in the conduct of the audit.
- Discrepancies between machine counts and hand counts reported to the Secretary of the State by municipalities and the lack of standards for determining need for further investigation of discrepancies.
- Weaknesses in the ballot chain-of-custody.
Coalition spokesperson Luther Weeks noted, “We found significant, unexplained errors, for municipalities across the state, in the list of districts in the random drawing. This random audit was highly flawed from the start because the drawing was highly flawed.”
Cheryl Dunson, President, League of Women Voters of Connecticut, stated,, “Two years ago, the Legislature passed a law, at the Secretary of the State’s request, which was intended to fix inaccuracies in the drawing. For whatever reason, errors in the drawing have dramatically increased.
Weeks added, “Some officials follow the audit procedures and do effective work. This year one town investigated discrepancies and found errors to correct in their election procedures – that is one value of performing the audits as intended.”
<Full Report (.pdf)> <Press Release> <Review detail data and municipal reports>
Aug 2012 Primary Audit Observation Report
Coalition finds 31% of Official Audit Reports Lack Critical Data
Municipalities failed to report data critical to audit evaluation. Increasing numbers choose paper only elections, avoiding scanners and audits.
The report highlighted concerns with two increasing trends:
- An increase in missing and incomplete official reports. There are 16 of 52 (31%) reports with errors making it impossible to determine if machines had functioned properly. What basis is there to trust audits, with this significant level of error in reporting?
- Up up to 19 towns avoided optical scanners and audits by conducting paper only elections. Such voting is not audited, not transparent, and error prone based on past observations of hand counts.
We conclude, based on our observations and analysis of official audit reports submitted to the Secretary of the State, that the August post-election audits still do not inspire confidence.
<Full Report (.pdf)> <Press Release> <Review detail data and municipal reports>
Apr 2012 Primary Audit Observation Report
Based on the size and relative simplicity of this audit, we provide an abbreviated report. We summarize the statistical information and observations, while we make no new recommendations.
Readers of past reports will note little change in our observations and conclusions; and little progress by officials in improving post-election audit integrity. Compared to past audits there were significantly fewer ballot count and race count differences in this audit. The fewer number of ballots and the single race to be counted contributed to this improved result. We are skeptical that this audit is an indication of future improvement.
Items of note include:
- Three towns selected for audit unsealed and combined their ballots from all districts, necessitating a town-wide count for the audit. This highlighted that ballots are not required by law to be sealed under a secure chain-of-custody during the audit period, only for the fourteen (14) day “lock-down” period originally applicable to lever voting machines.
- Despite the simplicity of the counting, several towns were unable to completely or correctly complete the official audit report form.
- One town’s report showed significant differences between the manual and machine counts for votes. The audit report form from this town was among those that were incomplete.
<Full Report (.pdf)> <Review detail data and municipal reports>
Nov 2011 Election Audit Observation Report – Data Available for Public Review
Coalition finds continuing problems with audit integrity
Provides calculations and official data on the web for public review and verification
For the first time, in the interest of public information and transparency, we are making all official municipal audit reports and the data we complied available for everyone to review on the web. Citizens can see the reports from their own town, other towns, and perform their own audit of the Coalition’s data entry and calculations based on those official reports. The November post-election audits still do not inspire confidence because of the continued:
- Lack of integrity in the random district selection and race selection processes.
- Lack of consistency, reliability, and transparency in the conduct of the audit.
- Discrepancies between machine counts and hand-counts reported to the Secretary of the State by municipalities and the lack of standards for determining need for further investigation of discrepancies.
- Weaknesses in the ballot chain-of-custody.
<Full Report, Press Release, Excerpts> <Review detail data and municipal reports>
Nov 2010 Election Audit Observation Report
Coalition calls again for legislature to act. Citizen observation and analysis show little, if any, improvement in November post-election audits.
The Coalition noted significant differences between results reported by optical scanners and the hand count of ballots by election officials across Connecticut. Compared to previous audits, the Coalition noted little, if any, improvement in the attention to detail and in following procedures in the November 2010 audits.
Bridgeport Recount Report and Recommendations
Votes were miscounted and miscalculated adding votes to each candidate, but not changing winner in the race for governor
Each candidate for the governor’s race gained votes in the recount when compared to the officially reported results, as follows: Foley (+174), Malloy (+761), and Marsh (+19). These differences parallel candidate shares in the initially reported results. Counting of all ballots in the governor’s race resulted in differences in many counts, totaling 1,520 votes miscounted, of these 1,236 were initially under reported and 284 were initially over reported.
Simply printing more ballots only reduces the chance of the specific problem that occurred in Bridgeport. There are other causes that could result in a municipality having to scramble to photocopy ballots or perform hand counting such as a massive power failure or ballots lost in a fire, flood, or accident shortly before or during Election Day.
Aug 2010 Post-Election Audit Observation Report – Incremental Improvement – New Integrity Concern
Citizen observation and analysis shows some improvements along with a newly uncovered problem with the random selection process…We conclude that August post-election audits still do not inspire confidence
the list of polling districts for the random audit drawing was missing some districts and is otherwise inaccurate and ambiguous. The integrity of the audit requires an accurate list of districts that is verifiable by the public. We have extended our recommendations to the Legislature to include an efficient fix to this problem.
Nov 2009 Observation Report – Improvement, Yet Still Unsatisfactory
The Coalition noted significant differences between results reported by optical scanners and the hand count of ballots by election officials across Connecticut. Compared to previous audits, the Coalition noted small incremental improvements in the attention to detail, following procedures, and in the chain-of-custody.
In this report, we conclude that the November post-election audits still do not inspire confidence. We find no reason to attribute all errors to either humans or machines.