Secretary of the State Denise Merrill announced Tuesday that 75 voting precincts will have election results audited following the Nov. 6, 2012 presidential election, she announced via press release.
The voting precincts were randomly selected with Connecticut Voting Rights advocates at a news conference at the State Capitol Monday. Connecticut General Statutes 9-320f requires that 10 percent of the polling precincts in the election using optical scan voting machines are subject to an audit. Since 747 polling precincts used optical scan voting machines, 75 precincts were chosen to have their election results audited.
In Cheshire, the District 1 polling place at Cheshire High School, and the District 3 polling place at Artsplace, were chosen for audit.
“We had a remarkably smooth Presidential election on November 6th, especially given our state of recovery from Hurricane Sandy,” said Merrill in the release. “Now, it is our duty to audit the machine totals from the election to ensure the accuracy of our optical scanners. We are committed to making sure Connecticut voters have continued confidence that their votes were recorded accurately and that’s why these independent audits are so vital.”
The post-election audits can begin as of November 21, 2012 and must be complete by Monday December 3rd.
“Auditing election results isn’t just a good idea, it’s absolutely essential in order to guarantee the integrity of our elections,” said Merrill. “We don’t just take the machines’ word for it. So we will have every ballot cast in a full 10% of precincts using optical scan machines hand counted and matched against the machine totals. Connecticut has the toughest elections audit law in the country and I am confident that following this audit the numbers will once again match.”
Connecticut is the first state in New England to require a comprehensive audit of election results.
