Secretary of State Jim Condos to conduct election audit

Secretary of State Jim Condos announced Monday, Nov.17, that Vermont’s Elections Division will be conducting a random audit of the 2014 general election results.

The audit will include six towns — a 50 percent increase from previous years.

The random audit of 2014 general election results will begin at 10 a.m., Thursday, Nov. 20, at City Hall, in Montpelier, Vt.

“Voting is one of the most important responsibilities and privileges that comes with being a citizen. Ensuring the election process is both honest and accurate is as important as voting itself,” stated Secretary Condos.

Results of all races from the towns of East Montpelier, Fayston, Manchester, Saint Johnsbury, Westminster, and Wolcott will be audited using new scanning technology from Clear Ballot Group, which will re-tabulate the ballots to produce an independent count from each town to compare to the results reported using the vote tabulators on Election Day.

Benefits of this new technology include: the ability to audit a larger number of tabulators and votes in a shorter period of time, the ability to audit every race from each town rather than only a race or two as has been done in the past, the ability to view scanned images of the processed ballots to understand why a certain vote was counted in a certain way, and a file with all of the scanned ballot images that we can maintain.

This technology also has the potential to assist with future recounts, given the visual transparency of the technology. Secretary Condos is excited to pilot this new technology for the first time in Thursday’s audit.

Condos further stated, “Conducting the random audit of vote tabulator results is an integral part of performing checks and balances of our voting system and as Vermont’s Chief Election Officer, I take this duty very seriously.”