Secretary of State Condos to conduct election audit

Secretary of State Jim Condos announced last week that Vermont’s Elections Division will be conducting a random audit of the 2016 General Election results beginning Tuesday, Nov. 29. The audit will include six towns randomly selected by the Secretary of State.
“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 Alburgh, Hartland, Highgate, Huntington, Rutland Town, and Vernon will be audited using 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 auditing 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 creation of an image file with all of the scanned ballots.
Condos further stated, “Conducting the random audit of vote tabulator results is an integral part of performing checks and balances of our voting system. As Vermont’s Chief Election Officer, I take this duty seriously and welcome the opportunity to verify our elections continue to be fair and accurate.”