After the November 2011 municipal election, Connecticut conducted its eighth large-scale post-election audit[1]. This was also the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit Coalition’s eighth large audit observation. The coalition includes the League of Women Voters of Connecticut, Connecticut Common Cause, Connecticut Citizen Action Group, and Connecticut Voters Count. The purpose of the observation was to demonstrate citizen interest in the process, increase citizen involvement in elections, provide feedback to the Secretary of the State and the Connecticut Legislature on the audit process, and provide the public with information necessary to determine their confidence in our elections.

Readers of past reports will note little change in our observations and conclusions; little progress by officials in improving post-election audit integrity; and little change in our recommendations which have been, for the most part, not addressed by current and past Legislatures and Secretary of the State’s Offices.

In the interest of transparency and public information, for the first time, we have posted on the web, available to all, the official reports and data used to compile this report. http://www.CTEectionAudit.org/ResultsDisplay.aspx

We conclude, based on our observations and analysis of official audit reports submitted to the Secretary of the State, that 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.

Most of our general observations and concerns remain the same as reported in previous reports. However, in this round of audit observations, we note that:

• Reported discrepancies have decreased, approximating the Nov 2009 post-election audit discrepancies.
• A significant increase in memory card problems have been reported.

By law, the Secretary of the State is required, in each election, to select at random 10% of Connecticut’s voting districts to participate in post-election audits and select races for audit, “…in the case of a municipal election, three offices or twenty per cent of the number of offices on the ballot, whichever is greater, selected at random by the municipal clerk,..”

Once again, in the November 2011 random selection, without investigation, we discovered, according to local registrars, two districts selected for audit were not included in the election. This despite the passing of a bill in 2011 by the General Assembly, at the request of the Secretary of the State, that was supposed to help remedy this situation.

In two towns, for a total of ten selected districts, officials did not select and audit the full three races required by the law. While likely unintentional, if such situations are not investigated and remedied when they occurr, they  provide an opportunity for errors or deception.

Among our greatest concerns are the discrepancies between machine counts and hand-counts reported to the Secretary of the State by municipalities. We can find no acceptable explanation for attributing these discrepancies either to humans or to the voting machines. In many cases, these discrepancies are not thoroughly and reasonably explained. In other cases the explanations make no sense or contradict the data in municipalities’ reports.

We believe that the lack of organization, planning, and ad-hoc counting procedures used by many municipalities were not sufficient to count accurately and efficiently. Therefore, we believe that the procedural guidelines provided by the Secretary of the State still need further clarification and improvement.

The Secretary of the State should expect officials to be able to organize audits to produce accurate hand counts, but not, in normal circumstances, to have the skills to analyze and explain differences between accurate hand counts and machine counts. Such differences should be investigated by technicians, with appropriate expertise, such as the University of Connecticut VoTeR Center

Audit and chain–of-custody procedures are not followed. This report does not question any individual’s integrity. However, a safe, credible system of security procedures should not permit a single individual any extended opportunity to handle records and ballots unobserved.

Random selection of races and investigations of discrepancies after the audits should be required to be public or noticed to the public. The extent to which they are not noticed, not made public, or are difficult for the public to observe, compromises the integrity and credibility of the entire post-election audit.

Recommendations

In our previous reports, the Coalition made recommendations to the legislature and the Secretary of the State to improve the post-election audit laws. The Coalition continues to urge Connecticut officials to:

• improve audit procedures by providing clearer guidance to local officials
• tighten up chain-of-custody procedures, and
• establishment an independent audit board.

Detail recommendations are included in Appendix C of this report.

Audit procedures continue to present challenges for elections officials. We observed several failures to follow prescribed procedures. We continue to strongly recommend that best practices for effective counting procedures be established. Coalition members and observers would welcome the opportunity to contribute to the development of such best practices and to complete the 2010 effort that was initiated by the previous Secretary of the State’s Office.

Even in these challenging economic times, many of our recommendations can be implemented to strengthen the post-election audits, make them more comprehensive, and provide a more efficient process with enhanced integrity without significant additional expense.