Canton voting precinct picked for post-election audit

On Saturday, November 12, while many in Canton and around the country were trying to move on from an emotionally charged and tumultuous campaign season, 16 of the town’s election workers and Canton’s four voter registrars found themselves back at town hall, reliving election night one hand-counted ballot at a time.

Canton’s precinct five, it turns out, was one of the 66 precincts from across the state that had been randomly selected to be a part of a post-election audit — a requirement of the commonwealth’s new election reform law that also ushered in early voting, online voter registration, and pre-registration for 16 and 17 year olds.

The new law, which was signed in 2014 but took effect with the 2016 election, mandates that 3 percent of the state’s voting precincts are to be audited after each presidential election. The audit must be conducted by the chosen municipalities’ board of registrars within days of the election and in “full public view,” pursuant to the procedures for hand counting of ballots.

According to Town Clerk Tracy Kenney, who joked that it was the first lottery she had ever won, the audit process itself went relatively smoothly, lasting approximately four hours in the Salah Meeting Room at town hall. Following the audit procedures outlined in the law, Kenney said the ballots were removed from their sealed containers and then counted in batches of 50, with two election workers examining each batch. Races that were hand-counted included president/vice president, representative in congress, and state senator, as well as two of the four state ballot questions.

And while Kenney had not yet completed the final audit report as of Monday morning, she indicated in a telephone interview that the hand-counted results were very similar, albeit not identical, to the results produced by the AccuVote scanner and tabulator on election night.

“It was definitely close,” she said, “and given that over 2,200 ballots were cast in that precinct, if we’re off by a handful I’m not going to panic about it. With that said, you always strive for perfection, although perfection is hard to come by.”

Kenney said that most of the discrepancies had to do with the way the voter filled out the ballot. For instance, she said there was one ballot where the voter had filled in the oval next to both state senate candidates but then drew an “X” through one of the ovals. The tabulator then recorded it as an “over-vote,” which counts as a blank, whereas the board of registrars overseeing the audit were instructed to look instead at the intent of the voter.

Kenney said the addition of early voting added a new dimension to this year’s election, especially since all early votes, along with all absentee votes, had to be saved and then run through the tabulator on election day.

Some of those early voter ballots registered as “over-votes” and had to be hand-counted at the end of the night; however, Kenney said “one or two” of them got stuck at the bottom of the bin and were not discovered until the audit process. Those votes were subsequently recorded, and in accordance with state law, the results from the audit will become the “official vote of record.”

All in all, Kenney said the poll workers did an outstanding job and worked “incredibly hard” on election day, especially given the newness of early voting, which proved to be wildly popular across Canton with more than 5,000 votes cast.

Kenney did express concern about a post made by one Canton voter on the Everything Canton Facebook group suggesting that he saw someone “feeding the machine with a bundle of ballots” at one of the polling locations. The person characterized it as potential voter fraud — a serious accusation — and the post generated dozens of comments, although many correctly pointed out that they were early voter ballots.

Kenney said voters should be vigilant when they are at a polling location, and she considers it their duty to report any activity that may threaten the integrity of the electoral process. However, she said it is neither responsible nor fair to the poll workers to insinuate something on social media rather than addressing the concern with an authority figure, such as herself or the precinct clerk.

“If you see something you don’t understand, ask a question — and go directly to the source to get your answer,” she said.

Regarding the audit process, Kenney said she would complete the required report and file it with the secretary of the commonwealth’s office. According to state law, the secretary must then make the results publicly available no later than 10 days after receipt of the audit report. The secretary must also determine the cause of any discrepancies and publish his findings within 180 days.

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Posted by Jay Turner on Nov 18 2016. Filed under News, Town Election, Town Government. Both comments and pings are currently closed.