State to audit Greenwich primary results
A dozen poll workers will hand count the ballots cast Feb. 5 at Greenwich High School, one of 71 polling precincts randomly chosen for the statewide audit.
The audit will start at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the Town Hall meeting room and will be open to the public. A total of 874 ballots were recorded in the precinct during the primary. However, absentee ballots will not be part of the audit....
....Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz defended the system, which requires municipal election officials to send the hand count results to the University of Connecticut for a statistical analysis. A report on that analysis should be available in about a month, she said.
'I have had a few legislators say, 'Gee, maybe in the future we won't need this.' I would fight that,' Bysiewicz said. 'I think from the voters standpoint and from the standpoint of the integrity of the election process, it's important to do a random audit each year to ensure people that their vote is being counted properly and that, if there is fraud, we can ferret that out.'
Municipalities chosen for the random audit will receive reimbursement for 'reasonable' expenses incurred from the process, Bysiewicz said.
'Yes, it does cost some time and effort, but I think it is a worthwhile investment in the security and integrity of our election process,' Bysiewicz said.
According to Bysiewicz, the vast majority of the 702 electronic voting machines used in the state worked without incident on Feb. 5. Six of the machines needed replacement because either their memory cards that read the paper ballots were improperly programmed or because of technical problems such as paper jams.
Musca said she had confidence in the machines' accuracy.
'There's no way you can make a mistake. You color in your ovals and the machine reads it,' she said. 'It's as good as scanning their can of peas (at the supermarket). If they trust the price on their can of peas, they should trust this as well.'
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