Secretary of the State Denise Merrill this week launched a new electronic system that allows towns to audit Connecticut’s election results.
The electronic scanners — which are faster and cheaper than traditional hand counts — will be used to audit seven polling locations this week: South Windsor, Meriden, Vernon, Washington, Stonington, Danbury and Colchester.
“The electronic auditing system is exponentially faster than the traditional hand counts and will spare towns the cost of hiring staff,” Merrill said
The system works by feeding the marked ballots into a scanner that can read the coordinates of the markings to calculate vote counts, which are then compared with the optical scanner’s results. The results of audits will be analyzed by the University of Connecticut, Merrill’s office and the State Elections Enforcement Commission.
By law, 5 percent of the polling places that use optical scan machines are subject to an audit.
The scanners were developed and programmed by the University of Connecticut’s Center for Voting Technology Research and funded with a grant from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
