League of Women Voters of Connecticut

For Immediate Release: January 26, 2012
Contact: Luther Weeks, 860-918-2115 or luther@CTElectionAudit.org

Hartford, Connecticut –Today, the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit Coalition released its report on the 
November 2011 post-election audits. 

Coalition spokesperson Luther Weeks stated, “For the first time, in the interest of public information and 
transparency, we are making all official municipal audit reports and the data we complied available for 
everyone to review on the web. Citizens can see the reports from their own town, other towns, and perform their own audit of the Coalition’s data entry and calculations based on those official reports”

The report concluded:

• 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.
  

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.

Without adherence to procedures, accurate random drawings, a reliable chain-of-custody, and transparent public follow-up, when discrepancies are reported, if there was ever a significant fraud or error it would not be recognized and corrected 

Cheryl Dunson, League of Women Voters of Connecticut’s President, noted, “We note little change in our observations and conclusions and little progress by officials in improving post-election audit integrity. Because of ongoing shortcomings in the performance of post-election audits, we continue to urge our state election officials to offer more guidance to local personnel and to require more consistency in the conduct of the audit.”

This is the eighth major post-election audit observation report by the Coalition since the adoption of optical 
scanners and paper ballots statewide. Observers came from the membership ranks of the coalition partners --
The League of Women Voters of Connecticut, The Connecticut Citizen Action Group, Common Cause 
Connecticut, and Connecticut Voters Count. 

The coalition’s reports and data are available online at:
http://www.CTElectionAudit.org.