If the following taste of Putnam County’s newly required partial audit of one race in the Nov. 6 general election seems tedious, it’s because the audit process is tedious. And exacting.
Under the state’s new, 98-page, election-procedures law, each county is now required to audit one statewide race, based on 20 percent of the county’s votes in the recent general election. A third-party firm (in this case, Arlo) is supervising the audit and will do the computations.
The race to be audited was chosen by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and it was his own race with Democratic challenger Bee Nyugen. The overall results, as well as those for individual counties, will not be available from Arlo until all 159 counties have finished the audits.
Putnam’s audit – in government-speak dubbed the “general election risk-limiting audit” – was held last Thursday, beginning at noon. The 20-percent rule meant Putnam’s audit team was checking 2,079 ballots of its 10,000-plus ballots cast for the results in one race.
As team members arrived, six boxes of ballots were placed on one table. Three tables were set up for two-person counting teams and marked for five piles of ballots for Raffensperger, Nyugen, Chase Metz (Libertarian), write-ins, and “no votes.”
Another table for two was set up for a “vote review panel,” yet another as a “ballot check station,” and one more as a “data input station.” Overall, the recount involved 10 workers, plus chairs for five election board members and one observer.
As part of the random selection process, Arlo contacted acting elections supervisor Kimberly Rudolph shortly before noon to tell her which groups of ballots to audit. In Putnam’s case, it was advance voting (the bulk of those reviewed) and absentee voting. It was enough for the three counting table teams to go through two rounds of 300 to 400 ballots.
For the counting teams, Rudolph reached out to experienced volunteer poll workers for their interest and availability. Six answered “yes” to the request.
Each time a pile of ballots was distributed or returned, the signing of chain-of-custody paperwork became involved (and took a few moments).
At 12:05 p.m., distribution of ballots to the counting tables began. One of the two team members would read the name of the vote on a ballot, show it for verification to the second team member, who would then place the ballot in its designated pile. Soon the sounds from the tables became murmurs mostly of “Brad” or “Bee.”
At 12:25 p.m., the first table counting its stack of ballots completed the task, equaling a rate of about 20 per minute. Then, each candidate’s pile was counted and the number entered on a tabulation sheet. The other two tables followed soon after. Then followed the vote review table (signing) and check-in station (more signing).
At 1:10 p.m., distribution of the next (and final) batches of ballots started the murmuring and piling and counting and signing all over again.
At 2 p.m., the audit was complete and reported without a hitch.
It was a tedious, but smooth process. If it also seemed “old hat,” perhaps it was that, too.
With a knowing look, board member Lorraine Webb recalled the last presidential election and commented, “We had to go through this thing three times in 2020.”