The Center for Voting Technology Research (VoTeR Center) at the School of Engineering of the University of Connecticut received the data gathered in the post-election audit performed in the State of Connecticut following the September 2011 election. The audits involved the randomly selected 10% of the districts and the audit returns were conveyed by the Office of the Secretary of the State (SOTS) to the VoTeR Center on November 18th of 2011. The audit data received by the VoTeR Center contains 83 records, where each record represents information about a given candidate: date, district, machine seal number, office, candidate, machine counted total, hand counted total of the votes considered unquestionable by the auditors, hand counted total of the votes considered questionable by the auditors, and the hand counted total, that is, the sum of undisputed and questionable ballots. This report contains several statistical analyses of the audit returns. This report presents the analysis of 83 records. The data presented in this analysis show that the absolute average reported discrepancy is lower than the number of questionable ballots (0.04 versus 0.93). We note that the discrepancies reported in this audit are substantially smaller than those reported for prior, larger election audits. One can conclude that the hand counts in the current audit were better because of the relatively small number of ballots and candidates in question, thus presenting fewer opportunities for human counting errors. It is anticipated that in broader elections, with greater number of ballots and more races the discrepancies will be larger. This analysis was performed on request of the Office of the Secretary of the State.

Full report: 2011-Sep-Hand-10

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