The Center for Voting Technology Research (VoTeR Center) at the School of Engineering of the University of Connecticut performed a post-election audit of the memory cards for the Accu-Vote Optical Scan tabulators that were used in the February 2008 Connecticut Primary Elections. The cards were programmed by LHS Associates of Methuen, Massachusetts, and shipped to Connecticut districts for use in the elections. For the purpose of the post-election audit, the VoTeR Center received 215 memory cards from a number of districts after the elections. The audit was performed on 210 of these memory cards. (Five of the 215 cards were examined separately: three contained data from special election held in March, different from the primary elections; one card contained a referendum, and one card was from the 2007 municipal elections.) This document reports on the findings obtained during the audit. Among the 210 cards received and tested by the VoTeR Center, 200 cards (95%) were found to have been properly programmed for election. These cards contained valid ballot data and the executable code on these cards was the expected code, with no extraneous data or code on the cards. The remaining 10 cards, or 5% were found to contain “junk” data, that is, they were unreadable, which is easily detected by the tabulators as such, and could not have been used in the election. This is a high percentage of faulty cards. 137 of the cards were used for the actual election (the rest where backup cards). All cards were properly programmed and contained no unexpected code. 126 cards, or 92%, of the 137 cards were in the “election closed” state with non-zero counters which is the intended state. 10 cards (7.3%) indicated that printing was aborted, which suggests that election officials turned off the machine before the printing of the election results was completed. The audit was performed on request of the Office of the Secretary of the State.

Full report: audit08-b1

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