CT: More (Human?) Errors In Reported Results?

[Wilms]

CT: More Errors In Reported Results?

By Luther Weeks

December 25, 2008

We have covered reports of differences between the results posted on the Secretary of the State’s web site and actual election results in Shelton and Stamford. We have learned of a third problem in the results posted for the Congressional race in Avon, with the possibility of similar problems in several other towns.

David Bedell (Green Party candidate for Registrar, Stamford) was researching the effect the Working Families Party may have had in the recent election. He noticed several anomalies: 9 towns with instances of zero counts for WFP and one with duplicate results for the Democratic and WFP for a candidate.

He checked with the Avon Registrar and she reported U.S. Representative Chris Murphy’s results were Democratic - 5111 and WFP - 269, making a total of 5380.

Checking this morning at the Secretary of the State’s web site we see totals of Democratic - 5577 and WKF of 0, an extra 197 votes. By our calculations that amounts to about 1.9% of the initially reported results for the race in Avon.

As we have pointed out before, the manual calculation of votes, usually with three transcriptions and several additions along the way is an error prone process. It can be a daunting task for voters, candidates, and parties to check results independently, since the State publishes summary results which must be verified against multiple hand written reports and machine tapes held in each town hall.

~snip~

http://www.ctvoterscount.org/?p=1242