Apr 17 2009
Retab Results
After each election, state statute requires each county to “retabulate” 5% of the precincts. The retabulation doesn’t really accomplish much. However, in Champaign County we have extended that process by conducting a hand count of select races in each of the 6 randomly selected precincts selected by the State Board of Elections for our County. You can see the results of the retabulation here.
The Green and Republican Parties did not send representatives to the retabulation. As such, members of my staff selected the races to be hand counted for them.
The results came out largely the same, except for a single vote discrepancy in Champaign 5. You can see the two ballots in that precinct that were oddly marked.
As in the past, the hand count of ballots demonstrates that our voting machines are counting accurately.
And an examination of the ballots shows that voters are doing a great job of following the instructions and filling in the oval. Out of 1,108 ballots cast in these precincts, just two marked their ballots with an X or check mark.
[...] Our retabulation of votes showed just two ballots where voters used an “X” or other mark instead of filling in the oval. That is an error rate of under .2%. Even then, there is a significant chance that the machine will count those ballots that a voter marks incorrectly. While the error rate is small, it obviously could have an impact in either of these contests. [...]