Vote audit uncovers no major irregularities

An audit conducted last week of Clark County’s November 2020 presidential election results has uncovered no problems with the counting of ballots, although “a handful” of voter errors were found that led to ballots for each major candidate not being counted.

Clark County Clerk Chris Jensen said this week that a two-day audit performed on Aug. 25-26 was paid for by the Clark County Republican Party to check for possible voting count discrepancies. It was not an election recount, Jensen noted, so no vote totals changed as a result of the audit.

For the 2020 election, the county had purchased new electronic ballot counting equipment for every municipality in the county. Prior to that election, different municipalities were using various equipment and methods for counting ballots on election nights, so the county board of supervisors voted to buy all new equipment to ensure consistency.

“Every township, city and village has the same equipment,” Jensen said. “Nobody is hand-counting paper ballots anymore.”

Each municipality’s equipment prints out the vote totals, and those numbers are then directly reported to the county clerk’s office. There is no online connection that could be accessed to alter vote count totals.

“Nothing is ever connected to the internet,” Jensen said. “They either call, fax or e-mail those to us.”

The county also conducts a canvas of the ballots a few days after the election before official results are reported to the state.

Last week’s audit involved a hand-inspection of each of the more than 14,500 ballots cast on Nov. 3. Jensen said the ballots were divided into those that went for Donald Trump, those that were for Joe Biden, and those cast for miscellaneous candidates.

The only problem discovered, Jensen said, was “a handful” of instances of voter error in which a voter both marked the ballot box for one of the candidates, then also wrote in that candidate’s name in the write-in space provided.

In those cases, Jensen said, the electronic equipment would have notified the voter that they had over-voted, but the voter hit the button to cast it anyway. The ballot was then rejected and not counted. Jensen said that did lead to “a few” less votes for both Trump and Biden across the county.

Jensen said the ballots with the overvoting issues should have been caught on election night.

“The poll workers should have been looking for those write-ins,” she said, and had they been found, likely would have been counted because the “voter intent” was clear.

Jensen said she made note of the issue, so when she conducts future election worker training for municipalities, “I can inform the poll workers to be aware of those things.”

Representatives of both the Republican and Democratic parties were at the audit to observe the process. The Republican Party paid the $894 bill for the work, and made sure the numbers that were reported to the state were accurate.

“They double-checked my counts against what was reported to the Wisconsin Board of Canvas,” Jensen said.

The final count from Nov. 20 found Trump with 10,002 votes and Biden with 4,524.