In a new request from the Kentucky Secretary of State’s Office, the Christian County Clerk’s Office conducted a hand-to-eye audit of a voting machine Thursday morning in the courtroom of Circuit Judge John Atkins.
There were several people in the courtroom to conduct the audit, which was of a random voting machine from a random polling location, of a random race that took place during Election Day on Tuesday. Christian County Clerk Melinda Humphries says the Clerk’s Office typically conducts their own internal audit, but this one came from the Secretary of State’s Office.
Two individuals were sworn in on behalf of both the Republican and Democratic Parties of Christian County, and they were the ones that conducted the physical count. Both candidates had to physical count out each ballot and both had to put eyes on them, to correctly conduct the audit.
The randomly selected machine was from the Sinking Fork Baptist Church polling location, and the race the audit was conducted on was the Christian County School Board race in District 2 between Ambrea Watkins and Margo Pickens.
Of the 259 ballots cast at that location on Election Day, only nine included the race for the District 2 School Board race—and the physical count perfectly matched that of the tally tape printed by the machine. Two votes were for Pickens, five for Watkins and 2 were under-votes, which means the ballot contained the races but no vote was cast for either candidate.
To finish the hand-to-eye audit, Clerk Humphries was pleased to announce the numbers were accurate and the ballots were then resealed safely back into their machine.
Humphries says these types of audit just further show that election integrity is strong in Christian County, and they take great pride in knowing that elections here are conducted correctly and securely.