Election expert: Audits and recounts bring more confidence to the system

Recounts are expected in two Minnesota House races. The election results could determine control of that legislative body. The upcoming recounts are expected soon and come after initial ballot totals changed when election officials discovered technical glitches.

In Sherburne County, it was a memory card that didn’t fully collect and transmit mail in ballot results. In Scott County, it was a ballot scan malfunction.

Republican legislative leader Lisa Demuth has criticized the glitches as “intolerable and unacceptable.” She also said there need to be “election reforms” to prevent this from happening in the future.

But elections expert Neal Kelley from the University of Minnesota said these kinds of occurrences are not out of the norm.

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“During the post-election process, which is what we call the canvass of the votes, that's the time to go through any issues that crop up — mistakes, irregularities,” said Kelley, who is a retired Registrar of Voters from California and a founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Election Security Task Force. “And in Minnesota, they give you a 10-day window to do that. So, there's nothing unusual about that at all.”

To hear the full interview with Kelley on election counts and recounts, click play on the audio player above. The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

Neal, you’ve overseen many elections. How common are things like this?

It certainly does happen. I think the general public doesn’t always hear about these things, but during the post-election process, which is what we call the canvass of the votes, that’s the time to go through any issues that crop up — mistakes, irregularities, you may have missing ballots, you might have ballots that didn’t scan correctly — that is the entire point of that process.

And in Minnesota, they give you a 10-day window to do that. So, there’s nothing unusual about that at all.

How are recounts like this conducted?

There’s a number of ways that you can do them.

In some states, you have samples that occur. I know in Minnesota, for instance, you might have a select number of precincts that are looked at in that recount process.

But overall, most states conduct what’s called a hand count of those ballots. That takes you through the process of comparing the hand count to what your machine tally produced.

When there is hand counting, does that come out to be more or less accurate than machine counting?

It’s a great question because a lot of people think it’s more accurate. It’s the opposite. I’ve managed well over 100 recounts in a very large county and as much as humans try to get things correct — they’re going to make mistakes.

But the whole point of that process is to work through those differences, or work through those variances, and determine why there was an error. Then, you go back and you hand count it again, and you do that until you come up with what matches — not what you think you expect to see, but what actually matches.

Do you find that there’s a trend growing among politicians to call for recounts?

I think so. I like to tell people, there’s nothing new in this day and age about what people have been saying about elections. It’s just more amplified.

But I will say that recounts were fairly common, even going back to the early 2000s. That was sort of a common desire for candidates to get some closure. I saw it, in many cases, as closure, not so much as trying to change the results.

How do you think counties can respond to these increasing calls for recounts?

Election offices are under a tremendous amount of scrutiny, which they should be. It should be a very transparent process and the public needs to have confidence in the election process. By doing recounts and by doing audits, that brings more confidence to the system.

I would applaud counties for doing additional audits when they can because that level of transparency certainly can change the thoughts and minds of people that might have concerns about it.

So, I would not just say recounts is the only solution. I would say increased auditing across the board for election offices is something that would really be helpful.