Sun Prairie completes election audit, works to avoid confusion in spring elections

SUN PRAIRIE, Wis. — No news was good news for Sun Prairie Clerk Elena Hilby as her city completed a mandatory post-November audit, which is part of the routine required by the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

“Matched perfectly,” Hilby said of the results comparing a hand count to what the city recorded on election night. “We were very confident and happy to find out that our machines were working exactly as expected.”

The WEC selects a handful of municipalities around the state to audit their election results and equipment, with the goal to get a broad sample of rural and urban municipalities as well as all the different types of equipment officials use in the state.

This year, Sun Prairie’s ward 11 was one of 368 different reporting units audited, making up roughly 10% of the reporting units in the state. In total, 21 reporting units were audited in Dane County, with eight in Madison alone.

“Spot testing them like this is just, it’s a great idea, it’s a great check,” Hilby said.

The process itself works a little bit like the pre-election tests that the voting equipment goes through. During that process, elections officials test ballots with all different kinds of marking errors to see how the machine handles those ballots — and the audit verifies that the machines accurately did so when put to the test in November.

This is different than the canvassing process that occurs after each election to certify both the county- and state-level election results. The canvass makes sure that each voter’s intent was accurately recorded — for example, if a voter wrote in a candidate but did not mark the bubble next to the write-in option, that their write-in vote is correctly counted. The audit makes sure that the tabulating machine correctly determined whether that bubble is filled in or not.

This is also as elections officials are preparing for the spring election. In Sun Prairie, that includes correcting mistakes that took place during the November election — in one polling location that served two different wards, voters for a few hours in the morning were given ballots for just one of the wards, not both.

This did not affect the results of the election, as both wards were in the same Assembly district so the ballots were identical except for the ward number, but that could change in the spring when voters cast their ballots for local races and the ward numbers matter much more.

“This is the first time this has ever happened, so we’re really happy about that,” Hilby said.

She added that the chief inspector of each location will be instructed to go over the ballots for each ward to make sure they remain separate.

“But then there should also be a double check when the election official is handing someone their ballot,” she said. “Just don’t assume that because in the right pile — but actually look and make sure you’ve grabbed the correct header code before handing it to them.”