On Tuesday, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill announced the completion of the post-election audit pilot program.
Sec. Merrill announced in a statement that the results of the audit pilot program confirm the accuracy of Alabama’s elections. Merrill expressed his thanks to all involved in the successful completion of this post-election audit.
The Alabama State Legislature authorized a post-election audit in just three polling places in three Alabama counties.
Alabama Act 2021-446 authorized a post-election pilot program to be conducted in three counties after the 2022 General Election in which one statewide office and one county office were audited for a single polling place. Dallas County, Houston County, and Marshall County were selected to conduct the audit. The post-election audit was conducted by the Probate Judge, Sheriff, and appointed poll workers in each county.
Houston County Probate Judge Patrick Davenport said, “It will only audit one precinct, and (in) that precinct, it will only audit one state race and one county race. It’s a test for the audit process. I think it’s something that the legislature thought was important. What it will actually do…the nuts and bolts of it would be the Circuit Court would issue an order authorizing the Sheriff and I to open those sealed ballot boxes. We’ll set up in this chamber, and I’ll probably have ten teams of two people with a supervisor observing each one of them, and each of those teams will go down the ballot and record the tabulated votes from those ballots on a tally sheet. We’ll compare that to the DS200 (ballot scanner) results we procure on election night.”
Many conservatives have expressed concerns about Alabama’s election counting processes after the 2020 election, in which former President Donald Trump alleged that votes in certain swing states may have been fraudulent. One area of concern has been the vote counting machines. The manual audit of the polling places audited showed no significant discrepancy between the paper ballots and the machine counts.
Some states have conducted full state audits following the 2020 election, but no state has found sufficient evidence to decertify their presidential vote.
Merrill’s tenure as Secretary of State ends in January.
Former State Rep. Wes Allen is the Secretary of State-elect. Allen is a former Probate Judge in Pike County who sponsored several bills while in the legislature to improve the security of Alabama elections.
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