COLUMBUS – Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced yesterday the completion of a Post-Election Audit of the results of the 2016 Presidential General Election. The audit showed the election results tested at a 99.998 percent accuracy rating. Secretary Husted made the announcement at the Ohio Association of Election Officials Winter Conference yesterday.
Secretary Husted requires boards of elections to complete a post-election audit following each Gubernatorial Election, Presidential Primary Election and Presidential General Election to ensure the election results reported by each board were accurate and to give Ohioans reason to have confidence in their system of elections.
“Our work to ensure elections have integrity does not stop on Election Day,” Secretary Husted said. “Election Officials from both sides of the aisle still have work to do to test their results and audit their systems to make sure everything worked as it should during the last election and to start getting ready for the next election.”
During the audit process, boards are required to perform a review of three different contests, which must include the “top of the ticket” contest (President or Governor), one other statewide contest selected by the Secretary of State’s Office after Election Day and at least one local contest chosen by each county board of elections. This year, in addition to their chosen local contest, boards were required to audit the race for President of the United States and for the Ohio Supreme Court, Full Term Commencing on January 2, 2017.
In 66 Ohio counties, the audit of the Presidential Race returned a perfect, 100 percent accuracy rating. Sixty-eight counties showed a perfect audit in the race for Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court and 66 counties achieved a perfect audit of their local contest.
Statewide, only 22 discrepancies were noted in the presidential tally during the audit process. Most discrepancies were caused by voters not properly marking paper ballots according to the instructions, causing the machines to be unable to read the vote.
In the case of every error, boards have been instructed to modify their official results to reflect the change.
Post-election audits are open to the public and duly appointed observers.
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