Nine people gathered into a small conference room inside the Henderson County Board of Elections office Tuesday morning. At the head of the table a woman parsed through paper ballots that had been cast in the county, reading off the presidential candidate selected on each one.
Two women, one on each side, marked tallies each time a name was called. After more than two hours of counting up the tallies, the numbers matched up for the ballots from two polling locations.
The scene looked like a mundane gathering, but the actions are at the heart of the democratic process.
The activity, the North Carolina Sample Audit, has happened after every election in the state since 2006. The State Board of Elections selects two ballot groups from random polling locations to count by hand and make sure they match the results tabulated by voting machines.
The sample hand-count audit is a test to ensure that voting equipment reads voters’ choices accurately, according to the state.
The audit, the first step in certifying election results, takes place in all 100 counties. Later this week the county will canvass votes, the official process of determining the votes have been counted and tabulated correctly. Canvass takes place at the county and state level to provide final authentication of the official election results.
Tuesday morning, the Henderson County group counted hundreds of ballots from the Etowah early voting location and the Long John election day precinct.
“Everything was good. When we did the hand-to-eye recount, paper ballots matched the machine totals,” Summer Heatherly, Henderson County Board of Elections director, told BPR after the audit Tuesday.
