Senator Sheehan for State Senate
August 6, 2018
Senator James C. Sheehan
Media Contact: 401-742-1702
Post-Election Audits may be put to the Test Election integrity has been the subject of much conversation, both locally and nationally, since the November 2016 election. Federal officials continue to investigate Russian attempts to interfere in the presidential election, and recent reports indicate the federal government has notified election officials in 21 states of attempts to hack their voting systems ahead of that vote. As recently as this past week, the leaders of four U.S. intelligence agencies reaffirm the "pervasive" and "ongoing" threats from foreign actors, including Russia, to interfere in upcoming U.S. elections. A new state law sponsored by Senator Jim Sheehan (D-Dist. 36, Narragansett & North Kingstown) requires that the state Board of Elections establish a post-election audit program to assure that all equipment and methods used to tally ballots during the election are both accurate and proper. Senator Sheehan stated, “Under the new law, the state Board of Elections would conduct special ‘risk-limiting’ audits, or partial recounts, in order to authenticate the results of an election.” Senator Sheehan explained that the post-election audits would make sure that the hard copy ballots sync-up with the digital readouts from the electronic voting machines. If discrepancies are found, the audit process would intensify to determine definitively if there is a problem with the accuracy of a given election result. As such, this measure will help deter voter fraud, identify programming errors and system issues, and avoid full recounts when only partial ones are required. “Auditing our voting machines will help safeguard the accuracy of our election results,” Sheehan said. “For a democratic republic to work as it should, the people must have faith that the election was fair and that their votes were accurately counted.”
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