Clean Elections Audit
Delhi Township, led by Clerk Evan Hope, received a clean audit of its Nov. 3 election. This was no small feat given record mail-in ballot and in-person voter turnout in one of the most contentious elections in recent history.
The independent audit, conducted by the Ingham County Clerks’ Office, evaluated these key areas:
- Testing vote tabulators prior to Election Day
- Training poll workers
- Providing a balance of Republican and Democratic poll workers
- Ensuring voter applications match the number of cast ballots
- Matching the physical number of ballots to the number of voters
To test election accuracy, the Michigan Secretary of State chooses one race to be hand-counted in post-election audits. This election cycle, Michigan’s U.S. Senate election was selected. In Delhi Township, the hand count for the U.S. Senate race perfectly matched Election Day results from the tabulators for both precinct and absentee ballots. Anticipating record turnout on Nov. 3, the township made several key investments to tabulate ballots on Election Day. The Township Board unanimously supported the purchase of additional high-speed scanners to process absentee ballots, which enabled Hope and his team to tabulate all absentee ballots by just after 8 p.m. on Election Day. Hope also obtained a grant that paid for part-time help to process absentee ballots.