Williamson County sees successful voting audit as part of state's election integrity pilot program

The Williamson County Election Commission held a hand-count performance audit following the Nov. 8 general election which showed 100% accuracy in the county’s election results, a change in procedure that will soon be seen state-wide.

That audit included the counting of ballots from a secured tabulator machine used for early voting from the Franklin Rec Center, one used on election day at the John P. Holt Brentwood Library, and locked metal boxes of absentee mail-in ballots, all of which were randomly chosen as part of a pilot program.

That program saw the audits completed throughout the 2022 election cycle in Williamson County, and starting in 2024 the Secretary of State will be able to randomly select counties to perform enhanced audits after elections.

“The purpose of our audit is to ensure that our paper physical ballots that people have cast match the electronic media results of the tabulators,” Williamson County Election Commission Chairman Jonathan Duda said. “This is an opportunity to provide confirmation to the public that their votes were cast, and that's the most important thing that we do when we conduct our elections is to ensure everyone gets a vote, everyone knows that their vote counts, and every vote counts once.”

Williamson County Elections Administrator Chad Gray said in a phone call that his office was given little guidance on how to actually perform the audit, but succeeded in their goal with the help of more than a dozen citizens representing each political party who hand-counted ballots at the Election Commission office on Nov. 17 in an effort that took approximately three hours to complete.

In addition to the auditors, several citizens attended as witnesses to the process.

While more than 4,000 votes were counted in the audit, Gray said that the process was fairly easy, didn’t cause too much strain or extra work on his office and staff, and resulted in no discrepancies in the voting records.

“I think it went really well,” Gray said. “A lot of people were interested in voter integrity. There's a lot of interest around voting equipment, the accuracy of all that, and our hand counts have matched exactly what the machine totals said, for those randomly chosen locations and everything.”

While Williamson County's records appear to be without issue, Davidson County faced their own challenges with election accuracy when hundreds of voters were given the wrong ballots during early voting.

In total, Williamson County saw 45.66% voter turnout for the general election, with 47,316 ballots cast in early voting, 36,670 cast on election day and 2,013 absentee ballots turned in.

Gray said that he and his office are already looking forward to the 2024 general election and assessing how many Election Day voting locations they anticipate needing following a drop in early voting in the county, a move that he hopes will alleviate long wait times on.

Gray said that they will also be working over the next two years to inform voters new to Tennessee about the state’s voter ID law to ensure that they are prepared to cast their ballots ahead of what will be another historic election cycle.