Pre-election Audit of Memory Cards for the November 2007 Connecticut Elections Uconn Voter Center

The UConn VoTeR Center performed an audit of the pre-election memory cards for the AccuVote Optical Scan tabulators that were to be used in the November 2007 Connecticut Elections. The cards were programmed by LHS Associates of Methuen, Massachusetts, and shipped to the towns in Connecticut. The towns were instructed to test the cards and to choose randomly one out of each four cards per district to be shipped for the audit. The total of 522 cards were received and tested by the VoTeR Center, out of which 378 cards were received before the election. Out of the total number of cards, 18 cards, or 3.5% were found to contain “junk” data, that is, they were unreadable, which is easily detected by the tabulators as such, and could not have been used in the election. The rest of the cards, or 96.6%, were found to have been properly programmed for election. These cards contained valid ballot data and the executable code on these cards was the expected code, with no extraneous data or code on the cards. About half of the cards were found to have been tested and set for election—the intended state of the cards following the prescribed testing procedure. Most of the remaining cards were tested by the towns but not set for election; while this is not a problem, this suggested that the relevant towns/districts either misunderstood the instructions or did not follow the instructions. One card was found in the state set for election but with non-zero counters, indicating that the district tested the card in election mode and did not reset the card. This is a potentially problematic, but detectable situation, since proper procedures require that the “zero counter” report is produced at the start of the election1. This document contains the description of the audit procedures, the (reverse) engineering that was performed by the VoTeR Center in order to enable memory car testing, the results of the audit, discussion, and recommendations. The audit was performed on request of the Office of the Secretary of the State.