Election review committee expected to vote on ‘quality control’ audit
Washington County’s election review committee is expected to vote tonight on whether to recommend that the county perform a “quality control audit” of its elections process.
The meeting was requested last week by county commission Chairwoman Diana Irey Vaughan, who asked the committee to discuss the matter and send a recommendation to the commissioners for review, according to an email sent Friday to its members.
The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday in the first-floor conference room in Courthouse Square at 100 W. Beau St., Washington, and is open to the public.
The committee’s meeting was requested last Friday, one day after numerous people from the online group “Audit the Vote” attended the commissioners’ July 15 meeting to demand the county perform a “forensic audit” on the 2020 general election and allow a third-party company to inspect the county’s electronic voting machines.
It was unclear what the scope of any potential audit recommendations would be from the committee, but it was unlikely to include an examination of the voting machines, according to Dave Ball, who chairs the election review panel and also is the Washington County Republican Party’s chairman. He thinks the most likely recommendation will be to conduct a “quality control audit” on the county’s elections process to see what, if any, improvements can be made.
“It’s not an ‘overturn the vote’ audit. It’s a look at what we’ve been doing. And there’s a lot of emotion in between,” Ball said. “It tells us if the measures we’ve taken are effective or not.”
The election review committee, which was formed in early 2020, has been meeting periodically to discuss how to improve the county’s elections process and has provided regular reports on their progress to the commissioners.
Elections officials have previously said that if an outside party has access to the voting machines, the state Department of State would likely decertify them because they were outside their “chain of custody,” forcing the county to purchase new machines. The state announced Tuesday that it was decertifying the voting machines in Fulton County after officials there allowed technology contractor Wake TSI to access the equipment in February.
Washington County spent $2.8 million when it purchased its new electronic voting machines and equipment in 2019.
“I don’t think there is anyone (on the committee) of the mindset to decertify the voting machines. We’ve got $3 million in equipment,” Ball said.
“I also don’t see any reason to do it,” Ball added about examining the machines and risking decertification. “What questions are you going to answer with it? The ‘Audit The Vote’ people haven’t answered that.”
The three county commissioners each selected three members to the 11-member committee, which also includes Ball and Washington County Democratic Committee Chairwoman Christina Proctor. Proctor, who serves as the election review committee’s vice chair, said Wednesday that she did not think they would recommend a “forensic audit,” but she was unsure what decision could be made at the meeting.
Ball said he called today’s meeting after speaking to Irey Vaughan last week.
“How it will go, no one knows,” Ball said.