MONTGOMERY — Members of the Senate General Fund Budget Committee passed legislation on Wednesday establishing a post-election audit for county and statewide general elections.
The bill by State Rep. Joe Lovvorn (R-Auburn) would require the probate judge of each county to conduct a post-election audit using existing staff after every county and statewide general election to determine the accuracy of the originally reported election results.
Under the bill, the probate judge of each county shall order a post-election audit after every countywide and statewide general election of all ballots in one precinct in a countywide or statewide race.
Lovvorn said during the meeting, “I hope that we have the safest, most accurate, and best elections in the state.”
“This wouldn’t change the result of any election. Just audit our process using our machines to make sure everything is working appropriately. This is just to make sure that we don’t have a problem with a machine that is giving the wrong count,” Lovvorn said. “This is just one more step to make sure and give confidence to the people of our state that we’re doing everything we can to make sure that systems are working correctly and their vote truly counts in our state.”
The bill passed the committee with an amendment despite bipartisan opposition.
“I know the proponents of this are going to stay mad at me, but I can think of possibly one election that might have gone differently than we thought it would go in a general election in all the elections I’ve been keeping up with for a long time. If the canvassing board, if there’s hanky panky business going on anywhere, they’re not going to select that particular precinct if they don’t want us to see what’s going on over there,” State Sen. Sam Givhan (R-Huntsville) said during the committee meeting. “My probate judge hates this and I just don’t see it as being effective. We’re talking about general elections, not talking about primaries (or) municipal. When we’ve visited on things in the past, most of the fraud that occurs in this state apparently comes from municipal elections and we’re not auditing those.”
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