Want to see for yourself whether the voting machines that people cast their ballots on in Whitley County actually recorded the votes accurately? If so, then you might want to head down to the old Whitley County Courthouse Thursday morning for the county’s first ever “hand-to-eye” recount.
Starting at 9 a.m. Thursday (Nov. 7) in the Whitley County Clerk’s Office election department, the “hand-to-eye” recount of the Nov. 5 General Election will take place.
The Kentucky Secretary of State or their designee will randomly select at least one ballot scanner in each county and one race tabulated on that scanner for a “hand-to-eye” recount that will be performed by each county board of elections or its designee.
In other words, in each county the Kentucky Secretary of State will pick a voting center or voting precinct and a race voted on in that voting center or voting precinct. County election officials will then hand count the paper ballots in that race from that particular voting center or voting precinct in order to make sure that the hand count matches the totals that the voting machine tabulated on election night.
The change is the result of House Bill 53, which passed in April.
There is a five-page process. The counting will be done by the county board of elections, two volunteers and some of the county clerk’s office staff, said Whitley County Clerk Carolyn Willis.
Willis said that there is no reason to expect the totals will be different between the two counts.
Willis said that this post-election procedure where voting machines will be randomly selected for hand counting audits would make it very difficult for someone to even attempt to rig voting machines for a particular race in Kentucky.
“People are always going to question whether their vote got counted correctly,” Willis said adding that Whitley County and Kentucky’s voting and vote counting processes are the safest in the United Sates in her opinion.
