Voter surveillance concerns: resident urges public test and transparency for ES&S tabulators

During public comment at the Cascade County commission meeting, Colleen Stewart raised concerns about transparency and accuracy of local election tabulation procedures and called for publicly run comparison tests between electronic tabulators and hand counts.

Stewart identified herself and said the county uses an ES&S 950 tabulator to count paper ballots. She said she reviewed public-test reports and hand-count records and described numerical discrepancies. “The public test shows 486 votes cast… however, the hand count of that … shows 405 total,” Stewart said, summarizing the difference reported in documents she reviewed. She told the commissioners she was denied access to view some of the test results when she attempted to observe and urged the county to run a public test using a test deck representing all 26 precincts so that hand counts can be compared with tabulator results.

Stewart said she is not focused on election winners or party outcomes but on verifying that “the machine is counting the ballots correctly by comparing the results from the electronic tabulator with the hand counted results.” She urged that such public tests be conducted and made available so voters can verify tabulator accuracy. The transcript records Stewart’s allegations and requests as public comment; it does not record any response from election officials in the provided excerpt.