Manatee County's new vote audit machines stalled until November election

The Supervisor of Elections office has three new Clear Ballot audit machines that are currently tied up in red tape and will not be used for the primary election on Aug. 20. 

The machines, used to audit votes after an election, were a $223,000 line item in a $841,340 mid-year budget request made in May by Supervisor of Elections James Satcher.

Satcher said the plan to use them is being pushed to the November general election. 

“The machines performed perfectly,” Satcher said. “They’re up and ready to go.”

The canvassing board met Aug. 6 at the Supervisor of Elections office to perform Logic and Accuracy testing on all the voting equipment, which ensures the machines are functioning properly and counting votes accurately. 

Tabulating machines count votes while audit machines only double check the votes. 

Satcher said a final decision hasn’t been made yet, but there are two options for how to use the audit machines. Votes can be audited on the spot right after they're cast on election night or they can be audited afterward. His staff has seven days to submit the completed audit. 

The canvassing board voted not to use the audit machines because the proper procedures had not been followed by the Supervisor of Elections office. 

Courtesy image

Satcher said a noticing error was to blame. He said the language wasn’t specific enough to meet the requirement. 

Scott Farrington served as chief of staff to Mike Bennett, the former Supervisor of Elections, for nearly 12 years. He's running against Satcher in the Republican primary to be Supervisor of Elections. 

Farrington attended the testing session and had additional procedural concerns beyond the notice, but said the canvassing board stopped there and didn't consider anything else. 

“The biggest one was the security procedures,” Farrington said of concerns. “I didn’t see where they had adjusted the security procedures to accommodate the additional steps needed to be taken with ballots.” 

Following the session, Farrington received a copy of the procedures and said they definitely had not been updated. 

Security procedures are required to cover the custody and security of ballots. Farrington’s concern stemmed from the fact that the county has never used these machines before, so there’s no provisions in the current procedures that address how to deal with them.

Satcher said the updated security procedures will be submitted 45 days before early voting, as required. For now, staff will handle the audit as they did when Bennett was in charge — by hand. 

Instead of 100% of votes being audited, 1% of precincts will be audited in randomly selected races. 

Commissioner George Kruse credited Bennett and his team for being “disproportionately better than anybody else in the state in terms of our elections” when he voted against Satcher’s budget request.

Kruse is running for reelection, and he trusts the votes will be counted accurately because procedures and most of Bennett’s staff are still in place. But this situation being on such a tight timeline is why Kruse voted against Satcher's budget request. 

“Whatever it is you’re doing with your money, there’s no need today to rush something through. That’s how mistakes happen,” he said. “We spent a quarter of a million dollars on machines that are unusable.” 

Farrington agreed it was too soon to purchase the machines, but budgeting was only one of his reasons. 

“The company’s been around a while, but this particular version was certified in June of 2023,” he said. “I didn’t want to be one of the first counties to use it. I wanted other counties to use it and see how it worked for them.”

The noticing error was not ideal, but Satcher is confident in the staff to manage a secure hand audit and he’s looking forward to the security and timeliness the audit machines will bring to the general election. 

“(The machines) are a great way to second check and audit the vote, especially for a large county where a hand vote could go for a really long time and make people worry,” Satcher said. “It’s going to be a great system, and we’re ready for November.”