(Hartford, Connecticut) - As Windsor’s former Town Clerk, Anna Posniak used to spend election nights checking seals on ballot boxes, signing off on results, and ensuring that every number lined up exactly as it should. After nearly two decades of doing the quiet, painstaking work that keeps democracy running, she knows what accuracy looks like — and what it takes to maintain it.

 

Now, in her role as the Assistant Director of Elections in the Office of the Secretary of the State, Posniak brings the same meticulous attention to detail to her work as Assistant Director of Elections, ensuring consistency and accuracy across Connecticut.

 

On Wednesday, she helped lead Connecticut’s post-election audit lottery — a public drawing to randomly select precincts from the November 4 municipal election to have their results double-checked by hand.

 

“Audits are how we prove to voters that the system works,” Posniak said. “They’re not about catching mistakes — they’re about showing that our machines are accurate and our processes are sound. That’s how you build trust.”

 

Following every election, Connecticut conducts post-election audits to verify the accuracy of tabulators and reinforce confidence in election results. In this process, 32 precincts were randomly selected to have their machine totals audited. In addition, 15 alternate precincts were also chosen in case any of the selected precincts cannot be audited. There were a total of 785 voting precincts in this year’s election, but only 633 were part of the drawing, as the 152 precincts with recounts were excluded from selection.

 

The audits are open to the public and are legally required to be bipartisan. Ballots from the selected precincts — at least five percent of all polling places statewide — are manually reviewed and compared to the machine totals. The results are then analyzed by the University of Connecticut’s Center for Voting Technology Research, with the findings published in a public report.

 

“Connecticut voters should be proud,” said Deputy Secretary of the State Jennifer Barahona, who conducted Wednesday’s draw. “Our audit system is transparent, collaborative, and deeply rooted in verification.”

 

Still, officials say there’s room to modernize. In the upcoming legislative session, the Secretary of the State’s Office plans to propose transitioning to risk-limiting audits, a scientifically rigorous method that provides strong statistical evidence that election outcomes are correct.

 

Unlike traditional audits that review a fixed number of ballots, risk-limiting audits scale their checks depending on the margin of victory. The closer the race, the more ballots are reviewed. The approach, already in use in states like Colorado, Rhode Island, and Georgia, is endorsed by the National Academies of Sciences and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission as the “gold standard” in post-election verification.

 

“Election security is not a one-time effort — it’s a continuous process of learning and improvement,” said Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas. “Risk-limiting audits use proven statistical methods to confirm results with greater efficiency and transparency. They would move Connecticut to the forefront of election best practices.”

 

For Posniak, the shift would represent both progress and continuity — a way to bring modern tools to a civic responsibility rooted in tradition.

 

“Every audit is really a promise kept,” she said. “It’s how we show voters that every ballot is counted as cast, every time. That’s what election integrity looks like, and that’s what makes me proud to do this work.”

 

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