St. Charles Times

St. Charles County recently completed a hand count audit of the Election Day vote, as announced by Director of Elections Kurt Bahr. "Each team of judges found the Election Day totals matched their count. It took nine teams six hours to complete this hand count audit," Bahr stated.

The audit process, which is a routine requirement under state law, commenced at 9 a.m. The selection of precincts for auditing involved a Republican and Democratic volunteer who randomly chose nine out of more than 100 precincts.

The counting was conducted in an open area at the Election Authority, allowing public observation as bipartisan teams reviewed boxes of ballots to verify results for races and ballot issues. Bahr explained that they do not provide election night totals to the judges until after they finish the hand count to ensure accuracy without influence: "One of the things we do is not give them the vote totals from election night until after they have finished the hand count, so there’s no way they could try to make the numbers match."

This year saw a record-breaking number of voters in St. Charles County, with 228,700 people casting ballots during absentee voting and on Election Day. This surpassed the previous record set in November 2020 when 223,533 voters participated. Despite increased voter registrations, turnout was slightly lower at 76% compared to 2020.