Election audits

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Links

Note: most of the links on this page are to PDF documents.

ElectionAudits.org

ElectionAudits.org sponsored by Brennan Center for Justice, Citizens for Election Integrity - Minnesota, Common Cause, Florida Voters Coalition, and Verified Voting Foundation

Verified Voting

"Percentage-based versus SAFE Vote Tabulation Auditing: A Graphic Comparison" (February 9, 2008)
Verified Voting: Manual Audit Requirements and Pending Audit Legislation (March 17, 2007)

Kathy Dopp/National Election Data Archive

Why audit levels should be based on margin of race rather than a fixed percentage of votes; explains why audit levels based on a fixed percentage of votes will almost always be too high or too low (December 2007)
History of Confidence Election Auditing Development (1975 to 2007) and Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals (October 22, 2007, last updated December 22, 2007)
Comparison of audit methods Compares audit methods proposed by H.R. 811-110, S. 1487-110, etc. (June 12, 2007)
Holt HR811 10 percent effective audit more costly than 99 percent effective election audits (March 17, 2007)
US HR811 and S559 audits are insufficient to detect vote miscount in many US House races (March 3, 2007)
Election Archive guide (in PDF format) to estimating the minimum size for an audit; see also the corresponding spreadsheet (in XLS format) (January 17, 2007)

Recommendations for Federal Legislation to Ensure the Integrity of our Democracy (November 29, 2006)
- Summary of recommendations:
  - Manual Audits: Require manual audits of machine vote counts sufficiently statistically valid to ensure that electronically-counted election outcomes are correct.
  - Voter Service Reports: Require states to submit timely reports of detailed election data that can be used to measure voter disenfranchisement and voter service levels.
  - Auditable Voting Systems: Provide funds for upgrading voting systems for jurisdictions that have un-auditable voting systems, but fund only "fully-auditable" voting systems where all able-bodied voters can directly record votes on a paper ballot that is voter-verified.
  - Fund Manual Audits and Voter Service Reports: Provide funds for conducting sufficiently statistically valid manual audits of machine vote counts and producing voter service reports in federal elections.
  - Teeth: Provide certain and swift penalties whenever an election jurisdiction fails in a transparency, auditing, or reporting obligation.
  - Public Election Records: Require election officials to make publicly available in original paper and electronic form all election data and records that would reveal fraud or errors in elections or are necessary to verify voter service reports and manual audits, prior to certification of results.
  - Election Monitoring Website: Create a website containing a publicly accessible database for logging and tabulating voters' complaints in elections; and for publicly displaying the reports from the states.
  - Submission of Reports: Require state election officials to submit auditable, audit and voter service reports to the US GAO prior to state certification of election results.
  - Public Disclosure of Voting System Software: Require public disclosure of voting equipment as a condition of any further contracting to enable post-election voting machine integrity verification.
  - Prohibit Certain Network Connections: Outlaw Wide Area Network connections to, and wireless capability in, voting equipment and prohibit voting through any network.
  - Qualifications for Technical Guidelines Development Committee: Require that members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission's Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) for voting systems have at least Masters-level academic credentials in a technical field.
  - Public Right to Observe: Require jurisdictions to allow citizens to observe all aspects of elections.
  - Vote Count Audit and Recount Committee: Create a U.S. Vote Count Audit and Recount Committee whose functions include approving state election audit and recount procedures and policies; and setting standards for state auditable, audit, and voter service reports.
  - Repository for Voting System Disclosure: Fund a repository for publicly disclosed voting system software or require "OVC Listed".
  - Prohibit Practices that Disenfranchise Voters: See a specific list in the "Detailed comments" section.
Manual audit proposal (November 20, 2006)
Election Integrity Audit proposal by The National Election Data Archive's Kathy Dopp and Frank Stenger to calculate election audit sizes (September 25, 2006)
Mandatory Vote Count Audit proposal for Utah (February 2006, revised September 2006 and December 2007)