NY Advocates to State Board of Elections: Audits Won't Find Wrong Winners of Elections

[Wilms]

NY Advocates to State Board of Elections: Audits Won't Find Wrong Winners of Elections

by Howard Stanislevic

July 29, 2009

Since 2006 when this paper (PDF) was published by VoteTrustUSA, it's been widely acknowledged by statisticians and election integrity advocates that the outcomes of many US House races, and smaller state and local contests, can not be confirmed with high confidence using small-percentage precinct-level audits of paper ballots originally counted by computerized ballot scanners or touchscreen voting machines -- even if the chain of custody of all the paper ballots could be verified.

These peer-reviewed papers estimated the scope of the problem by examining almost 1,400 Federal elections over six years. The authors found that the winners of more than 17% of all Federal contests from 2002 to 2006 could not be confirmed with high confidence using a 3% audit of precincts, known in NY as Election Districts (EDs) -- even if the audits showed no erroneous vote counts.

Think about that for a moment: even if the 3% audit did not find a single miscounted vote, the winners of many elections counted by computerized voting systems could still be wrong -- and no one would ever know.

This white paper (PDF), published in 2007, covered six years of New York's Federal elections, and extended the study to the 2006 New York Senate and Assembly elections. The author found that in NY, the winners of 14 out of 87 US House races, 7 out of 62 State Senate Races, and 32 out of 150 State Assembly races could not be confirmed with high confidence using a 3% audit of Election Districts.

snip

http://e-voter.blogspot.com/2009/07/ny-advocates-to-state-board-of.html

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

1. great blog but also

I am VERY jealous of Howard's graphic on his blog.

Where can I get one that cool?

[diva77]

2. ever since having worked at the polls with paper ballots I have believed that audits

are not good enough. It is too easy to rig an audit. The only way out is through - in order to have confidence in any election that can be won by ! vote, you must count ALL of the ballots at the precincts with public oversight.

[Wilms]

3. I could live with the public overseeing of transporting ballots and holding them in a jail cell.

Almost, anyway.

But at issue here is the scope of the audits being inadequate for some of the closer reported outcomes. The 3% may have been over-kill in some other races, though not the main point here.

But it points to the importance of risk-based statistical AND the fact that officials are not really into dealing with audits.

All reasons to keep the levers.

:hi: