Reply #124: Look at the bill [View All]

[Dumak]

Here is a link to the text of the bill: http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=35049

My very brief inspection indicates that only 1-2% of precincts are manually audited, and each of these audits is only conducted within one randomly-selected race. Perhaps this method of audit can detect problems that affect all precincts and races equally, but what about cases where election fraud is focused on specific precincts, and only on the presidential election?

Let's say there are 6000 precincts in Florida. This means that a manual audit would be done for 60 random precincts. If we were to greatly modify the election results in 10% of precincts (where it would make the most difference), that means we would expect about 6 of those precincts to exhibit problems. If the presidential election represents only 10% of the races on the ballot (our ballot had a lot more than that because of all the judges), then it would seem that we might expect that we would notice a problem with the presidential election in just one precinct.

Looking at the bill, I couldn't find anything related to taking immediate corrective measures should an audit "fail". If this is the case, then the audit does very little for election security and accuracy - it only provides a false sense of security. It seems designed only to detect widespread problems with voting hardware.

I believe the audit should be at least 5%, and should always include the presidential race. Each political party should also be able to designate specific precincts for audit (say, 1% for each party). If the audit fails in any precinct, then there should be language in the bill to automatically trigger a complete manual recount. I don't see that here.