Reply #10: We have central count opscan for early & absentee ballots - [View All]

[IndyOp]

Early voting is at one location (clerk's office) and absentee ballots are all mailed to the clerk's office. All ballots are run through the one and only opscan on election day at the Courthouse - anyone can go watch.

The one and only opscan reader has to be programmed to read all of the different ballot styles. A code goes on the bottom of each ballot that tells the machine which precinct that ballot belongs to (how to count the votes on that particular ballot style).

It occurs to me that, in my case, we cannot randomly select machines - because we only have one central count opscan reader machine -> :blush:

In general, it's always better to randomly select from the largest number of precincts or voting systems or whatever the units are that you're auditing.

Okay - I'll try to follow that suggestion here:

Even though people do not go to different precincts in early and absentee voting, their ballots are marked with precinct numbers instead of a 'ballot style' identifier.

Let's imagine that a ballot style is programmed once and then the precincts that all use that single ballot style are directed to that code ->

For precincts 1, 2, 3, 4:
"1" = Hill
"2" = Sodrel

I think we get a thorough audit by randomly selecting a precinct from each of the different BALLOT STYLES. Let's say...
Ballot Style 1 is used for Precincts 1, 2, 3, 4
Ballot Style 2 is used for Precincts 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Ballot Style 3 is used for Precincts 11, 12, 13

We would randomly select one precinct from Ballot Style 1 group; one precinct from Ballot Style 2 group; one from Ballot Style 3 group.

If, after selecting one precinct from each ballot style group, we did not reach 5% of total votes cast, then we could go back and select more precincts from the larger ballot style groups?

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In Indiana counties with all opscan ballots - early voting and election day voting - I am thinking that the most effective audit would, again, be to select precincts from ballot style groups, too. Not just randomly select precincts, but randomly select precincts from each of the ballot style groups to make sure that each ballot style was programmed correctly.

I have an aggravating voice in my head saying that if we select any 5 or 10 precincts we won't have sampled each of the different ballot styles.