New Election Auditing Protocol Proposed

[Wilms]

New Election Auditing Protocol Proposed

By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA

August 12, 2006

In a newly released paper, “Random Auditing of E-Voting Systems: How Much is Enough?”, Howard Stanislevic argues that “Auditing protocols proposed and implemented at the federal and state levels that rely on small-percentage random sampling without replacement are unlikely to detect miscounts sufficient to change the outcome of Congressional or smaller local races, even if such races initially appear to be decided by relatively wide margins.”

While accpeting that random sample comprising a small percentage of thousands of voting systems may be adequate to confirm the outcome of all but the closest statewide races, Stansislevic recommends that a much larger percentage of systems must be audited than commonly suggested for Congressional elections. "Each race must be considered a separate auditing process taking into account the vote margin, the number of precincts in which the race appeared on the ballot and the possibility of miscounts concentrated in a relatively small number of large precincts."

Stanislevic is quick to add that he does not discourage legislation requiring routine election audits, but rather, that the limitations of such audits must be acknowledged by those who promote them so as not to engender a false sense of security. “Routine methods of error and fraud detection must be developed and employed to supplement small-percentage audits, particularly when there is no obvious trigger for additional auditing or full recounts.”

snip

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1664&Itemid=26


From the paper:

Using the above methodology (which does not even take precinct size into account), in the 2004 general election for the US House of Representatives there were 57 races with margins of less than 17.4% requiring more than a 2% audit, 14 races (with margins of < 8.1%) requiring more than a 5% audit and 7 races (with margins of < 4.2%) requiring more than a 10% audit.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/pdfs/VTTF/EVEPAuditing.pdf

[OnTheOtherHand]

1. nitty-gritty stuff

I'm not sure what is more worrisome: that so many House races require larger audits, or that so few are competitive enough to need them.

[BeFree]

2. Every machine should be audited

And anyone in favor of HCPB should demand audits. In fact, everyone should be demanding the best audit possible.

Good to see some experts talking about audits, eh?

[Wilms]

3. .