Principles for Post-Election Audits:Putting It All Together

Panel 7Saturday, October 27

Principles for Post-Election Audits: Where Do We Go From Here?

• What have we learned?– election auditing is in its infancy & evolving rapidly– many points of agreement

• e.g., it’s difficult to put statistics into legislative language

– some more controversial ideas• e.g., responsibility for audits should be independent

• Transparency!– it’s good for election officials as well as the public

• Building Public Confidence– expecting routine problems &

variations/descrepancies

What needs to be done?

• to help spread the election auditing gospel

• to gain more cooperation from election officials

• to build information & infrastructure

• to provide foundations for good legislation

Possible Follow-on Activities

• Post-Summit Working Groups• Information Sharing• Web Information Resources• Research Coordination• Policy Development• Individual State Meetings (ala this

Summit)

Possible Post-Summit Working Groups

• Table of State Auditing Laws, Administrative Rules, and Current Developments

• Glossary of Election Auditing Terms

• Web Archive of Auditing Documents & Forms

• Model Auditing Standards & Legislation

• Election Auditing Training Materials

• Data Collection Instrument Design

• Statistical Sampling and Measurement

Information Resources & Sharing• More Face to Face Meetings

– Another National Election Auditing Summit?– State-specific meetings?

• Web Sites

• Email list servers

• Wiki's for sharing files & collaborative editing

• On-line Bibliographies & Resource lists

• On-line & Spreadsheet Audit Calculators

Election Auditing Summit Meetings in Selected Individual

States?• Bring together similar mix of local and

state election officials, statisticians, computer scientists, and election integrity advocates.

• PLUS selected others from other states– (some via remote videoconference if

necessary)

• Hold in state capitol so key legislators and their staff can participate

Other Venues to Spread the Word

• National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS)

• National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL)

• National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks (NACRC) [schedules meetings in conjunction with National Association of Counties (NACo) conferences]

• International Association of Clerks, Recorders, Election Officials and Treasurers (IACREOT) [splintered from NACRC in 1960's)

• Others?

Data Collection

• Specify what kinds of data are needed– precinct-level, by contest, equipment, type of

voting

• Develop standard forms for gathering data– Election equipment– Auditing & vote counting procedures– Detailed audit cost components– Etc.

• Collect existing forms, training materials, etc.

Promising Research Areas

• Sampling methods to improve efficiency– (statisticians, computer scientists)

• Counting methods for accuracy & efficiency– (statisticians, industrial psychologists)

• How to change norms for election auditing– (administrative behaviorists, industrial

psychologists)

Infrastructure Policy Development

• Public access to data

• Transparency across all levels of voting process

• Election tabulation & auditing rules & legislation– stay tuned for Panel 8!