Election audits

Election auditing refers to any routine review conducted after polls close for the purpose of determining whether the votes were counted accurately (a results audit) or whether proper procedures were followed (a process audit). Results audits must be performed before the election results are declared final if their findings are to be used to correct errors. Process audits can be performed between elections.

Non-routine reviews, such as election challenges or recounts, may incorporate elements of both results and process audits. Recount laws vary by state, but typically require recounting 100% of the votes, while audits may use samples. The Verified Voting Foundation explains the difference between audits and recounts: Post-election audits are performed to “routinely check voting system performance…not to challenge to the results, regardless of how close margins of victory appear to be. Recounts repeat ballot counting (and are performed only) in special circumstances, such as when preliminary results show a close margin of victory. Post-election audits that detect errors can lead to a full recount.”

Computerization of elections occurred rapidly in the United States following the presidential election of 2000, in which imprecise vote-counting practices played a controversial role, and the subsequent adoption of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. The switch to computerized vote tabulation forced election officials to abandon many pre-automation practices used to verify vote totals, such as the redundancy included in valid hand-counting procedures.

Within and outside elections, use of computers for decision support comes with certain IT risks. In even those jurisdictions where vote-tabulating computers do not have active wireless communications, Election-Day electronic miscounts can be caused by unintentional human error, such as incorrectly setting up the computers to read the unique ballot in each election; undetected malfunction, such as overheating or loss of calibration; or by malicious intervention by either corrupt insiders or external hackers who accessed the software before Election Day.

Computer-related risks specific to elections include local officials’ inability to draw upon the level of IT expertise available to managers of commercial decision-support computer systems and the intermittent nature of elections, which requires reliance on a large temporary workforce to manage and operate the computers.

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Wikipedia